Native at Browns

Native at Browns | Wild Food and Botanical Cocktails

You’ll find the newest iteration of Native at Browns, the designer boutique in Mayfair. 

It’s true, the sustainable restaurant and high fashion store partnership may seem like an odd fit at first, but they’re more closely linked than you’d think, in terms of appreciating craftsmanship and the upward trend of questioning where it’s all coming from (traceability, sustainability).

Obviously, taste is important as well…

Previously, Native’s owner-operators, accomplished hunter-gatherer Imogen Davis and self-taught chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes, had a tough time of it trying to tie down a long term home; starting from Neal’s Yard (where they had to leave due to there being ‘too many restaurants in Covent Garden’). As logic dictates, Borough Market was next. Then came a residency on Osea Island. And after some time in London restaurant wilderness, they’ve returned and it seems they’ve finally found ‘the one’ at Browns. 

Red Deer (a design studio behind the interiors of St John Marylebone, Ochre and more) are who to thank for making Native look incredibly easy on the eyes – laying out the floor in a hand-crafted mosaic tapestry (complete with a wild mushroom emblem) and decorating the space itself in a beach cottage-chic aesthetic that has terrazzo tables (made from marble recycled from an old Browns installation), dappled lamps, a cosy banquette upholstered in pastel pink wool and a bar from where they pour natural wine and mix cocktails infused with foraged ingredients (of which we’ll get to later). Then outside, hides a seriously leafy courtyard – lined with trees – for alfresco dining. 

THE FOOD

In the kitchen, they’re cooking up wild food. Wild in that it’s both seriously inventive and that the ingredients they work with are either straight from the soil or sourced from trusted UK farmers and fishermen (hence the name, Native). You begin with ‘zero waste snacks’ that save the supposedly ‘unwanted’ bits and turn them into nibbles like fish trim on toast with a quince ‘hoisin sauce’. Main dishes – ever-changing –  might be line-caught pollock in a parsnip purée; Dorset brown crab with foraged sea herb; fallow deer haunch (the back of the leg) with smoked beetroot; or wood pigeon kebabs. 

The Native fish fillet is a signature (though not always on the menu) and yes, does look a bit like the McDonald’s burger, but is miles better than that – crumbed cod cheek sandwiched between two brioche buns with brown crab rarebit and seaweed tartare. Another dish with signature status is the marrowmel, a sweet but savoury dessert where half a beef bone is carved open and filled with white chocolate and caramelised bone marrow. If you, understandably, are struggling to settle on something, they can also arrange a tasting menu for the table with a bit of everything for £70 per person.

THE DRINKS

As you’d expect, the wine offerings are natural and low-intervention, and some native, including a few pinot noirs from Sussex. Cocktails see classics given the zero-waste treatment where you’ll see the words ‘foraged’, ‘discarded’ and ‘waste’ in every drink, in some shape or form – be it a cosmopolitan (fittingly named the Compostopolitan) made with discarded grape skin vodka and citrus stock, or an espresso martini whose liquor comes from spent coffee grounds. 

Which might help you to feel a little less guilty about drinking more than a few of them…

NOTE: Native at Browns is open from Tues-Sat for lunch & dinner. You can find out more and book a table HERE.

Native at Browns | Browns 39, Brook St, London W1K 4JE

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