The Ledbury

Review Highlights

Alexander visits The Ledbury in London's Notting Hill for an 8-course tasting menu — a name day gift from his wife for himself and his daughter. The restaurant just captured London's newest 3-Michelin-star rating in 2024, the culmination of a remarkable comeback: COVID forced a closure that stripped The Ledbury of both its stars, but Chef Brett Graham reopened in 2022 after a full renovation and reclaimed them all within two years, making it one of only nine UK restaurants to hold three stars. Alexander brings a 2010 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru from Domaine Leflaive (retail: over €1,200) and settles in to see whether this resurrected institution lives up to its freshly minted status.

• ·Opening bites — chestnut biscuit, cured meat, and scallop tempura with seaweed mustard and lobster emulsion, followed by a lobster tartlet with bisque jelly and N25 caviar, then a rye pancake with pancetta and black truffle. Alexander: "Nice range of flavors and textures here. Solid openers"
• ·Marinated trout with raspberry, salted cherry blossom, frozen spring flowers, and freshly grated wasabi — presented tableside by Chef Brett Graham himself. Alexander: "Explosive flavor profile and a great example of different textures here"
• ·Seabass with shaved asparagus, oyster, and elderflower, topped with buttermilk sorbet and dusted with kaffir lime. Alexander: "It looks like an art piece. A complex dish with delicate ingredients executed perfectly. So many textures and temperatures"
• ·Veal sweetbread with vin jaune, English peas, and vadouvan, finished in a foam of lemongrass, ginger, and coconut. Alexander: "I like it"
• ·Wild Turbot roasted on the barbecue and smoked with chamomile, served with Scottish girolles and young peach, topped with Australian black truffle and a yuzu-chamomile sauce
• ·Mushroom ravioli — filled with porcini and truffles, served with a vegetable sauce of shiitake and oyster mushrooms, potato, buckwheat koji, and watercress, finished with freshly shaved black truffles from The Ledbury's own mushroom cabinet. Alexander: "It's erupting in umami. I love it"
• ·Iberian pork with English cherry, black olive, liquorice, amazake, and shiso — featuring different cuts from Chef Graham's own Iberian pig farm. Alexander found it "too intensive due to the aging process" and felt the balance wasn't there compared to the other courses, though his daughter loved it
• ·Jasmine custard flan with fresh almonds, peach and sake sorbet, and fig leaf ice cream — a surprise replacement dessert after Alexander accidentally dropped his phone into the original mille feuille. Alexander: "Amazing. The peach flavor really stands out. This is why you should throw around your phone in a 3-Michelin-star restaurant"

Alexander found The Ledbury to be a really good 3-Michelin-star restaurant and definitely worth a visit. The service was flawless and precise — the team even surprised him with a fresh dessert after he destroyed the mille feuille by dropping his phone into it, turning an awkward mishap into a memorable moment of hospitality. Chef Brett Graham's warmth and constant presence in the dining room created a welcoming atmosphere that punctured any three-star stuffiness, and the high complexity of dishes like the umami-erupting mushroom ravioli and the explosive marinated trout showed a kitchen at the top of its game. Alexander's critiques were specific: the Iberian pork felt overly intense from the aging process, one pre-dessert was overpowered by balsamic vinegar, and the tables were uncomfortably close together. But he left happy — and the bill of €860 for two, including his own grand cru Burgundy, felt fair for the experience.

About

The Ledbury is a three-Michelin-star Modern European restaurant in London's Notting Hill neighborhood, opened in 2005 by Australian chef Brett Graham. Originally the sister restaurant to The Square in Mayfair, The Ledbury earned its first Michelin star within a year and a second by 2010, topping London restaurant rankings and breaking into the World's 50 Best top ten before closing during COVID and losing both stars — only to reopen in 2022 after a seat-reducing renovation and reclaim both, then capture a coveted third star in 2024 as one of only nine UK restaurants to hold the distinction. Chef Graham runs his own deer farm for game, an Iberian pig farm in Andalusia, and an in-house mushroom cultivation cabinet, supplying his 8-course tasting menu with hyper-seasonal British ingredients transformed through modern technique.