Food reviews

Crescent House

Once the Tavistock Hotel, this site is famous as a location in the 1986 film Withnail and I, when it was the fictional Mother Black Cap. Later it was the first Firkin pub, then Babushka, then (briefly) it was really called the Mother Black Cap, before becoming the altogether smarter and more serious Crescent House. Everywhere is called something House these days, but the new name highlights the fact that this is a lone remainder of what was a Victorian terrace, reduced to one single tall house in a street of uniform new builds.
Downstairs is a bar and a garden, while the wonderful upstairs room with windows all around is a smart dining room with wallpaper on the ceiling, gilded cornicing, oil paintings on the walls and an enormous moose’s head over the fireplace. We started with Dublin Bay prawn tails with Parmesan gnocchi and squid ink puree, which was a delicious combination, and some foie gras with brioche, also high class. Mains were baked turbot with girolles, truffle, onion puree
and carrots cooked in duck fat (loaded with juice and flavour) and Aberdeen Angus with shallots, tomatoes and herb potatoes.
It’s an ambitious menu, and not a cheap one, but the enthusiastic and clearly skilled team pull it off. Let’s hope that this incarnation
is a winner for Tavistock Crescent. l