The Michelin starred dining room at The Goring is getting guests closer than ever to the kitchen – but it’s not a shiny customer-facing one, it’s the real one in the basement, writes Adam Bloodworth The latest attempt to prove that the London restaurant industry is an ever-changing and terribly exciting beast is from The Goring, who are now serving Michelin starred food on the wrong side of the swinging service doors. We had barely touched our champagne and were just getting comfy in chairs my guest described as having “Titanic vibes” when we were plucked by the sommelier and taken through to the pot washing sink. Not the glamorous welcome you’d expect from a Michelin starred restaurant that style-wise almost certainly would have been rejected by Buckingham Palace for being too regal, but it’s the latest attempt to get diners uncomfortably close to chefs.
Kitchen tables have long shouted about hauling guests nearer to the action, which has always felt bizarre: who wants to sit near a probably angry shouty man when you could be in the silent oasis of the restaurant, literally designed as a safe space away from them? This one is even more eccentric because the kitchen is in the basement, and getting to it requires going down sobering back-of-house corridors and past staff rotas. This isn’t some pretty kitchen table adjacent to the restaurant, basically a private dining room, this is a warts-and-all kitchen table experience in a place that, let’s face it, us lo.