EATING OUT

Tom finds much to be admired on the menu at a restaurant within a pub in West London

The Holland, a new incarnation of an old Kensington pub, is discreet in the best possible way. Smart but not showy, laid-back but assured. And on a particularly soggy Friday night, when winds rage and sleet whips the face, stepping out of the deluge and into this warm, softly lit room offers succour of the most delightful kind. Tables are bare, like the plain wooden floor, and the walls wear tastefully muted shades.

Although there is a bar, it’s small, and not exactly built for leaning upon. This is very much a restaurant in a pub, rather than a drinking pub with snacks. Which is absolutely fine when done properly. As it is here. The menu is short, broadly European and not overly wordy. They certainly don’t wheeze on for paragraphs about the breed, feed and favourite Taylor Swift track of each and every beast we’re about to eat. Like all good restaurants, you trust the chef. Let the ingredients do the talking, not reams of windy waffle.

Chef Max de Nahlik was behind the much-loved pop-up Oxalis, and his food moves from classic to altogether more original with well-honed ease. There’s a generous, well spiced and wonderfully bosky splodge

Here you trust the chef to let the ingredients do the talking

of brown crab on toast, all rowdy, salty sea-dog swagger. And an equally rambunctious beef tartare, uncompromisingly bovine and lusciously rich, with soft nuggets of chilli-flecked confit egg yolk. Simple, but beautifully done, the quality of those ingredients all too clear.

Burrata comes draped, like a golden-age starlet, across broccoli, a languid combination of warm brassica and lactic cool, while a dish of sweetcorn, tomato and chilli peanuts, all bathed in miso butter, manages to combine about three different cuisines into one glorious melange. There’s heat and bite, crunch and chew, a dish as original as it is exciting.

A main course of hake, splendidly fresh and pearlescently cooked, sits on a bed of gentle piperade, with lashings of good olive oil and a delicate tangle of shaved fennel. Another dish of skill and quiet confidence, in a restaurant that never feels the need to shout. Service is equally civilised. Throw in a good wine list, with most available by the glass, and you have that rarest of things – a well-priced local restaurant. With cooking that’s a few cuts above the norm.

About £35 per head. The Holland, 25 Earls Court Road, London w8; thehollandkensington.co.uk