AngloThai, London W1: ‘There is an understated elegance to just about everything’ – restaurant review

AngloThai, as the name suggests, has neatly entwined Thai and British roots. There are proudly British ingredients – Hebridean hogget, Cornish monkfish and crown prince pumpkin. And they’re cooked with Thai expertise in a kitchen led by John Chantarasak, who was brought up in Wales and trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok, where his father was born, and who, alongside his wife, sommelier and co-owner Desiree, has been beloved by the London food scene for several years now. Many new restaurants are said to be “much anticipated”, but in AngloThai’s case it has been anticipated for so many years now that many had given up hope of it ever becoming a reality.

But you realise almost the moment you walk through the door where all that time went, because creating something as beautiful as this takes money and a great deal of planning. You need an interior created by Thai-American designer May Redding, complete with strategically placed Lampang Province ceramics to help attract a clientele who’ll be happy to stump up the £30 supplement to add Brixham crab, caviar and coconut crackers to their tasting menu. This isn’t Soho or Shoreditch; this is a smart restaurant close to Edgware Road where Anglo and Thai influences collide with the requisite levels of pomp and fire.

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If the reimagining of authentic Thai food has been an ongoing plotline in the British food landscape over the past 15 years, here at AngloThai we see it dangle a pedicured toe into modern fine-dining territory. We began with non-alcoholic sunflower seed sours, made with Herb All spirit, Botivo aperitivo and egg white, that had all the weirdness of a proper cocktail with none of the headache. After that, we had jus de raisin, which some posh restaurants are currently selling for £30 a bottle to generations who are far too young to remember Shloer.

Then it was on to a set of complex amuse-bouches, starting with a comice pear perched on a small plinth of candied beetroot. Eat it in one bite, we were instructed, and I complied like a boa constrictor: it was crunchy, sweet and dotted with nutty Duchess Farm rapeseed. Next, a Carlingford oyster, served in its shell and drenched in a thoughtful, fire-red and brutally spicy fermented chilli dressing with sea buckthorn. “This heat has actually made me giddy,” said my friend Hugh, batting away the flames. “My eyes are watering, and I can’t feel my nose,” I replied. Then a dainty parcel of spiced lemongrass-scented pork in thin tempura on a hand-thrown plate; battered sausage has never tasted so good.

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If AngloThai, with its caviar and comice frippery, sounds a bit stiff and daunting, it absolutely isn’t. It is most definitely good fun, with a buzzy, youngish clientele and 1980s Madonna on the playlist – not too loud that it drowns conversation, but rather at that rare sweet spot where you can talk freely with some privacy. The front of house are knowledgable, and clearly proud of Chantarasak’s ingenuity, but they never overstay their welcome, even when explaining why the restaurant doesn’t serve rice, and instead offers up more sustainable British grains – the night we visited, the evening’s starch was barley simmered in a little lamb fat, which was rustic and really rather lovely. Those same servers will also tip you off as to how good the thinly sliced, top-quality tomatillo draped over cured chalk stream trout is, or how the Wildfarmed bread course is made glossy with shrimp butter. But they’ll be off soon thereafter, and leave you to your chamchuri wood chair under flattering Ban Pa Ao lighting, listening to Into The Groove and chewing on a mouthful of exquisite hogget massaman curry with plenty of deeply bronzed shallot and a slick of rich, but not overpoweringly coconutty sauce.

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There is an understated elegance to just about everything that AngloThai does – there are jet-black crackers in the shape of Michelin stars (accidental, perhaps?) and a dessert in which a rich, duck egg custard enrobes a thinly shaved pumpkin tart that more closely resembles an art installation than a pudding – but if you simply want to be fed, there is also a sating bowl of wok-fired long aubergine that still retain their form and some bite, to eat with dainty homemade pickles.

Friends of mine have been back to AngloThai again and again since it opened in late November, having become addicted to those aubergines and the caviar crackers, but for most people this will be a special-occasion restaurant. AngloThai may have been a long time coming, but it is certainly feels set to stick around.

• AngloThai 22-24 Seymour Place, London W1, 020-3307 8800. Open lunch Wed-Sat, noon-2.30pm; dinner Mon-Sat, 5.30-10pm. From about £60 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service.