Like dining with Elrond in Rivendell: Corenucopia reviewed

Corenucopia by Clare Smyth is in Belgravia, amid a line of interior-design shops, and it is prettier than all of them. It is a female paradise on the ground floor of a mansion block, dedicated to art nouveau and ‘comfort’ food. There are plaster tree branches peeking from the walls and the menu script looks elvish. It is rare that whimsy does not make me kick things, and few things are more whimsical than plaster forests, but Smyth, also of the three-Michelin-starred Core, is one of the great cooks working now. From her, whimsy is merely voice; or, rather, I forgive her.

There is a sanity to this restaurant, even if it is gilded for native Belgravia blondes. Unlike many of their ponds it feels like a real place. Perhaps it is its smallness? The tiny rooms are painted cream; the banquettes and chairs are golden velvet; the paintings are still lifes of flowers; a copy of The Dairy Book of British Food – a real book! – is on a shelf. In the hall there is an idealised glass-fronted fridge for women who have never seen one for themselves. It holds washed fruit and vegetables, oysters and caviar, and in that I read Smyth’s love.

Two things particularly endear Corenucopia to me. The first is the specialist potato menu, but I still have fond memories of the long-dead Potato Merchant in Exmouth Market (it lasted a season under the coalition government, though it made fewer headlines) and, before that, Spudulike. Now, Smyth’s potato menu is as definitive as it gets: chips, Anna, boulangère, steamed, dauphinoise, croquettes with Davidstow Cheddar, Hasselback, dauphine, fondant, mashed (possible with caviar for £20 more, or black truffle, also for £20 more, though I would counsel you not to waste your potato on truffles). The second is the specialist vinegar menu which I don’t have the space to type out, though I smelt, and I wanted, them all. Smyth is obviously a monomaniac, and this is good.

We eat malted sourdough with Ampersand butter (£5.50) and wild venison salami with black pepper (£6). Both are glorious, even if we have, essentially, made a top-of-the-range Pret A Manger sandwich out of them. ‘Fish and Chips’ (the scare quotes are Smyth’s) is Dover sole with lobster mousse, mushy peas and triple-cooked chips. It tastes less intimidating than it sounds but when is a fish finger ever intimidating? (The answer is at Babington House.) The fish finger is £54, though Smyth’s seven–course ‘Seasons’ tasting menu at Core is £265 per head without wine or service. That is more, then: the fish finger is delicious.

I long for ‘Toad in the Hole’ (£34) with Cumberland sausage, black pudding, smoked bacon and charcuterie sauce but I am unable, in the end, to resist chicken Kiev cordon bleu (£34.50) and dauphinoise potatoes with garlic and nutmeg (£9.50). The potatoes are served in a boiling inky pot – this is loved food – and the chicken Kiev? It is stuffed with cheddar and Serrano ham, the greatest double act since Cain and Abel. It’s a joy.

Finally, we eat a sticky toffee pudding with rum and Jersey cream (£18) – an exquisite sugar soup, dense and lovely – and a lemon meringue pie (£16) so slender, undulating and yellow – the crust has exactly the right amount of char – that its memory is a contender for deathbed recollection. But I make no promise. Corenucopia is dining with Elrond in Rivendell in the late 1970s, and if that is something I never knew I sought – elves are weird – I do now.