There is a serenity to the kitchen of Grace and Savour, one that we have a full view of from our position on the counter. A silent orchestra of chefs moving from station to station, tweezering and saucing, placing and preening, all rehearsed and refined, executed and perfected. It makes for a watch that is both thrilling and calming at once, a juxtaposition not unlike an Attenborough documentary featuring some big fish chasing after a small fish through the ocean bed. Maybe it is the martini talking, but this feels a lifetime away from the early restaurants I got hooked on, where the clattering of pans and chefs shouting was the norm. Maybe it’s the new norm. Maybe it’s the scandi way; from David Taylors tenures past or from his always charming Norwegian wife Anette who is serving up our first course. Maybe it’s the terrior of being sat in this purpose built restaurant in the beautiful garden of Hampton Manor, the bleak winter night a backdrop for the lightest of restaurants paved in glass and bathed at that very moment in Radioheads ‘House of Cards’. Excellent choice on the music. Excellent work on the martini.


I knew from the moment the first course arrived it was going to be a memorable meal. A bovril-like broth of veal bones, heady and warming, with a top-note of smoked salsify and savoy cabbage that has the texture of crisp autumn leaf underfoot. There will be many delicate moments in this meal, but this is not one of those and I pursue the last of the dots around the bowl with a milk bun that has the bitter citrus scent of juniper. Then two nibbles of conical golden beetroot looking like a Madonna outfit from the 90’s, sweet and lactic and making me like beetroot for the first time in twelve years, followed swiftly by crispy Jerusalem artichoke shells with a puree of the veg, tiled with apple and whispers of bay leaf. Jaw-droppingly brilliant in every way. And wagon wheels of fried potato with breezy raw prawns, prawn salt whatever prawn salt may be, and redcurrants, finishing up the last of these bites with technical pockets of mushroom and buckwheat holding liquid states of mushroom and black truffle, dancing precariously with richness and vinegar and coming out on top. These are just the snacks. I’ve barely finished my glass of Nyetimber.





The next piece to come on my blog is my top ten dishes of the year, and, spoiler alert, the following dish comes in at second. I debated it coming first for a while. Why, I hear none of you ask? Well it is because it is perfect in its celebration of December’s best produce. Pumpkin pulled out of the ground forty metres from where we are sat, gently cooked I think it’s own juices, with pumpkin vinegar, pumpkin hollandaise and probably other ways that have escaped me, with a kiss of sweet apple, the almost vanilla-like note of fig leaf, and a grating of walnut. It is cooking to tell your friends and family about, which I have, almost incessantly since eating here in mid-December. The trouble with cooking this good is that it tends to overshadow other dishes, which it very nearly did with partridge and pear in a rather brilliant sauce made from waste grains that lengthens everything else in a way not dissimilar (but undoubtedly far greater skilled) to the bread sauce we made with Christmas lunch.


The bread here is always excellent, as is the butter which they also flavour with the bread grains, which arrives before a dish of razor clams, oysters, cobnuts, and a broth of mussels that is way too saline for my own personal taste. We move on to carefully cooked monkfish where a sauce of preserved tomatoes and crab sings because of the floral miso that is straight out of the Noma cookbook. Brilliant, absolute top-tier cooking, and ideal use for the last of that bread. And then another brilliant sauce, this time for the venison, glossy and reduced to the point I can check my hair in its reflection. Yes, I am still receding. The venison is gently smoked over juniper branches, the belly cooked until the fat softens to a molten state. There is interest and intrigue everywhere on the plate. It really is some restaurant.




I would say that my second favourite course was the one which came next. Blackberry from the bush outside the door. Creamy blackberry things, crispy blackberry things, milky things infused with blackberry wood, and blackberry leaf topped with blackberry gels. Unbelievable flavours that few chefs could pull off. Fruity. Intoxicating. Herbaceous. There is a final dessert of a savarin soaked in green and black walnuts that Sophie correctly describes as tasting like a cross between a rhum baba and sticky toffee pudding before a choux filled with plum compote washed down with an old fashioned. I really like my life.



Dinner is £165 and we take the mixed pairing that includes some great wines and arguably better non-alcoholic pairings. Seriously, the work they have put into pairing the various juices and ferments to the dishes could warrant a piece by itself. Although I could never claim that £165 is value, there is some perspective to take from this. Grace and Savour was SquareMeal’s Restaurant of The Year in 2023, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is a two Michelin starred restaurant presently wearing a one-starred apron. It should be in January, though knowing the Guide they might have to wait until they prove that they are worthy for yet another year. Regardless, it’s a special restaurant, occasionally provocative and at all times interesting. Book now, because if my hunch is correct that price is going to rise next year as their star ascends. There are lots of restaurants that try to pull off this kind of cooking and very few that do it quite this well.
10/10