Though Clare Smyth’s Notting Hill restaurant Core holds three Michelin stars, it feels a lot like a neighbourhood hangout. W11’s old money irreverence over Mayfair desperation; gilt-edged but where regulars might stay late and buy the staff a drink.
No more so is all this apparent than at Whiskey & Seaweed, its adjacent new bar. It is dimly lit and green, shards of frosted glass as dividers, with an enormous whiskey cabinet celebrating distillers from the British Isles. This might just be another high-end cocktail bar, somewhere to further dent a Saltburnesque money pile before seven courses for £215. But there is a true purpose to the place and, more to the point, it may be treated as a bar alone. The dining room feels far away. Customers walking past to the loo won’t look right but left, to the kitchen, where chefs work behind a wall of glass. Do not call it dancing.
