Walking past the chi-chi furniture stores filled with unaffordable mid-century chairs and antique shops stuffed with toys and trinkets that will turn your home into the set of an A24 horror film, it’s easy to remember why I don’t visit Belgravia often. It’s not my scene. Not my cup of tea. A bit too Rooibos for my liking. Wildflowers, though, is a restaurant in SW1W that’s very much my cup of tea. Dash of milk, no sugar. Leave the bag in.
Nestled in Newson’s Yard, a reclaimed timber yard just off Pimlico Road, the restaurant is the creation of chef Aaron Potter and interior stylist Laura Hart. Potter, who has previously shaken pans at Trinity and Elystan Street and most recently took on the executive chef role at Maria G’s, has set up the menu with a strong selection of Mediterranean-inspired dishes and a mean European wine list. Both the upstairs wine bar and lower ground dining room have been decked out by Hart, creating a cohesive candle-lit ambience where you can comfortably sip on Amalfi Spritz cocktails and eat gossamer-thin slices of fennel salami all night long – or slip downstairs for a slap-up three-course meal.
We opted for the latter and started with the moules farcies. Wildflowers’ take on the southern French classic is certainly eye-catching. A dozen plump mussels arrive in their shells on a bed of goth-black pebbles coated in parsley and garlic butter. Think of it like a smokier, sunnier, more coastal version of escargots. It’s a dish that ate well, at first, but ended up being far too salty for comfort – perhaps taking the brackish seaside influence of the dish a little too seriously. There’s nothing wrong with food designed to make you drink more wine – especially when the wine you’re drinking is an excellent flinty Bordeaux from Hubert de Boüard – but you don’t want to finish your first course feeling like you’ve had a saline rinse. Thankfully, the seasoning was on point for the rest of the night.
The calamari sandwich, stuffed with an Olympic number of crispy rings and a welcome slick of aïoli, shuffled us along the Mediterranean coast to sunny Spain. Cut into two halves speared with pintxos-style cocktail sticks, it’s the ideal starter for two and a great way to save yourself from being forced to make stilted conversation. Instead of saying, ‘How do you feel about the tariffs then?’, you can say, ‘Fuck me, this is a good sandwich’. Or whatever that is in Spanish. It’s worth brushing up on your Italian, too, as the hand-rolled tagliolini with black truffle and shards of nutty aged Parmesan was another plate good enough to help you forget about the state of the world. Put any thoughts of politics aside and focus on the Super Noodle-like strands of pasta (this is a compliment, trust me) and the subtle earthiness of the truffle. I’m not usually a big fan of truffles – I find the oil to be especially overpowering and often used as a crux in kitchens with something to hide – but they added an extra dimension of flavour here which took the pasta from merely good to simply excellent.
One of Wildflowers’ main tenets is using responsibly sourced ingredients and cooking them over coals. The flames of the open grill, which spit and lick at the various haunches of meat tossed within their sooty reach, are the first thing you’ll notice walking in. And that grill came into its own with the grilled sugar pit Ibérico pork chop – each served with cubes of crassane pear, almond purée, and a fresh gremolata to cut through the richness. The flesh was tender, the fat lush, and a side order of rosemary-dusted roast potatoes (listed on the menu as ‘holiday potatoes’ for reasons I’m not privy to) got along marvellously with the meat.
We finished the evening by splitting a slice of blood orange, almond, and polenta cake. High-quality citrus meant the flavours were light and bright while the cooling blob of crème fraîche brought the textural components together like a delicious dairy caulk. Wildflowers isn’t a perfect restaurant, but when it gets it right, it gets it so right that you won’t care about the moments when it doesn’t. And that’s a rare thing to find. Especially in Belgravia.
