Restaurants are temples of aspiration. From sound, scent and ceramics to hand soap and elegant wine glasses, I’ve often wanted to recreate elements of my favourite restaurants at home. I’m unlikely to sous-vide celeriac or triple cook my chips, but I can elevate my plate of pasta with a drizzle of amazing olive oil, or invest in a cutlery set that gives even a midweek dinner a sense of occasion. As much as the cooking, it’s the little details that are, as celebrated chef Skye Gyngell puts it, “what you take away and what make you feel wonderful”.
I spoke to restaurateurs across the UK about the little touches that make their restaurants distinctive – and easy ways to bring their magic into our homes.
Glassware
£96 a pair at Borough Kitchen £96 a pair at Richard BrendonYou can spend almost anything on a wine glass – and restaurants do. At Restaurant Mýse outside York, co-founder Victoria Overington waxes lyrical about the Richard Brendon and Jancis Robinson collaboration glassware. “We use their universal glass, designed to suit any wine – sparkling, white, red or sweet. They are very fine and the shape of the bowl means you get amazing aromas,” she says. A set of two will set you back £96.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ruth Leigh of Updown farmhouse, a restaurant and small hotel in Deal, Kent, reveals that their wine glasses are from Ikea’s Storsint range (£12 for six). “I’d been buying them for years for home,” she says, “and they’re incredibly durable.” Between these extremes, brands such as Riedel or Nude tend to populate the tables and bars of higher-end restaurants. At the Dover in Mayfair, London, restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski chose weighty fluted crystal wine glasses from Luigi Bormioli (£40 for four) to add a touch of old-school glamour.
Hand soap and scent
£18 for 500ml at MahalaRooms at Inver, in Argyll, are adorned with the work of local craftspeople, and in the bathrooms you’ll find products from Glasgow’s Caurnie Soaperie, “the only traditional cold process soapery left in the world”, says chef-patron Pamela Brunton. Her friend Celine Louise provides “a hand lotion with meaning”, using flavours from Inver’s kitchen, such as black pepper, verbena berry and cardamom.
For Mýse, Overington chose nearby Boston Spa aromatherapy brand Chapter Organics, which is developing a bespoke hand soap for the restaurant that is “woody and earthy, with a citrussy background”. Meanwhile, Carter uses a plant-based hand soap with a Mediterranean garden aroma from London lifestyle store Mahala (£18 for 500ml).
Kuczmarski wanted diners to “feel hugged by a scent that was sexy but not overpowering”. He developed some candles with a base note of Mysore sandalwood, available on his online store for £40.
Olive oil
From £18.50 for 500ml at Two Fields £22.50 for 500ml at Trulli UliviIt’s standard for restaurants to have one oil for cooking and another for dressing. The latter is often a high-quality extra-virgin olive oil from a supplier such as Brindisa, which sells five-litre tins of Arbequina olive oil for £84.
Will and Harry Rolph are making waves with their terrific, good value Two Fields olive oil from Crete. Yotam Ottolenghi sells it, and chef David Carter says his restaurant Oma, in London’s Borough Market, gets through 100 litres a week. It is the first non-Italian olive oil that celebrated chef Skye Gyngell has used professionally. A 500ml bottle costs £18.50, and subscriptions are available.
Other excellent, restaurant-grade olive oils ideal for finishing off dishes include Trulli Ulivi (£22.50 for 500ml) from Puglia, Capezzana from Tuscany (beloved of the River Café and Trullo), and Citizens of Soil, which bottles oils from across the Med.
Cutlery
£711 at Harts Of Stur £995 at Arthur PriceChoice of cutlery runs the gamut from simple to splashy. Luke Wasserman, of Nest farmhouse in Norfolk, says the vibe there is “Granny’s house for Sunday lunch – lots of mismatched vintage”, so the team visited antique markets for old Sheffield steel pieces. But at his London restaurant, St Barts in Clerkenwell, which takes its “best of British philosophy to the nth degree”, Wasserman has commissioned specialist forges Joel Black and Lee Jones to make knives and forks respectively.
Meanwhile, at Lasdun, one of the restaurants in London’s National Theatre, tables are laid with David Mellor’s elegant and weighty London cutlery (48-piece set £888), and Quo Vadis, in Soho, London, uses Arthur Price of England’s Baguette canteen (46-piece set £995).
Lighting
£138 at PookyWhether it’s candles on tables or bespoke wall lights, low and ambient lighting is key in evening dining spaces. At Grace and Savour restaurant at Hampton Manor hotel in Warwickshire, chef-director David Taylor worked with local ceramicist Sarah Jerath to make ceramic lampshades “to give a warm glow”. At Manchester restaurant Winsome, every table has a large candle in a candlestick bought on one of the team’s charity shop raids. These give “every table its own personality,” says co-founder Tom Fastiggi, “and they all have candle wax dripping down the sides.”
Wasserman also loves candles. “We buy pillar candles from the London Candle Company [from £7.49 for a set of three] and put them in vintage ramekins or ceramic holders I’ve made.” They also have wall lights from Pooky, which “work with the farmhouse vibe” (£130).
Matthew Slotover, co-founder of Toklas in central London, says lighting wasn’t given a lot of thought before they opened, but “it became clear we needed to spotlight the food”. He sourced Pina table lamps (£118) from Italian designer Zafferano, which “are so thin you almost can’t see them, but they flood the table in a high-quality light.”
Table linen
Request a quote at Dash LinenKuczmarski says three tablecloths are traditional in continental hospitality: the first to absorb the noise, the second “for decency”, to hide diners’ legs, and the third “purely for stains, and which could be changed very quickly”. For the Dover, he insisted on all three and designed bespoke table linens with Dash Linen “with a little bit of shine, because I wanted sparkle at night”.
For their restaurant Jikoni in Marylebone, London, founders Ravinder Bhogal (a Guardian Feast columnist) and Nadeem Lalani buy bright, hand-blocked linens direct from women’s cooperatives in India. The restaurant is a sea of colour and pattern, realising the couple’s fantasy of an “un-restaurant”, a place for guests to gather, eat and drink that feels “like an extension of home”. The linens are available to buy on the Jikoni website.
Coffee and tea
£7 for 50g at Amazon From £10 for 200g at AssemblyIn this golden age of the roastery, restaurants have plenty of choice when sourcing coffee. Slotover works with Assembly, in south London, on a rotating selection for the cafe and a bespoke espresso blend for the restaurant (subscriptions from £8). He says: “In a restaurant, you don’t want a super funky coffee – it needs to be palatable and easy-drinking.” Kuczmarski agrees, adding: “I’m Italian, so we use Lavazza. It’s a crowd-pleaser. It works.”
Erst, a natural wine bar serving seasonal dishes in Manchester, uses Chester-based roastery All Caps. Only filter coffee is served, says co-founder Will Sutton, but it still needs to stand out: “We wanted a richer style of filter, to satisfy espresso lovers. The one we have now is from a female-run co-op in Colombia and has rich, orangey, honeyed notes.”
Wasserman uses Difference, which roasts high-quality beans for sustainable pods and supplies a swathe of high-end restaurants and hotels (boxes of 25 available on subscription, from £22.50).
Rare Tea Company is a darling of fine restaurants; Slotover says a tasting of more than 30 types, from black, white and green to oolong, pu’er and beyond, “opened up my mind to what’s possible with tea”. At Winsome, Fastiggi opts for a familiar name: “We serve Yorkshire Tea! It’s what people want to drink.”
At Updown, plates are there “to subtly frame the food”, says Leigh, who chose plain white plates, sourced from artisan potter John Julian. “We buy all their seconds, which makes them half the price, and we like the imperfections.”
Sounds
At the Dover, nostalgic soul, jazz and funk – all from Kuczmarski’s personal vinyl collection – is “an addition to warm your heart and move your shoulders”. The playlist is public and “every track is approved by me – as is the timing at which we play each one”, adds Kuczmarski.
For Mareida, a new Andean restaurant in central London, co-founder Prenay Agarwal asked Chilean music producer DJ Raff to make five tracks using recordings he had taken from the landscapes of Chile. “We wanted the mood to change as you moved through the spaces in the restaurant,” says Agarwal. Mareida Sound is available on Spotify.
Flowers
From £10 at Helston Street“It makes such a difference to see something seasonal and beautifully arranged on a table,” says Leigh of Updown. She has five raised beds for cut flowers and makes new arrangements for the restaurant every week. “I try to keep it as foolproof as possible – easy things such as euphorbia (the lime green goes with everything) and, at this time of year, dahlias, which are huge and have enormous impact in every colour: dark reds, coppery oranges, deep pinks.”
Overington chooses wild and seasonal dried flowers for Mýse, made for her by York florist Helston Street, with colours and styles that reflect the restaurant. “I like sculptural displays of edible things, such as poppy seed heads, lavender, flaxseed, chamomile, dried wheat and grasses,” she says. She displays the plants in small stone vases that she gets from Etsy.
Ceramics
From £22 at Sytch Farm StudiosAlmost every restaurant I speak to has a relationship with a potter who is local or a friend. At Grace and Savour, the restaurant at Hampton Manor hotel in Warwickshire, chef-director David Taylor has worked with nearby ceramicist Sarah Jerath on a set of off-green plates made with a glaze of dehydrated rhubarb leaves from the kitchen garden. He also works with Sytch Farm Studios where plates and bowls are made from Cornish clay, into which a little shell is pressed to resemble a fossil. “Everything tells a story of our land, and is handcrafted by British makers,” says Taylor.
Tiles
At Legado in London’s Shoreditch, designer Patrick Abrams of Applied Studio used handmade zellige tiles laid in contemporary patterns for a restaurant “inspired by Spain that belongs in London”. Originating in Morocco, these glazed tiles are all unique, which results in a pleasingly uneven tone and texture to a wall – even when laid in a single colour. The Mosaic Factory and Otto Tiles each have a wide range of zellige tiles in block colours and patterns. For floors, decorative encaustic tiles from the likes of Bert and May can be found across several Soho House properties and Thyme hotel in the Cotswolds, where green and white hexagonal tiles bring character and calm.
