London’s appetite for Basque-influenced cooking is a furious one. But despite a recent wave of restaurants, bars, bakeries and pop-ups, the Prince Arthur proves that there’s still space for glammed up wood-fire cooking and full-bodied flavours. With a kitchen helmed by chef Adam Iglesias (of Brat, Sessions Arts Club, and San Sebastian’s Michelin-starred Alameda), the Basque boom has breached the walls of a flashy Belgravia boozer.
That being said, save for a few pint drinkers, bar stools, and Sky Sports on TV, the Prince Arthur isn’t your standard pub - unless your local displays shellfish and caviar on ice at the bar. Making our way through to the ground floor dining area, with its delicate painted tiles, pristine tablecloths, and smart bistro-style banquettes, we don’t mourn the loss of sticky counters and beer-stained carpets. Quite the reverse.
Guided by staff, we jump from rich turbot-dripping potatoes crowned with spiced txangurro spider crab, to impossibly fresh sea urchin, served in its shell and drowned in an intense lobster bisque. Devilled eggs, meanwhile, arrive as immaculate glossy orbs, gutted and re-stuffed with creamy smooth egg yolk seasoned with a luxurious five-gram bump of Siberian Baerii caviar.
Elsewhere, there’s a fluffy wedge of burnt Basque cheesecake, a mammoth Galician blond ribeye large enough to share between three, and whole turbot pil-pil. Judging by a wood-fired presa Iberica, whoever’s on the grill knows what they’re doing; every surface is charred to crisp perfection, but the cuisson is a beautiful rosy pink, and impossibly tender.
The hallmarks of flavour-forward Basque cooking are present and correct, a fact driven home by a dish of lobster rice. The edges and bottom are scorched, leaving that irresistible caramelised layer known as socarrat. It’s polka-dotted, perhaps overzealously, with aioli splotches, framing a chunk of tail and a solitary claw.
Portions sometimes teeter on the small side. But the Prince Arthur has found its crowd among Belgravia’s well-heeled business folk, who saunter in post-work on a Wednesday, shedding their suit jackets and reclining into wicker-backed chairs, ready to splash out £25 for a single carabinero prawn. Dining on robust, deeply flavoured, occasionally flamboyant Basque dishes is an enviable way to spend an evening; if your wallet allows, the Prince Arthur makes a stellar place to do it.