The Lavery opened on 25 March 2025 at 4 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, in a painter's Georgian house furnished with the best pieces from a few legendary dining rooms. A River Café cook was then hired to put lunch on the tables. The Natural History Museum is nearby, and the lunch finally matches it.
A River Café cook, a Rochelle crew
Yohei Furuhashi spent nine years in the kitchen at The River Café as a senior chef, also cooked at Petersham Nurseries, and ran the kitchen at Toklas for three years before this. Alcides Gauto, who runs the floor, worked with him there, and before that at Llewelyn's in Herne Hill and for eight years at Rochelle Canteen. Creative director Martin Cohen brings L'Escargot, the Odeon in New York plus the opening of Rochelle Canteen. Miguel Ferro heads operations, with Hotel Café Royal, Sea Containers London and Nobu Portman Square behind him. Put together, it is the River Café's daily menu, Rochelle's few good things without fuss, and a West End instinct for running a room.
A short history of how London learned to eat lunch, laid out on one first floor.
The room
The building is a run of Grade II-listed Georgian townhouses, once the home and studio of Sir John Lavery, the Anglo-Irish painter who died in 1941. The entrance is understated and easy to walk past. Upstairs, the Studio on the first floor has a marble fireplace, cornicing, ornate plasterwork and mirrors rising floor to ceiling, with a sweeping stainless-steel bar and red stools. Cohen sourced chairs and fittings from Venice's Hotel Excelsior, London's Groucho Club and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. Lunchtime daylight does the room no harm at all. Downstairs, an all-day café serves anyone from museum visitors to locals.
What to order
The card is short and changes daily, with produce leaning on Scotland, particularly the Balcaskie Estate in Fife. Dishes come and go quickly, so treat any dish list as a grammar, not a promise.
Order first the gnocchi di patate with fresh peas, ricotta salata and hen of the woods. It is ethereal and revelatory, and it works for vegetarians. Alongside, the Scottish scallop arrives with its coral, and the Middle White pork chop with endive, Dijon and parsley is the kitchen letting good produce speak. Capocollo with broad beans, pappardelle with rabbit slow-cooked in tomato, bay and green olive, and salt cod with polenta are the comfort option. Puntarelle alla Romana, punchy and salty, is a spring pick.
For pudding, the chocolate mousse with Agen prune is the one to order. The Lavery Mess, Eton mess reworked around pomelo and passion fruit, is the house joke and a fair update on the original.
On the hedge side, the team could use a little more personality, the carne cruda is tasty but pale on the plate and an orange martini can arrive not cold enough. A menu this produce-led will also be tested through autumn and winter.
Drinks
A rhubarb sour, an elderflower Negroni and an orange martini made the early cocktail list, and the Glossary Magazine recommends the martini on a cherry-red Groucho stool. The wine list is concise and European, with classic bottles beside orange wines and a bottle from Transylvania, and a Loire chenin worked well with the farinata and the monkfish.
South Kensington has long had the museums and rarely the lunch to match. Go at midday, when the light is on the mirrors.
- The vibe
- Grand Georgian first-floor room, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, chairs borrowed from the Groucho.
- The food
- Daily menu: peas-and-hen-of-the-woods gnocchi, scallop with coral, pork chop, Lavery Mess.
- The drink
- Orange martini or elderflower Negroni; short European list with orange wines.
- A tip
- Go at lunch for daylight; the entrance is easy to miss.
