Tom Aikens used to have an eponymous fine dining restaurant a few hundred metres from The Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea.  That’s where I first became a fan of Tom’s cooking, during lunches before/after my hospital appointments from March 2013 onwards.  But Tom was a well-renowned chef before then, having become the youngest British chef to win 2 Michelin stars, in 1996, when he was just 26 years old.   Over the years he gained a reputation for his cuisine, but also for his temper and his somewhat lax business management, and unfortunately his Chelsea restaurant closed whilst I was an in-patient in 2013, so Mr A and I had to find somewhere else to celebrate my return to ‘normal life’, and subsequent Marsden out-patient appointment treats.  Both of us pined over Tom’s food, so we were really excited to read that he was finally opening a new fine dining restaurant in London in January 2020.

I booked through their website to have dinner at the end of January, after having some scans at the Marsden.  Whilst booking, I had to pay £100/person deposit (a sign that Tom is trying to bolster his new venture’s cashflow better?) which was described as non refundable if cancelled less than a week out.  Unfortunately I had a severe allergic reaction to the contrast agent used in my CT scan in the afternoon, the hospital detained me for monitoring and we had to contact Muse to cancel. But to my relief they were very understanding and allowed us to reschedule, without losing the £200 deposit I’d paid. This made me very happy, so I rebooked for a date in February.

Muse is in a small converted mews house (geddit?) in London’s Belgravia. The small cobbled street, complete with a 17th Century coaching inn, seemed a world away from Belgravia’s busy streets and embassy district. It is a rather lovely hidden location – indeed our black taxi driver said he’d never been on this road in his life!

Stepping inside you come to a small softly and stylishly furnished lounge area, where drinks can be taken before or after the meal.  Their ‘bar’ and drinks collection is quite small, in a specially designed wall installation.  But they had no problem whipping us up a couple of great negronis, which weren’t on their small cocktail menu!

Opposite the lounge is an open kitchen where snacks and desserts are prepared. There’s a marble counter where 5 people can eat their whole meal, or where, like Mr A and I, you can be invited to eat your dessert, after your meal upstairs.  The restaurant’s only toilets are behind the kitchen too; clean and spacious, with unbranded toiletries and proper hand towels.

Upstairs is an intimate dining room on one side and the main kitchen, open, on the other. In between was another marble counter, where half a dozen or so can pre-book to eat at. It was quiet when we arrived, but filled up soon afterwards.  We had counter seats so we could watch all the ‘action’ – it’s mostly plating up – and hopefully grab a word with chef Tom.  The small kitchen brigade works in almost silence, and all diners get to chat with Tom because he actually brings some of the dishes out himself.

I got the impression the staff (especially the chap in the photo above, who didn’t smile all evening) were terribly nervous – under the pressure of working under the gaze of such a renowned and exacting chef as Tom Aikens.

At dinnertime one selects a six or 10 course set meal. We chose the former and were presented with a menu which revealed a pop-up facsimile of the restaurant and a list of the dishes of our £95 dinner.  (ten courses is £145.  Both menus are also available at lunchtime, along with a 3 course lunch at £50)  But there’s not much information about what you’ll be getting because each course’s name references moments in Tom’s past, when tastes and experiences have had a profound emotional effect upon him, and which each dish seeks to replicate.  So we had a menu of titles and key ingredients, plus a menu of the back-story behind the titles.  Nothing told us how the ingredients were to be prepared, cooked and presented on the plate, so there was an element of anticipation and excitement.

“Snacks” were brought to us first, by one of the brigade from the downstairs kitchen.  We had a small but lovely bite of venison tartare, served in a bone and presented on a bed of moss and lichen (9/10), a really lush and creamy cep tart (9.5/10) and a new one on me; a sheep cheese biscuit, curd and sorrel (9/10).

Tom then personally served us our bread and butter, and explained things to us too.  His 3-grains sourdough with stout and treacle was very good; crispy crust and light and airy inside. There was a good butter with salt crystals on top, but the stand-out was his incredible cep and chicken butter, which takes 5 days to make. 10/10

The first proper dish was called “just down the road” and consisted of fresh Ricotta (made using raw milk from a dairy just down the road from where Tom grew up in Norfolk), honey, black truffle and a burnt leak puree.  A super starter, this dish was light, fresh and novel (the sort of dish I would associate with L’Enclume in the Lake District). 10/10

Dish two was named “Sea Lavender” after Tom’s father’s boat in Devon, from which Tom occasionally caught mackerel. A bowl came with a piece of torched mackerel and some poached daikon, into which was poured a dashi-style broth, made with roasted mackerel bones rather than bonito. I thought the dish was stunning; very Japanese in its clean layers of flavours, yet different and novel. 10/10

Our third dish, “Essence” is all about Tom aiming to get the most from a single ingredient; in this instance, beetroot.  Three kinds of beetroots prepared in different ways were uplifted by fermented cucumber, blood orange segments and pine salt, to deliver a delicious, light, zingy and delicate dish, not at all beetroot-earthy. 10/10

“Conquering the beech tree”, dish four, was about taking risks and being fearless, which in the kitchen takes the form of creativity.  To this end Tom had paired a BBQ’d langoustine tail on a stick, covered it in a trotter sauce, and added lardo and burnt apple.  The flavours were brilliant, but my langoustine was a touch over, for me, so I score it 9.5/10

We could see our main course being assembled across the pass.  It looked like a piece of fillet steak was being topped with finely sliced and fried onions, but when Tom came to serve us “playing with fire” we discovered that it was a slice of brisket topped with fine crispy threads of fried pulled brisket.  Superb cooking of the brisket steak, to make it as tender as fillet, and great innovation to create the onion-like topping!  On the plate was a roasted onion stuffed with Norfolk grains, and a red wine and tendon sauce.  Finally there was a side plate with a bone on top, offering up one triple fried chip topped with fried tendon, each. Everything was very good, except I found the grains in the onion somewhat bland. 9.5/10

Very unusually, I wasn’t full and in pain by this stage. It seems that the abominable abdominal surgery I had in October has cured the post prandial pains I’ve been having for 5 years!  So I ordered some cheese as an extra course at £20. There was just one cheese, the UK’s only unpasteurised ‘brie’, but it was brilliant, and the home made accompaniments (jams, chutneys, pickled walnuts and crackers) were absolutely sensational!  10/10

Before the cheese course I mentioned to one of our servers that I needed to catch a train 45 minutes later. She said I’d be OK as long as I ate the cheese quickly, which I did, with Mr A’s help.  Then we waited.  And waited.  We were then ‘invited’ (asked) to move downstairs for our dessert, and so we moved to the marble counter overlooking the pastry kitchen.  From this vantage point, and with the minutes ticking away, we could see absolutely no urgency from the chefs. Maybe my message hadn’t been communicated.  In the end we left the restaurant one hour after I mentioned my train, and so I missed the train, which resulted in a much later and more convoluted journey home.  This really inconvenienced me, so I sent a ‘feedback’ email to them the next day, but I haven’t had a reply.

Back to the food, and our dessert called “cows and cornflakes” which is inspired by fresh raw milk being delivered in the mornings of Tom’s holidays in France.  I can’t recall the ingredients (my departure time was playing on my mind, and I’d had a bit to drink!) but it was light, fluffy, clean, milky and delicious. Pop corn gave the textural feel and the flavours all shouted “cornflakes with fresh creamy milk”. 10/10

We asked for the bill, but no coffees, but we were still presented with a plate of ‘petit fours’. We had 6 delicate sweets each, which were delicious and amongst the very best petit fours I’ve had. 10/10

My bill on the night came to £278, of which £200 was booze and £53 was service. But remember I’d also paid a £200 deposit beforehand, so in total this was a £478 meal for two.

I thought the food at Muse was superb (my lowest score for any dish was 9/10, most were tens) and I believe it is worthy of 3 Michelin stars, or definitely a strong 2 stars, for its very technical and skilful cooking. We’ll have to wait until the autumn to find out what Michelin thinks.  But as we made our way home I felt very annoyed that the final 2 courses were served so slowly that we missed our train. Added to that, I forgot (ie the staff forgot to give me back) my woollen jumper, and so far they haven’t posted it on to me, nearly two weeks later. So I think the front of house team needs to be a bit more on its toes in properly supporting its guests’ needs, and for that reason my overall score is just 9/10

PS food is served on a variety of beautiful ceramics.

UPDATE: My jumper was finally delivered to me on 2nd March, along with some small jars of home-made booze to numb my frustration; three flavoured gins and one flavoured vodka. I’m not kenos the taste of juniper berries, so, for me, these were amazing, and something I’ll drink on my next visit.  A particular star was the rosehip gin, which I loved neat. It would make a great digestive.   10/10