What’s it like being Jason Atherton? He has usurped the title of Britain’s super-chef from his mentor Gordon Ramsay, with sixteen restaurants around the world and the much-loved ‘Social’ branding, which suggests that if you want an excellent, informal meal at a reasonable price, you know where to go.
Yet his Michelin-starred flagship has always been Pollen Street Social, a reliable bastion of superb cooking and an even finer wine list. Until, that is, Atherton made the decision earlier this year to bring Pollen Street to an end, citing a lack of demand for the multi-course tasting menus that had once been de rigueur for well-heeled, often famous diners.
In its place would be something different, named after a regular patron who would always have a Martini and a steak on her visits, but stopped doing so when the restaurant became, in her eyes, unaffordably expensive. Mary’s (est. 2024) was functioning as a pop-up when we visited and will turn into the permanent replacement for Pollen Street next year after a temporary closure and refurbishment.
In the meantime, the Blind Pig cocktail bar takes up much of the front of the restaurant, and Mary’s is sitting in a lightly redusted Pollen Street space. If it has the feeling of a dress rehearsal of sorts, this is intentional; Atherton has not got to where he’s got to without finessing and testing his establishments to the nth degree.
He can be patchy. I still shudder when I think of a truly wretched meal that we had at the Biltmore in Mayfair, where a seafood curry arrived tasting and looking like something out of a packet. But at his best, Atherton is a consummate professional who knows exactly what diners want.
It’s this side of him that was on full display in an evening that sees my chum Jamie and I give the menu a fairly comprehensive going-over, assisted by the charming sommelier Andrea, who is only too keen to recommend the wines on the list that he’s tried himself and can thus vouch for.
Starters-wise, we opt for a duck croquette (sauce too rich, filling too dry) and a monkfish tempura (excellent, posh battered fish), to say nothing of a dish sent over by the chef, onion agnolotti in a beurre blanc, which is comfortably the best of the starters and wouldn’t have disgraced Pollen Street in its former incarnation. Andrea recommends a pint of Chenin Blanc – amusingly, wine here is served either by the 125ml glass, pint or bottle – and it’s superbly gutsy, matching everything that we try.
Mains are carnivorous, and it seems only right to share the T-Bone steak, which arrives with very fine fries (of the Koffmanns variety) and an energetic tomato carpaccio, which pays lip service to the vegetable aspect of the meal. But before then, there are two surprises.
The chef asks if we’d like to try the signature dish of the pop-up, the burger of your dreams; he is not lying. We sample half each of one of London’s best burgers, a so-called ‘Cumbrian beef dirty smash burger’, and oh God it’s good, a symphony of superb meat, perfect cheese and a deep-fried pickle lurking on top. And Andrea excels himself with the accompaniment, a 2016 Gran Reserva Rioja from Vina Arana; it’s delectable in every regard, serious and fun at the same time.
We’re pretty sated by the time that desserts come round, to be honest, and so we can’t do much more than pick at lime soft-serve ice cream and some sort of caramel and apple doughnut. Both are excellent, but we’re too full to do them any kind of justice, although a recuperative citrus-tinged espresso martini is a very fitting accompaniment.
But Mary’s is a class act, and shows that Atherton is firing on all cylinders here, taking the glamour and glitz of Pollen Street and making it fun, casual and accessible. There was the usual smattering of celebs – Johnny Vaughan was with his family on the next door table – and everyone who comes here is going to end up very happy. You can’t say fairer than that.
Mary’s est. 2024, 8-10 Pollen Street, London W1S 1NQ. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.maryslondon.co.uk.
