Hawksmoor are launching a new Lunch Special which will be available Wednesday to Saturday alongside the wallet-friendly Express Menu and their traditional à la carte.
If Hawksmoor has shown anything over the years, it is that inspiration can come from anywhere: a Michelin 3* restaurant, a global fast-food chain, the streets of Vietnam, Renaissance Italy, childhood memories, futuristic fantasies and, most recently, a famous walking potato and the inventor of the Cronut.
The latest iteration of the lunch menu is no different, drawing on 30s Geneva, the tableside trolleys of the 1960s, Dickens’ England, and a Californian restaurant chain founder immortalised by the Beastie Boys. As ever, its North Star is some of the best beef on the planet.
Six new dishes will be availble on the Lunchtime Menu, including:
Flatiron Steak, Café de Paris makes its Hawksmoor debut. Charcoal-grilled flatiron (a tender cut from the shoulder that’s named after Hawksmoor New York’s wedge-shaped neighbour, the Flatiron Building), served in the style of the hottest restaurant in 1930s Geneva: Café de Paris – served with beef dripping fries and a salad of watercress, shaved radishes and cornichons in a mustard dressing.
Shortrib au poivre: Steak au poivre wasn’t born in the 1960s, but that was its spiritual heyday. Back then, it was often flamed tableside by a tuxedoed waiter. Hawksmoor has swapped steak for shortrib, slow-cooked for 10 hours until meltingly tender, brushed in mustard, dipped in cracked pepper and coated in peppercorn sauce and served with buttery mash or our beef-dripping fries.
Beefsteak pudding: ‘In the whole catalogue of cookery, there is nothing I should like so much as a beef-steak pudding!’, exclaims a character in Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. It might even have helped its cook, Ruth Pinch, land a husband. Hawksmoor has swapped steak for braised short rib and added red wine and Somerset Cider Brandy before mixing with winter vegetables and steaming in a traditional suet pastry crust.
Tunworth Royale patty melt: the lovechild of two of the best things in the food world: a burger and a toasted cheese sandwich. Invented by William Wallace ‘Tiny’ Naylor (for any hip-hop nerds, he’s on the cover of the Beastie Boy’s 1994 album, Ill Communication) in 1950s LA. Hawksmoor makes theirs with their famous burger patty, one of their favourite cheeses, rich, complex, unctuous Tunworth, and mozzarella for maximum string factor – all between slices of Texas Toast.
Charcoal Roasted Hake, caught by day boat off the South Coast, roasted over charcoal, and served with slow-cooked peppers with onion, garlic, thyme and olive oil and finished with fresh basil leaves, and Salt-baked celeriac, baked until soft and yielding, with Hen of the Woods mushrooms lightly glazed with soy sauce, and whipped ricotta (cashew varietal available), celery leaves, capers and fresh marjoram, completes the new menu, giving pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans options as appealing as their meat-eating friends.
Room for dessert? Executive pastry chef Carla Henriques has flown in from her new home in the US to create four new seasonal puddings: Hot chocolate tart with brown butter ice cream, Rum bread & butter pudding, Upside down pear and chestnut tart with mascarpone ice cream and Rhubarb Pavlova.
As ever, Hawksmoor has sustainability and food waste in mind, with day-old burger buns providing the base of her crossover of French toast and bread & butter pudding and the seasonal Pavlova featuring rhubarb compote, sauce, and sorbet to ensure no edible parts of rhubarb are wasted.
Hawksmoor’s Lunch Specials are available Wednesday to Saturday alongside the wallet-friendly Express Menu and the à la carte from Wednesday, 14th February. To book, visit thehawksmoor.com.
