Cutting a dash: the Savile Row restaurant that’s making top-end dining look better than ever

Dressed in a tailored shirt, well-fitting jacket and smart tasselled leather shoes, Jason Atherton looks every bit like he should on Savile Row, the sartorial location of his newly launched restaurant Row on 5. Together with former The Ritz head chef Spencer Metzger Atherton has just opened the last of his five proposed new restaurant concepts in the capital in as many months, following on from the launches of British brasseries Sael in St James’s, Hotdogs by Three Darlings in Harrods, Mary’s in Mayfair, and Three Darlings in Chelsea. But he has left the smartest, and most ambitious of them all to last.

It could have been so different. The 53-year-old chef and restaurateur admits that he nearly didn’t embark on any of these projects and that Row on 5’s sibling restaurant in Dubai, Row on 45, might have been his last. Recently anointed two Michelin stars, a long-held dream of Atherton’s, Row on 45 could so easily have marked the apotheosis of a career spanning more than two decades across several continents.

“You become an old man before you know it, you look around and think ‘what the fuck happened?’,” says Atherton when we meet on Savile Row just days before Row on 5’s launch. “All these young people around me are doing this cool stuff and we’re stuck doing the same old thing. I was very mindful of that. I did think that it might be time to get out of the game.”

So strong was his conviction that he might be done with London’s restaurant scene that he and his wife Irha even started looking at houses in Dubai so that they could relocate. A new life under the United Arab Emirates sun and the prospect of getting his golf handicap down seemed too good to pass up.

Yet here he is, opening what in his own words is the restaurant of his dreams, a culmination of a life spent not only cooking in but eating in restaurants across the world. In the end, the lure of London and the opportunity to prove himself on one of the world’s biggest and most competitive restaurant stages proved too great.

“London waits for no man; it is not waiting for you to catch up. And no matter what people say and all of the crap that comes with living here, there’s something about London that is really hard to put your finger on. It’s alive, it’s real, it’s electrifying, it’s a grind.

“Maybe I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome. But if you can be the best here, you are really the best anywhere – I genuinely believe that. I know I’ve not given it my all yet, there’s another 20% I can give to the industry. That 20% is Row on 5.”

Sartorial elegance

It’s a bold proposition, but with their new restaurant Atherton and Meztger have undoubtedly created something special. As diners descend the steps to the subterranean entrance of the restaurant their presence triggers the sounds of exotic birds that provide a calming soundtrack as they wait to be let in having first rung the doorbell. Once inside guests are greeted with a smart reception desk before being led into an opulent lounge area in which there is a well-stocked champagne cellar, two separate wine cellars and a kitchen island to which they are invited to try one of the early bites on the menu.

Snacks on the restaurant’s 15-course menu include Oysters and Pearls, Atherton’s and Metzger’s riff on Thomas Keller’s Per Se classic that sees caviar on a meringue base topped with a sphere of oyster cream; a bite of Cornish Blue Fin tuna; and an ethereal dish of cheese and onion encased by two delicate but supremely crunchy wafers.

Diners then ascend the stairs to the spacious ground floor dining room above that has a large open kitchen as its focal point around which they can sit at a long wooden bar made from one piece of wood. Elsewhere in the dining room are a number of white clothed tables and higher banquette style seating on either side of the room. The lighting is moody, the carpet deep pile and plush giving the space a sense of decadence. Nearly every seat in the restaurant looks onto the kitchen.

What then follows is a procession of courses, many of which are prepared tableside, the highlights of which include mashed potato topped with N25 Kaluga caviar and drizzled in brown butter; Cornish turbot and razor clams in a beurre blanc sauce; Sika deer, that comes with a jus warmed at the table; and a tiny tart of Colston Basset Stilton that acts as a precursor to the desserts.

Global inspiration

Everything is as immaculate as it is delicious, but it is also very deliberate, with Atherton having drawn on his vast experience not just running restaurants but visiting them and being inspired by what he has seen and tasted.

“I’m a foodie as well as a chef, I love to eat out,” he says. “Not to judge the competition but just to experience new places. Once you get to a senior level the quickest way to learn is to eat out, understand trends, see what people are looking for, what they are spending their money on, and what their eating habits are.”

He cites Bjorn Frantzen’s eponymous three-star Stockholm restaurant and a meal at Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare in New York when led by César Ramirez as also formative, with Atherton enthralled by Ramirez’s use of French technique and Japanese produce.

“When Bjorn opened Frantzen, he changed everything by taking people to different spaces within the dining room to break up the monotony of fine dining. The fine dining scene has a lot to thank him for, I took a lot of inspiration from him.

“I wanted to build a restaurant of our dreams and make it so sensational that it gives me the same feeling as when I first went to. I’m going to try and make Row on 5 as good as that.”

Attention to detail

Atherton may have taken inspiration from some of his favourite places, yet Row on 5 is no mere facsimile of other chefs’ projects. The attention to detail that he and Metzger have poured into their project is nothing short of remarkable, with a concerted effort made to ensure it feels part of the fabric of Savile Row.

The famous street’s local traders have played their role, with tailor Cad & The Dandy having designed the uniforms; leather goods specialist Bennet Winch responsible for the restaurant’s leather wine menus, coasters, and bill folds; and Gaziano Girling supplying the shoes.

Other nods to the restaurant’s sartorial location include smoking jackets designed for diners who want to nip out for a swift drag and the glassware for water, which has a thread-like pattern running through it in reference to the former tailor shop in which the restaurant is now located. Perhaps most impressive of all is the dry-cleaning service that the restaurant offers when guests check in their coats.

“Obviously it’s all about the food but it’s also about embracing where you are,” says Metzger. “We’re not going to preach to you and say ‘this is from here or here’, but if someone wants to know there’s a reason behind everything. We’ve gone to extremes to make it an incredible experience for guests, which is the fun part.”

This attention to detail far exceeds small nods to its location. Every effort has been made to accentuate the dining experience, whether that be getting access to a secret downstairs private dining table for two that is accessible behind a wine chiller, or the hefty 200-page wine list, which requires some decent muscles to handle.

In a move that will no doubt please the restaurant’s supplier of argon gas capsules, every wine by the glass is served using a Coravin, regardless of the fact that an opened bottle might only last a few hours when the restaurant is in full swing, to ensure drinkers get their wine at its absolute best.

For the truly serious wine buff Atherton has even donated his private collection of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, stored in a separate wine cellar with bottles ‘held’ by casts of his and his wife’s hands. Prices of these bottles are available on request, but as American financier JP Morgan once famously said, ‘if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it’.

A powerful partnership

Forming a partnership with Metzger has already proven to be masterstroke for Atherton, with Row on 5’s sibling Dubai restaurant Row on 45, which Metzger launched alongside head chef Daniel Birk and Atherton, winning two stars. It’s a relationship that is proving to be mutually beneficial, with Metzger gaining huge amounts of experience of opening and running a restaurant under his mentor’s guidance but also bringing to bear his experience at The Ritz and, as a 31-year-old chef, providing a younger perspective to proceedings.

“One thing I look for in up-and-coming chefs is how invested they are in their own career,” says Atherton. “I needed someone like I was back when I was at Maze; I was obsessed with the industry. It was never about the money. I knew Spencer was like that.”

Atherton’s instincts have proved right. Having spent most of his career at The Ritz (13 years) and being crowned Great British Menu 2022 Champion of Champions, Metzger was starting to consider his longer-term future and his desire to eventually run his own place.

“I’d just done Great British Menu and had a number of offers on the table,” he recalls. “One Sunday morning Jason called me and asked about my plans, and I told him I wanted a small restaurant, learn how to run it and have the freedom to do what I want.

“The Ritz is amazing but it’s an institution, you always have to remember the building and the room you’re cooking in, and I wanted to step out of that. I wanted to take the foundations I’d learnt there and build on them with something lighter and different ingredients and create a restaurant I would want to go and eat in.”

Atherton’s track record of working with and supporting his chefs was an attractive prospect. “Out of all the chefs out there Jason, with what he’s achieved in his restaurant group around to world, was the person to work with. He is not a control freak – he’s given me the scope to design the kitchen and the restaurant but has advised me.

“He’s very open and transparent about everything, and straight to the point. I’ve never negotiated on things before, but he has given me the opportunity to go and do it. I’ve learnt more about restaurants in the past in 13 months than I did in the last five years at The Ritz, it’s been like gold dust.”

Row on 5 then is where the old and new guard of the industry meet, a place that combines the self-assurance and attention to detail people have come to expect from Atherton and the exuberance and passion of one of the most exciting young chefs in the country. The true recipe for its success, however, will be that it is a shared vision and partnership.

“I don’t see it as working in a restaurant but building my future in this restaurant,” says Metzger. “We’re doing this side by side. I’ve got to be as invested in it as Jason is.

“This is it for me. I have to make this work. Jason has given me the opportunity to stand here at the end and say, ‘look what I’m running’. Everyone is watching, it’s a big deal. We want London to be just as good as Dubai, if not better. There’s a lot of pressure to get it right, but you thrive on it.”

Atherton shares this view. “The dream is to get to the very top of the mountain, and me and Spencer have to climb that mountain together.

“The journey will not be finished until we are both at the top, producing a world class restaurant side by side.”

5 Savile Row, London, W1S 3PB
www.rowon5london.com