Google didn’t want me to find GL50. Put it into your phone and it offers a postcode, one with the pin set to the top bit of the Royal Spa, north of the race course and into the green parts of the map. And then, once I’d found the found the restaurant and established that it was it was a centre bit of town I kind of know, the pin stopped on St Georges Place instead of taking me up Chester Walk like it should have done. Four times I walked up and down St Georges Place. Four times. Next time I’m hiring a sherpa to haul me and my emotional baggage to lunch.

By the time I arrive I’m starving and well in need of a good drink. Two cocktails up; both the weakest part of the meal by some distance, though the fruity tequila number is way more drinkable than the bacon one which is heavy on the vinegar. Then wine, really nice wine chosen from a very well curated list. Portuguese Douro for forty quid. I’m there in November to watch Bon Iver, by the way. It’s a tough life. Bread with butter they churn inhouse, which excites me a little bit, and a mushroom tart with duxelles, mushroom powder, raw slices of mushroom, and a caramelised onion layer than works just beautifully at adding a little interest. The tart is a work of art. I don’t care what comes after this. I like it here.

I’ve come for lunch where five surprise courses total fifty quid, excluding that mushroom tart which I’m hoping shows up again but know deep inside that it won’t. I don’t know much about GL50 other than Chris from PX and Tarts thinks that chef patron Jonas Lodge can really cook and it transpires that Chris, once again, is correct. It’s deeply complex cooking and every plate has a lot going on. I would later find out that Jonas has worked in some very serious kitchens across the continent, and has decided to focus firmly on what he can rustle up using produce from this isle. Although there are reference points in the forthcoming dishes that nod towards other chefs, the style is very much of his own.

First up is a parfait of autumn squash encased in the same light dainty casing which formed the base of the aforementioned tart. Smooth, clean flavour of nutty squash which is just about room temperature. Crispy lovage, pine nuts, dice-sized bits of charred squash, and a dressing made from pickled walnuts. It eats like a dream, the culinary equivalent of a stroll on a chilly morning kicking up damp leaves. Straight after is cod loin pastrami, which I struggle with texturally, but my fellow diner loves. Langoustine emulsion, various ferments and pickles, and a kind of pesto from what I think is broccoli stalks but are likely very wrong. It’s a salty umami bomb. Main is venison, pickled red cabbage, potato terrine, beetroot. and a tangle of something green which tastes like kale. What takes this from very good Bistrot fodder to sublime cookery is two things; first a rosehip ketchup of sorts which is sweet and sour and slightly floral, and, secondly, a masterful sauce spiked with chocolate. Nothing on this course is going break boundaries, yet the delivery is spot-on. I use the last of the bread to mop up the last of the sauce.

Three desserts to go, though the first is sent by chef to see what I think. Malted cabbage and buttermilk ice cream, unmistakably so in flavour, with roasted yeast caramel and some soil of sorts that tastes like chocolate but probably wasn’t. Hardly helpful I know, but I wasn’t listening too hard, instead indulging myself face first in something that starts vegetal and ends up tasting like salted caramel and only hints at ever getting sweet. I wouldn’t usually entertain cabbage in a dessert and more fool me for that. A little Eton mess with raspberries lifted by a meringue dotted with long pepper, and then, to finish, one of the best desserts I can remember eating: certainly post pandemic. Burnt milk and sesame, the latter in various forms of crisps, crackers, purees and dusts. My only reference point is something I ate in a cone at Stanley beach in Hong Kong, but that’s as useless to you as it to me. It’s nutty, honeyed sweetness, laced with just a little sherry and balanced impeccably by the burnt milk that is reminiscent of malted milk biscuits. It is quite exceptional, the high point in a meal full of them. I’d go back again purely to eat it.

I have no idea how long GL50 has been open, but it felt like I caught it at that magic moment when all the pieces have come together and the adventure is just getting started, though maybe that magic has been there from the start. The food leaving the kitchen is intelligent, technically excellent, and provoking. It is everything that eating out should be. And whilst it occasionally strayed into parts that challenged me a little too much, I was enthralled from the second that mushroom tart came out. The bill for two is £180, including the wine and the cocktails, and is money well spent. And the best part? They are tweaking the name soon to Jonas at GL50, meaning that I’ll have no problem finding it next time.

9/10