New restaurant St Leonards should be next on your private dining hit list

Have you been to Brunswick House? If you haven’t, Jackson Boxer and Andrew Clarke’s Vauxhall baby is a twinkling, antique-laden Aladdin’s cave of a restaurant. Their new venture, St Leonards, is not. It’s harsh, warehouse-like and stripped back – and I loved it.

It’s great news for events. There has been a slew of serious new private dining rooms opening around the capital so far this year. When it opens in September, we’ll be adding the 12-seater at St Leonards to our list – we suggest you do too. It’s still in the ‘not-quite-ready-yet’ phase but is being designed in-keeping with the main restaurant, and I am in no doubt that it will be as popular for meetings with meat as it will be private dinners.

Until then though, I strongly advise you to go and ‘test-drive’ the food. The menu – inspired by south-east England and south-west France – is made up (mostly) of sharing plates that either come in the form of fish (raw), meat (cooked on an open fire in view of diners) and vegetables. 

My guest and I started with flamed oysters topped with pickled rhubarb and a crust of pork fat – yum. A vivid plate of charred leek with almond buttermilk and truffle is vegan (and non-vegan) heaven, but it’s the meat that wows. The duck to share is an obvious choice, but bavette steak topped with shaved bone marrow has umami-curiousness on its side. A dessert of salted caramel tart with cardamom ice cream is frankly ridiculous (in a very good way). 

It ain’t cheap, but if the boss is paying who cares? Besides, I think it’s worth it. Get in touch about September bookings now – we think the boys might be just a little bit busy.