Pimlico is an area I tend to avoid, mainly because its abject loveliness makes me introspective: it’s all those spotless pavements and treasured Regency architecture filled with bougie boutiques selling £495 lacquered tea trays while the local 7-11 is a Daylesford Organic, so even your daily bread is a seven-seed sourdough.
Pimlico is modern life with all its tricky edges smoothed off. Wildflowers, a new restaurant by chef Aaron Potter and interiors stylist Laura Hart, is Mediterranean-inspired both in menu and decor. Potter was once head chef of Elystan Street, one of the capital’s loveliest places to have dinner. Here, he’s dishing up the likes of lamb tartare with harissa, scallop crudo and sugar pit pork chop with gremolata. It’s a three-course-dinner affair: there’s no painfully long tasting menu and a heavenly absence of tweezers. The menu is hearty, but thoughtful and fancy – but not painfully fancy. Wildflowers is, damn it, verging on casual, but it’s Pimlico casual, so, yes, denim and trainers, if you like, but this is no Bella Italia.
The first challenge at Wildflowers is to make it through the “retail opportunity” of Newson’s Yard without being seduced by shops selling bespoke kitchen appliances and 20th-century Nordic furniture. This former timber yard has been dreamily repurposed as a magnet for interior designers and the artsy local community. In any other postcode, it would simply have been bulldozered, but because this is Pimlico, architects have lovingly restored its skeleton and created a double-height courtyard with a glass ceiling that allows light to flood over Wildflowers’ mezzanine cocktail bar, and make the indoors feel oddly outdoors.
The second challenge at Wildflowers is to order a round of their chunky, glossy gnocco fritto filled with gorgonzola, topped with speck and drizzled with honey, then eat it in one bite so it doesn’t dissolve before it’s all in your mouth. These delights are £4.50 each, but then, this is Belgravia, where even breathing is expensive. Wildflowers, like most things in the area, is so charming and tasteful that finding fault is a challenge: you sit in a room of marble, velvet, oak and terracotta, eating complimentary warm focaccia while waiting for a generous plate of prosciutto San Daniele served with feisty pickled peaches. Scallop crudo lies in a slick of fennel pollen, nashi pear and almonds.
One of the shining lights of the menu is the fat, blackened mackerel, which looks almost cartoonish on chunks of sardine-smeared bruschetta. The whole thing is powerfully, decadently fishy. The lamb tartare, meanwhile, might seem to some a rather odd concept, raw lamb not being all that common a sight on British menus, but it’s definitely worth a go: it is a delicate dish with soothing labneh and a lightly spiced harissa.
Main courses are generous; Wildflowers is very much a place to take guests who quibble at style over calorific substance. The duck cooked over coals and served in sherry jus with soft golden raisins is a large portion. When my grilled sea bass arrived – a hulking chunk topped with puttanesca butter and on a bed of beans – I suddenly remembered how many Lilliputian dinners I had eaten recently. Was this meant to be fish for two? Alongside came a side of “holiday potatoes”, a take on rosemary-encrusted roasties dipped in puttanesca sauce. No amount of quizzing the servers could glean any more info on the name – was Potter on holiday when he came up with the idea, maybe? Whatever, I needed a holiday after finishing them. This was the sort of lunch when even my tights felt tighter afterwards. And I’d not even tried the cuttlefish fideuà.
We shared a lemon tart, artfully blackened on top, with brittle pastry and sharp, zinging innards. Just like Belgravia, it was sweet, refined and so beautiful that it made me feel shabby and unkempt in its presence.
I told a friend about Wildflowers afterwards – about the shops, the cocktail bar and the lovely fish – and asked if they’d ever go. “Belgravia?” they replied. “Pgh. Not bloody likely: full of snobs, it’s like another planet.” I doubt the residents will lose much sleep about that.
Wildflowers Newson’s Yard, 57 Pimlico Road, London SW1, hello@wildflowers restaurant.co.uk. Open lunch Tues-Sun, noon-3pm (4pm Sun); dinner Tues-
Sat, 6-10pm. From about £60 a head for three courses à la carte, plus drinks and service.The next episode of Grace’s Comfort Eating podcast is out on Tuesday 5 November – listen to it here
