What: A 30-cover restaurant that sits within the newly-refurbished townhouse 3 Henrietta Street in London’s Covet Garden. The first-floor restaurant sits above roastery and coffee house The Gentlemen Baristas as well as Lilly’s Café on the ground floor and basement Hawaiian restaurant El Ta’Koy, the first UK opening from Cuban chef Luis Pous.
Who: Scottish chef Mark Greenaway mans the bijou counter kitchen at this his first restaurant in London. Greenaway is best known for his eponymous Edinburgh restaurant, which opened in North Castle Street in Edinburgh in 2013 but closed in 2018. He has since opened Grazing by Mark Greenaway in Edinburgh’s Waldorf Astoria – The Caledonian.
The food: Greenaway says that many people have wanted to pigeonhole Pivot as a Scottish restaurant, and it does indeed rely on Scottish produce, not least its seafood, but it is better described as a modern British restaurant deep-rooted in French techniques. That said, Greenaway’s launch grazing menu has portion sizes more akin to Scottish hospitality than that of French fine dining, with his seven-course menu (plus snacks) unlikely to leave you hungry. While the launch menu features the big hitters of scallops, halibut, lobster with the mains ending with a roast filet of beef with Yorkshire pudding and a red wine jus, Greenaway encourages diners to get back to nature with his mushrooms on toast starter (it’s a £10 supplement instead of a bread dish of treacle sand stout sourdough with duck skin butter). Here shiitake mushrooms are served on the log, having been roasted whole, dotted with parsley mayo with diners provided with scissors and tweezers with which to snip and place them on accompanying toasted sourdough. The meal ends with a chocolate and kumquat creation that, while being the most intricate of the courses, is not as much fun as the waffle sandwich (pictured below) loaded with bramble ice cream and caramelised Rice Krispies that comes before it.
The vibe: At only 30 covers, Pivot is a small and smart, almost study like dining room with deep red and browns that has the added value of affording views of Covent Garden piazza. For a more interactive experience, try and secure one of the six or so seats at the kitchen counter where you get a ringside seat of Greenaway and his small team busying away in a space no larger than a king size bed (there is another kitchen upstairs that the team hope to begin using as a development space once completed).
And another thing: Given how restaurants have navigated the past 18 months or so, you’d think that the restaurant’s name referred to the pivot many businesses made between dine-in and takeaway and delivery during lockdown. Not so. It in fact references the restaurant’s regular change of menu as it pivots between the seasons and the different ingredients to hand.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London