Grace Dent reviews Core: The staff are adorable

Ambience 3/5

Food 4/5

I’m not a Notting Hill person.

Never, not once in 20 years, has a visit to Ladbroke Grove ended without me ascending the Tube steps beaded in tepid sweat, hurling money at TfL to take me east. I acquiesce nowadays that this fish-out-of-waterness may never shift. Notting Hill is a party that began too long ago for me to kiss the hosts with real warmth.

It is a posh series of Love Island where I missed the first 345 episodes. I’d like to whisk Richard Curtis from W11 to Magnus Reid’s restaurant, Legs, on Morning Lane, E9, and see if within 50 minutes he loses all natural colour and goes floppy like an overwatered spider plant, like I do when I pass the Westway.

Still, I cannot fault the much-plaudited chef Clare Smyth for opening her new place over west. Smyth operated for some time at three-Michelin-star level at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and I sense this is where she is comfortable. I’ve watched people chase Michelin stars in, say, South Woodford and you can’t please the locals long-term with teensy portions of chef’s whimsy and no burgers. Notting Hill gets it. And while there was talk of Core scaling down fine dining to relaxed groovy levels in this new spot, I never quite bought the notion of Smyth cooking, like Reid and his ilk, in a Ramones T-shirt while swigging natural wine and blasting out Butthole Surfers’ back catalogue.

Yes, Core plays a bit of U2 and the kitchen is so very ‘open’ it’s like the staff have signed up for a BBC Two reality show with a name like Kitchens Uncut. But, menu-wise, this is still full bells and whistles faff and finery. That’s not criticism — I rather bloody loved it. Incidentally, if you know someone who gets their rocks off from kitchen over-cleanliness, bring that filthy niche bleach-buying pervert here because the Core kitchen is an ongoing paean to the beauty of gleaming surfaces. Alternatively, you could enjoy the food, which I did too. I arrived feeling like Core was merely a box to tick, so as not to have to bluff through end-of-year lists, yet it opened into something more. Tiny, sumptuous amuse-bouches began with a small scone-like tomato and basil ball of joy — sorry, ‘gougère’ — a sliver of jellied eel on toasted seaweed and a chunk of crispy smoked duck wing with burnt orange skin. Fine British produce served surprisingly. I won’t lie, Core’s lunchtime clientele are older couples with retirement funds and spare time to squander, so I’d suggest a glass of Chablis and a will to create your own party.

The staff are adorable in that manner I’ve only felt at The Ledbury, where the line between Michelin-type primness and being a best friend you want to take drinking is ever-so-finely danced. One of the nicest things I’ve eaten this year was the Charlotte potato topped with herring and trout roe on a heavenly white butter sauce. Yes, it’s a fishy spud; yes, it’s gone in three bites. A plate of ‘lamb braised carrot’ on sheep’s milk yoghurt, frankly, sounds like a wet weekend in Dudley on paper, but transpired to hold all the lamby sweetness of that mouthful of Sunday roast you enjoy most in the kitchen away from the hoi polloi you foolishly said you’d cook for. I was impressed similarly with an oxtail-stuffed Roscoff onion served with an abstemious but satisfying serving of short rib. A piece of skate festooned with Morecambe Bay shrimp and Swiss chard in a puddle of brown butter was delightful.

By this point I’d drunk two glasses of Chablis and had been in west London two hours and was not remotely homesick for the sight of a Hackney Wick berk collecting a spelt loaf on a penny-farthing. I didn’t have time for pudding as I was late to eat another mid-afternoon meal somewhere just as fancy. Yes, I hate me too. But they packed me up some fabulous chocolate tart petits fours, which I ate in bed later watching telly. I enjoyed west London. What the hell has Smyth started?

Core

1 bottle Glenlivet still water £5.50
2 three course set lunches £130
2 glasses of Chablis Vocoret £25
1 glass of Riesling Spätlese £15
1 glass of Lousas Envínate £10
2 coffees £10

Total £195.50

92 Kensington Park Road (020 3937 5086; corebyclaresmyth.com)