London - Chiltern Firehouse

Hi guys,

So last week I went to have dinner at Chiltern Firehouse by famous André Balazs, who also owns the glamorous Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles and The Mercer in New York. The restaurant is in the cool hip area in Marylebone. Although most restaurants you go is just for eating and drinking, this place had a interesting experience to it.

The restaurant has been a fuss for the past year, with months of waiting lists to make a reservation and A-list celebrities coming to hang out. No wonder it hit the headlines of the news.

Marylebone is known for it’s cool restaurants and world-famous boutiques and unique designers. Its in the heart of London and streets like Oxford Street is the place to see beautiful art and fashion. St. Marylebone, is known as a urban village with it's colorful character.

Since we arrived a little earlier, we were seated at the bar inside the hotel to have a drink. I ordered from the menu an amazing drink. I very much enjoy both sweet and bitter drinks depending on my mood. I wanted something like a kir royal but with a twist to it and I also wanted to try the chef’s specialties. The barman is a specialist in anything with tequila, so he did a drink that had tequila, which usually isn’t my favorite drink to go, but he said it had a edge... vanilla inside! Vanilla is my all time weak spot, so once I had it, I knew I had to write about it here. I swear you couldn’t feel the hard tequila at the back.

We were sat a while later. The cool thing about this restaurant is that it used to be a firehouse, hence the name. From the outside the building looks like a gothic Victorian house with a beautiful opened space with many flowers, however, the decoration inside is very cozy, low lights hanging from the ceiling, and wooden ceilings kind of reminding us of those New York style high-ceiling restaurants. It was pretty full when I went, however, we were seated on our own round table with those high walls, which made it feel like we were in a more private box, which I loved. The kitchen is also opened to the customers, so it feels like you are at home when you see what the chefs are up to.

The menu changes once every 2 weeks or so. The chef is Portuguese, Nuno Mendes, who formerly worked at Viajante. Mendes was trained at California Culinary Academy and has worked at elBulli, 3 star Michelin by Ferran Adrià. Viajante, his restaurant opened and received 1 star Michelin on its very first year, and in 2013 it was listed as 50 best restaurants in the world. Due to his training at California, Mendes created a more relaxed American style menu with colorful presentations. The menu varies for all types of tastes: fish, pork, meat and even vegetarian dishes.

We began ordering the crab-stuffed donuts, like the name suggests, it’s small donuts with crab fish, which is a fish that I very much like. I ordered a fish as a main dish, a monkfish cooked over pine with puff barley and fennel. I never had this fish, so it was very interesting trying it: it was a firm meat, but very juicy. To accompany it, siders have to be picked. I had maple-bourbon sweet potatoes. To drink I had a glass of white wine.

The end of the night was very interesting. I was taken into the bathroom to a door at the end of the ladies room that looked like an ordinary mirror but opened into a private opened bar where people can sit and have a drink or two. Insiders call it the secret bar. I think it suits it very well.

Hope you guys liked my post. Stay tuned for more posts to come.

Xx