Ekstedt at The Yard review: a dazzling and simple celebration of Nordic flavours

There’s a power in breaking bread. There’s possibly more power in breaking tunnbröd, doubly so in sight of a kitchen that, on first glance at least, is more blacksmith in Game of Thrones than a restaurant in a very smart hotel in London’s Whitehall.

The Great Scotland Yard Hotel is an unusual choice for Swedish chef Niklas Ekstedt’s first restaurant outside of Stockholm, but Londoners (and commuters within easy reach of Charing Cross) should be very grateful for the decision. Ekstedt’s love of wood, open fires, smoke and traditional Scandinavian technique has secured him Michelin stars back in Sweden and, while Ekstedt at The Yard sounds like the Victorian Scandi-Noir we never knew we needed, his style of hospitality has translated remarkably well to the art-laden interior of the hotel.

The glow of flame, the warmth and the gently aromatic smoke hanging in the air are certainly welcome on the very wet winter evening I turn up – and one suspects that the little courtyard outside makes this a very pleasant place to be on warmer days. Its room also feels suitably Scandi – clean lines, calm, much wood – rather than a hotel dining room, which is always an impressive trick.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The food

Dishes are also intriguing. Some ingredients are mysterious – reindeer moss, the aforementioned tunnbröd (a Scandinavian crispbread), while others – scallop, pork, trout, Jerusalem artichokes, etc – are far more familiar. However, many of the twists, nuances and flavours employed – birch-flame, charcoal cream, fermented cep juice, sea herbs – are borderline unimaginable. One lingon negroni and two snacks in, however – if not before – you can relax as Ekstedt clearly knows what he’s doing and has taught his team well.

Reindeer charcuterie with pickled salsify is both a fine way to get the palate working and probably explains Santa’s waistline. Although that could also be the bread served with butter, pine and whey, presented as a huge bowl of delicious, glistening fat that you scoop into a smaller dish and blend yourself.

The treats keep coming. Flambadou oyster with beurre blanc and juniper smoked apple sounds delicious in its own right when like us, perhaps, you assume “flambadou” is the species. Wrong. In fact, it’s a device that allows you to drip hot beef fat onto things. Such as, you know, oysters, where it’s used to gently sear the outside… and if that doesn’t make you whimper a little, I don’t think we can be friends.

We make similar noises over many of the subsequent dishes. Ember-baked leek, smoked blood pudding, reindeer moss. The exceptionally pretty hay smoked custard with trout roe and chives. The crispy, rich pleasures of the doughnut, lovage, smoked egg yolk. Birch-flamed chanterelles, black truffle, caramelised cream with – but of course – the addition of flambadou lobster because, well, see above. Juniper-smoked John Dory, brown butter, roasted hispi cabbage. Slow charcoal-roasted pork neck, fermented gooseberries, trotter sauce.

It’s all both dazzling and a simple celebration of flavours, underscored by remarkably different, subtle smoke. And the cooking itself is just good. Take that last dish, for example. A hint of pink within, lightly caramelised on the outside, with a fleeting flavour of woodsmoke, the fat right on the point of melting, all bathed in the richness of that sauce, and cut through by the delightful acidity and sourness of the gooseberries.

The desserts

Desserts maintain the standard and, in the case of the wood oven baked Alaska (with elderflower ice cream and lingonberries), bring the theatre of the kitchen right to your dining room with a little flambé action. My cast-iron baked Maida Vale has also seen some considerable heat, and comes as a tray of slightly melted cheese, topped with seeds and berries, and served with fennel knäckebröd, another crispbread variant (and a LOT more fun to say than “tunnbröd”). Like so much of this meal, it’s beautifully simple and ultimately more than the sum of its parts.

The verdict

For cooking of this quality, I’m also going to say it’s good value at two courses for £68 or three courses for £85, although the snacks and the oysters quickly add to that total. There’s also a nine-course “Journey to Scandinavia” tasting menu for £145 which, for these times, this postcode and this level of cooking, creativity and theatre isn’t bad at all. Memorable, creative and, all in all, a very fine addition to the London dining scene.

Neil Davey was a guest of Ekstedt at The Yard, 3-5 Great Scotland Yard, London SW1A 2HN; ekstedtattheyard.com