Tom Aikens

Smart, exclusive, high-quality and worth every penny - Tom Aikens fits chi-chi Chelsea like a glove. Celebrities, business people and locals alike are flocking to the new destination restaurant to discover for themselves if the gastronomic modern French cuisine really is up there with the likes of Gordon Ramsay's. Delectable dishes include roasted foie gras with beetroot pickle and syrup, and roast langoustines with peas and braised veal shin. Formal fine dining in Anouska Hempel Design created surroundings this may be, but stiff-backed penguin-suited waiters are nowhere to be seen. Led by a young, talented husband and wife team, Tom Aikens scooped the 'London Restaurant of the Year' award at the Tio Pepe ITV London Restaurant Awards 2003. Prizes and glam aside, there's even at times a community feel to the place, an attribute that has much to do, no doubt, with the secluded Elystan Street location. Awarded a Michelin star within 10 months of opening, there is no doubt another is not f"In these straitened times, does London need one more ambitious, ego-driven, fancy-pants restaurant? In my view, when it is the restaurant Tom Aikens, it does. It is, to put no finer word on it, a delight. Aikens's food is original, daring, witty, light-footed and not predicated tediously on expensive, grandluxe ingredients. - © Evening Standard 2003 / Fay Machsler The food, when it arrived, was absolutely top of the range. This is modern French cooking of the very highest stan