The Guardian
Grace Dent supped at a new “fine-dining” spot from the team behind Chelsea’s Medlar, following up after a 15-year gap which she thoroughly approved of – too fast an expansion often proving ruinous to restaurants. It’s run by “lovely, smiling and very amiable staff”, but the restaurant itself is “somewhat serious”, and “seriously rooted in the principles of French cooking” under chef Gary Foulkes.
The prices are “pretty serious, too”, with a tomato salad clocking in at £20 – although the tomatoes are a rare heirloom variety sourced from Hubert Lacoste in Gers, southwest France.
Grace clearly found the whole operation quietly impressive – much as it isn’t aimed at her demographic. “It isn’t trying to be youthful or on-trend, it’s just celebrating exquisite products cooked by a talented team working at a level that only a handful of people in Britain today could even hope to manage… Big prices, nice tablecloths, no riff-raff: to your average Belgravian punter, that is as good as it gets.”
Grace Dent - 2024-08-18Evening Standard
David Ellis was baffled by what he called the “Greek-builder” design of this new restaurant from the team behind Medlar, leaving it somehow unfinished, with exposed air conditioning ducts clashing with the white tablecloths and “shoddy A4 print-out” menus.
The cooking, on the other hand, was absolutely and classically superb, led by Gary Foulkes “one of those chefs’-chef chefs” who learnt his trade at The Square under Phil Howard, who is name-checked on the menu for his dish of “parmesan-infused gnocchi pucks topped with langoustines painted in a potato and truffle sauce, topped with girolles and shavings of black summer truffle. If you don’t like truffle, it ain’t for you. But otherwise? It’s bang-the-table, f***-me-that’s-good, up there with Wilton’s twice-baked cheese soufflé as London’s finest starter”.
The Cornish lobster with spaghetti was another dish that “might convert fine-dining sceptics, offering a convincer for the merits of fine French technique”, while chicken came with a “truly beautiful sauce, tasting as if a roast chicken had simply melted”.
With its serious wine list and sky-high prices, David judged it to be very much a restaurant for the type of well-heeled senior Belgravians “who talk of summering somewhere. It is not, perhaps, for the hot young things. Not sexy, in other words…”
David Ellis - 2024-08-25The Daily Telegraph
Unlike Grace Dent, William Sitwell was hardly bothered that he was in Belgravia, but he was undecided in his judgement of this new restaurant from the people behind Chelsea’s Medlar.
His meal was “dainty, precise, nicely tempered, and deftly cooked and delivered (the service is excellent, of course)”, with dishes (mostly fish and seafood) that attracted a smattering of superlatives: “impeccable”, “accomplished” and “perfectly cooked”.
So why the equivocation? Two reasons: cost – “£30 for starters and £45 for mains” – and atmosphere (or lack of it), in a dining room that is “tame” and “reliable” but “feels like a trip to the private dentist’s treatment room (albeit pain-free and pleasurable)”. William’s conclusion: “If you want hustle, energy, vibe, colour, noise and memories then, er, don’t go to Cornus.”
William Sitwell - 2024-11-03
