Sunday lunch with a deliciously smoky twist. Ekstedt at The Yard is a very fair cop
It should be a criminal offence to make jokes about a restaurant that was once the HQ of London’s Met police, but I’ll plead guilty. It’s just too hard to resist.
I’d been putting off visiting Ekstedt at the Yard for some time, not because I didn’t want to go, but because life always got in the way. Hearing about Sunday by The Fire a new Sunday lunch though had me turning on the blue lights and tearing through traffic (figuratively) to get there.
I am rather bored with standard Sunday lunches – lakes of gravy, Yorkshire pudding bigger than a hat, beef that often needs a chainsaw to tear through etc etc. Ekstedt promised something different, while still retaining that Sunday vibe
Great Scotland Yard Hotel is easy to find, a few steps from Embankment tube, or just a short walk down Whitehall from Trafalgar Square. The outside is discreet, but when you go in it all gets rather fabulous rather fast. Quirky (prison) art and sculptures abound and it’s all very opulent without being flashy.
It is now a five-star boutique hotel, part of Hyatt’s Unbound Collection, which are all special places. As such it has a unique restaurant in Ekstedt At The Yard where Michelin-starred Niklas Ekstedt uses fermentation, ancient fire-cooking in an open kitchen. There are no gas or electric ovens or hobs, there is instead a large wood fired oven and a wood fired cooking ‘pit’. This is his only restaurant outside his native Stockholm.
You get the scent of smoke as soon as you walk into the elegant space, all decked out with Nordic features and shelves of fermenting products, like barley miso. With all the flames, it must be especially good to walk into on a cold winter’s day.
Normally guests eat a number of tasting courses, but for Sunday lunch the menu is perfectly pared down and changes regularly. It begins with sourdough baked in the oven and served with melted butter, and then for me a single scallop cooked over open fire in its shell and surrounded by smoked butter, sea herbs, seaweed powder.
The open fire has turned the scallop a fine shade of grey, but has enhanced the flavour fabulously. That and the butter sauce are wonderful together.
P has hay smoked veal fillet with pickled wild mushrooms and lingonberries. The tangle of thinly sliced pink veal has a delicate smoky aroma and taste and there are dabs of mayonnaise all around, which make me think longingly of Vitello Tonnato, one of my favourite things
The wild forage-y mushrooms are perfect and the lingonberries,all but inescapable in Nordic cuisine, add a sharp cranberry flavour to it all. It’s really very good indeed.
I wander over to the open kitchen, visiting is encouraged, and marvel at the flames and the chefs’ calm control over what must be a rather temperamental cooking method. Dishes are lining up on the pass, the Fire Roasted Pork Chop looks especially good.
My main is nodding to classic Sunday lunch with Guinea Fowl standing in for chicken. Hay smoked guinea fowl to be accurate, and served with roasted girolles, sweetcorn and fermented grains and a mustard jus gras. The last is a classic sauce made from the drippings left in a roasting pan.
Guinea Fowl is chicken, elevated. The hay has added extra deliciousness and there is a crispy skin to savour. The grains are rich and bouncy, I think they are barley and the (a teeny bit salty) sauce is sticky enough to cling onto my fingers. Breast and leg are soon devoured.
P has gone for the Charcoal grilled Cornish seabass, roasted hispi cabbage, celeriac puree, smoked brown butter. Open fire grilling and fish never fails, especially with fish this good. The cabbage is just about cooked, the leaves are lovely, but the core is defiant to both teeth and knife. Celeriac is always welcome, a vegetable that looks like a Dr Who monster’s head when raw, but is less scary once cooked. It’s another great dish.
Bone marrow mash sounded very interesting, but as a concession to Sunday we had roast fire potatoes which were perfectly crispy, and on the side some kale which is very much a green vegetable of the season. I like it, although it does like to get caught in one’s teeth.
Throughout we’d had some excellent wines by the glass chosen by their Sommelier, service here is very smooth, friendly and professional
Baked Swedish cheese took me back to my cub scouting days, the sort of thing we’d cook over open fires out in the fields. I don’t expect Health & Safety allow that kind of fun anymore. Here the cheese was safely paired with buckwheat waffles, but I still had to watch out for the very hot bits.
P went for Roasted plum sorbet with star anise cream and hibiscus tea coulis,very much a seasonal treat. Of course the smoke seeped into this dish as well. I was surprised my clothes didn’t also smell of smoke afterward, not that I would have minded.
It’s a Sunday lunch you’ll talk about after, as well as during. A superb taster of what Ekstedt is all about in Sweden and what he’s doing right here in the ‘smoke’.
An arresting experience. Boom, tish!
Served weekly each Sunday, starting at 12:30 through to 2:30pm
3-5 Great Scotland Yard
London
SW1A 2HN