Tom Aikens’ Michelin-starred mews house is a trip down memory lane – literally
What was your favourite food as a child? Mine was turkey dinosaurs. I would beg my mum for them on a daily basis, even staging a protest one Christmas when presented with leftover turkey stew. My friend Tara’s was spaghetti bolognese, cooked in an entirely un-Italian way and, one occasion, baked in the oven for her as a bolognese birthday cake.
We find ourselves discussing this when faced with the trio of starting snacks at Muse by Tom Aikens, which are, the menu tells us, inspired by his childhood faves. Well, inspired by his memories of being in the garden with his mum, anyway, which he has rendered into three impossibly delicate snacks topped with tweezed herbs and flowers.
‘Tom Aikens clearly ate better than us as a child,’ I say, as we demolish some dainty little crackers smeared with cheese and topped with a penny-sized leaf, set at a jaunty angle like a beret. ‘I’m glad he did,’ she replies, ‘I was going to have pasta and cheese for dinner tonight before you called me.’
So goes the experience of eating at Muse, a Michelin-starred restaurant on a tiny mews street in Belgravia, and one of the most personal dining rooms in London. It is a trip down memory lane – and you can’t help leaning into the nostalgia.
The background
The headline was in in big, black, bold letters. ‘IS THIS THE MOST PRETENTIOUS MENU EVER?’ That was my first introduction to Muse – a restaurant so committed to doing things differently that the Daily Mail had worked itself into a fury before a single plate had been served. If that’s not a sign you’re onto something, I don’t know what is. I wanted to go, immediately.
Six years and six courses later, I can tell you that Muse isn’t pretentious. It is, however, run by a chef who has spent decades obsessing over British producers, sustainable sourcing and cooking things properly – and it shows. Tom Aikens grew up in Norfolk in a family who took food seriously – seriously enough that by 26, he had become the youngest British chef ever to receive two Michelin stars, at Pied à Terre in Fitzrovia, after formative years cooking in France. Muse is his fourth restaurant, and his most personal
Muse features an experimental interior with vintage-inspired downstairs
The space
Muse is a mews townhouse (geddit?) on a whitewashed street in London’s Belgravia. ‘Wait, is this someone’s house?’ says Tara, as we step through the front door, slightly dishevelled from a Tube-striked journey and in desperate need of a glass of wine. Or perhaps a cocktail, shaken from the shell-like spirits cabinet inside what I can only describe as Muse’s living room, a cosy space set around a sofa, also fitted with a vinyl player and a small open kitchen.
We are taken up a narrow staircase, notable for its rock-climbing handles in place of a banister (don’t worry, the stairs aren’t that steep) and into the upstairs dining room, also homely and also fitted with an open kitchen. Comfy banquettes are set beneath wiggly mirrors, and there are counter seats if you’re feeling particularly foodie. It does have the sense of being in someone’s house – if said someone had a full professional kitchen, of course.
“Just down the road” - a creamy ricotta and blood orange salad
House made charcuterie
The food
Good news for millennials who love a Boomerang clip: the menu is decorated with a pop-up mews house. It is also filled with poetic descriptions of each dish in the context of the memory it evokes, rather than the flavour.
“Making and breaking” is all about the ‘comfort, satisfaction, sharing, connection, love and joy’ of eating bread – all words I’d use to describe the basket sourdough that we practically polish off before the on-duty chef has finished telling us about Tom’s 25-year-old sourdough starter (‘older than some of ours chefs’, he tells us, as we nod through mouths bursting with bread and chicken butter).
“Just down the road” is a creamy ricotta and blood orange salad inspired by the ‘ongoing quest to find the very best of British producers’ (the result of which is, apparently, near Tom’s family home in Norfolk). It’s sculptural and squiggly, like a posh Colin the caterpillar. There’s a whiff of cheesecake about it, too – or maybe that’s the nostalgia talking.
There’s a monkfish dish that stays roughly the same “From season to season”, hence the name. For spring, it is bathed in wild garlic and elderflower foam. Before the French course (“The love affair”, bien sûr), we’re presented with a choice of knives, each of which represents a different part of the Muse ethos. I choose the French knife, influenced by our French waiter Matthieu and his assurances that it offers ‘quality, sustainability, stability’ (write that on the French flag).
The French course is flawless, by the way – pigeon cooked three ways, including a dinky portion of creamy pasta topped with a confit wing (‘I did say I was going to have pasta and cheese tonight!’ exclaims Tara, as Matthieu inevitably wonders who he’s let loose in this beautiful Michelin-starred restaurant).
We finish with the first strawberries of the season, layered with milk tuiles and rice pudding. ‘As a child, I remember the first taste of summer with beautiful, sweet strawberries,’ Tom writes in the menu. And at last, here is a memory we share: hands stained red from fresh berries, eaten by the fistful in our parents’ kitchens while still knee-high.
"Swim for your life" - seared British venison, parsnip purée, clementine, cabbage, and radicchio.
The verdict
Tom Aikens is in his feels with Muse, but in a beautiful, earnest way – like a culinary poet, or a Taylor Swift ballad. He is sharing the best moments of his life using the best techniques he has learned and refined for decades – and somehow, being here, they feel like mine, too. Turkey dinosaurs never stood a chance.
The bill
Lunchtime tasting menus are six courses for £105pp or 10 for £195pp.
38 Groom Place, London SW1X 7BA; musebytomaikens.co.uk
