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It is not wrong to say that The Yellow Bittern is a bookstore. Located just a short walk from London’s St Pancras station on Caledonian Road, from the outside it looks like a second-hand bookseller. The windows display two dozen volumes on art, photography, politics, poetry and gastronomy, including, on my visit, a 1949 copy. sizzling fountain by the American cartoonist Peter Arno. During opening hours you can ring the bell and access an eclectic range of books for sale in the basement. But The Yellow Bittern is also, more obviously, a restaurant; one run by an Irish chef, Hugh Corcoran, a magazine editor, Frances Armstrong Jones, and Oisín Davies, a bookseller.
As a restaurant, it marches at its own pace. “We see it as an alternative to what exists,” says Armstrong Jones. Armstrong Jones, daughter of Lord Snowdon and his second wife Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, is editor of Lunch magazine, a biannual publication about art, fashion and food that launched in 2016 and revolves around recorded conversations over lunch. “Lunch “It’s about bringing together creative, irreverent people from different backgrounds,” he says. “And for a long time I wanted to open a restaurant that was the embodiment of that.”
The restaurant has 18 seats. It is open for lunch Monday through Friday. Reservations can be made by phone, in person or by postcard (which some clients have done, including a chef from outside Paris who came on the Eurostar). Payment is cash only: as Armstrong Jones points out, there’s an ATM at the Tesco Express across the road in case people need it. “Paying cash is fun,” he says Corcoran. “It is one of the last remnants of privacy. [in a digitally tracked society].” “I haven’t heard a single complaint,” he adds. davies. An art programmer and former administrator of the UAL Archive and Photography Research Center, he oversees the bookstore and helps in the kitchen.
That old analogue approach extends throughout the space, from the white tablecloths and flowers on the tables to the lack of music; You may feel a slight clinking of glasses as trains pass by on the subway. “A quiet space to come, chat and have lunch,” says Corcoran, who not only cooks but takes and serves your order, brings wine and happily explains the meaning of the art on the walls if asked. This includes a portrait of Samuel Beckett, as Corcoran is a big fan; paintings by Anthony Fry and Oliver Messel, who were Armstrong Jones’s godfather and great-uncle, respectively; works for Pedro Doig who provided the cover for Corcoran’s short story collection Two dozen eggs; and a painting of Lenin bought by Corcoran’s mother in Moscow in 1987 that used to hang in his childhood home in Belfast. “For political and aesthetic reasons,” he explains. “She was from Yorkshire and grew up in a union family. It is also a beautiful portrait.”
Corcoran spent about a decade living and working in the Basque Country and France, including as a chef at the wine and small plates restaurant Delicatessen Place in Paris. Most recently he was resident chef at Italo in Vauxhall. From The Yellow Bittern’s modest kitchen (two induction hobs and a small oven), he creates a daily à la carte menu that consists of at least one appetizer, a soup, a main course (stew, roast bird or something “resistant”). such as Lancashire stew or bassoons and mash), a green salad with cheese and pudding (classic English offerings such as gooseberry fool or trifle).
On my visit before the restaurant opened in October, we sat down to a Basque leek and potato soup made with vegetables grown in Armstrong Jones’ garden in Sussex. “Obviously we’re going to buy things at the market,” Corcoran says, “but it’s nice to use our own vegetables.” This was followed by a succulent roast guinea fowl with vegetables and a bottle of white wine (Quartz by Etienne Cortois) from the Loire Valley. Speaking of wines, there is no list as such. “We put things next to the glass and one or two bottles on the board so people have an idea of the cost,” Corcoran says. “Otherwise, people tell me what they are going to drink and how much they want to pay and I find them a bottle. “We have some good assignments.”
The whole setup sounds dated but it makes sense. “It’s for us,” Corcoran says. “We are not employing other people. My dad was a mechanic and I see it as a mechanic’s shop. Come in at nine. Prepare some food. Open some bottles of wine. Closes at six. Go home and cook the kids dinner. On the weekend, take care of the garden.” And he adds: “We like old places where people gather, eat and drink. “That’s what we’ve tried to recreate, but in a way that’s unique to the people who run it.” As Davies says of book curation: “It’s in the general interest, but the general interest is ours.”
As for the name, it derives from a Gaelic poem about a bird dying of thirst, which urges its readers to empty their cups while they can. Corcoran recites a few lines. The case of an alcoholic lunch has rarely been so beautiful. 20 Caledonian Road, London N1; 0203-342 2162