A first taste at The Cocochine: the restaurant that rewrites the gastronomic rules of Mayfair

Receive free food and drink updates

We will send you a myFT Daily Summary email gathering the latest Food and drink news every morning.

A new restaurant is opening in Mayfair that promises to rewrite the rules of dining in Mayfair. Behind him stand two of London’s most distinguished tastemakers. Tim Jefferies runs Hamiltons photography gallery, whose artists include Richard Avedon, Daidō Moriyama and Don McCullin. His business partner, Sri Lankan-born Larry Jayasekara, is the former head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Pétrus, which he left in 2018 after being named National Chef of the Year.

His restaurant The Cocochine, which takes its name from a diminutive Jefferies used for his daughter, is spread over four floors at 27 Bruton Place. The dining room on the ground floor contains only eight tables, with 28 covers each for lunch and dinner and one table per table for each meal. For practical and economic reasons, this could lead to expecting a set menu with minimal spending. But the menu is a la carte and you can order as much as you want.

I don’t really want to serve things that everyone else serves.

On the first floor there are seven additional seats at the chef’s counter. These are first come, first served. But come first, because the 920-square-foot kitchen is worth seeing. Its specifications include a temperature-controlled bread bin, dry-aging units for meat and fish, and washable metal roofs, which I wouldn’t have thought to admire if Jayasekara hadn’t pointed them out. Jefferies apparently accepted all of his partner’s high-spec requests, regardless of the expense. “When you get involved with Larry, things have to be done at a level, a level that I really appreciate,” Jefferies told me. The wider operation also includes two neighboring premises, which house a staff canteen/development kitchen and an office/recreation room with showers – unheard of for independent restaurants.

The piece de resistance is the private dining room on the top floor. Conceived by Jefferies in collaboration with Jonathan Reed of Studio Reed, the space is reminiscent of a bachelor pad, if the bachelor had impeccable taste and spared no expense: world-class art, eclectic custom furniture, a dining table with capacity for 14 people, a double bed High-rise coffered ceiling with golden lattices, skylights and Saracen fireplace. “Private dining rooms are often an afterthought,” Jefferies says. “Almost always underground, a room with a door, that’s what makes them private. “I hope this gets people excited.”

The space is modeled after Hamiltons’ private entertainment space. “For me, presentation and atmosphere are extremely important,” says Jefferies. “Photography is a difficult art form to understand when a print costs $800,000 and everyone is a photographer. I created a space where these beautiful, rare and expensive works can sing.” When I visit, no artwork has yet been hung in either the private dining room or the bar and restaurant spaces, but I’m told that diners should expect photographs by, among others, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Hiro .

But what about the food? Jayasekara is a highly regarded chef who leads his brigade with quiet authority. In his cooking, Jayasekara sticks to the modern European playbook. Many of his dishes, including a fried cauliflower dish I previewed, are finished with dots of oil or gel administered with a pipette, as well as flower arrangements with tweezers.

But none of its flavors are precious. That cauliflower is marinated for a week in soy sauce, rice vinegar, whole-grain miso, teriyaki sauce, and Sri Lankan molasses (which is derived from coconut blossoms and adds a prune-like depth). It will be difficult for you to analyze all those ingredients on the plate, but the combination attracts you like a puzzle that you want to solve.

Their lobster is smoky from being roasted in a banana leaf and finished with yuzu gel, crème fraîche, microbasil, and a cardamom-lobster jus, which is bright, embodied, and made me feel vampy as I licked it. Green cardamom, which Jayasekera sources from Sri Lanka, is a surprise guest in many dishes.

“I don’t really want to serve things that everyone else serves,” says Jayasekara, whose drive for originality never tests your patience. The truffle bao, which is the bread dish, is a topic of conversation because of its resemblance to a pigtail, or perhaps a brain. Jerusalem artichokes with roasted chicken fat are magnificent. The quince vinegar tart is pure joy. And I’ve never seen canapés loaded with as much caviar as these. Not even in the case of the black truffle donut, a bite so generous that I almost had to unhinge my jaw to fit it. Who needs something delicate when he tastes so good?

@ajesh34