The King's Road was the private road created in the 1670s to take King Charles II from St James's |Palace to Hampton Court, Kew and west London. Only royalty and a privileged few who carried copper tokens or metal passes with the monarch's initials could get past the gatekeeper. In 1830 the road was opened to everybody in the reigns of King George IV and William IV.
Landmarks include at the Eastern End, the Peter Jones department store, a grade II listed building on Sloane square, and the Saatchi Gallery on the Duke of York Square.
A few steps from Medlar restaurant is 430 King's Road, World's End fashion boutique established by designer Vivienne Westwood. You can see outside the clock with a 13 hour dial (remember the clock which struck 13) and the hands rotate ani-clockwise at disconcerting speed, turning back in time, representing coiunter-culture.
Medlar Restaurant
A medlar is a fruit used for making jelly. The fruit was popular in medieval times. It has multiple seeds at the centre, like an apple, a feature known as a pome, and like the apple tree has abundant flowers, white flowers.
At the back of the restaurant is a secluded spot attractively arched by white flowers on branches. I admired that at the time, but it wasn't until I got home and researched the medlar tree that I realised that the decor reflected the name.
I had been warned about the stairs, and the toilets are downstairs, whilst we ate in a group together in a private room at the top, three flights up from the ground floor, passing a cute little bar.
Our room had a view down over the busy King's Road, with pedestrians and buses. At the back on this level is a mural of London.
The host of the event, my husband had chosen food to match his wines. Once reason for choosing Medlar is that you can bring your own bottles of booze, paying corkage.
We started with two kinds of bread, white sourdough with a sprinkle of seeds, and a darker bread, plus butter. (A good start. I much prefer butter to oil.) The butter was soft enough to spread. Everything was just perfect.
The other guests had a shellfish starter. From the online menu I had selected an quail's egg tart. The egg was on top, like a fried egg, the size of a normal egg, not the teeny quail's egg I had anticipated.
The main dish was pheasant, a very pleasant variation on chicken, chunky, solid yet soft and not stringy, tasty. I liked the potatoes sliced into thin overlapping strips.
The most memorable dish for me was the dessert, the creme brulee. Crisp burned sugar on top but not so hard as to crack your teeth. The presentation of the dessert was as a large version, nut the usual deep, small muffin size, but a proper dessert plate size. Not a limp one either, but solid and creamy.
A nice touch was the chocolates which came with the coffee which we ordered.
Despite the fact that we were isolated at the top of the building, the service was attentive, neither too fast, nor too slow.
We started at around noon, and finished nearer four pm. Our friends had no trouble finding a local place to continue socialising. But I had a meeting in the evening so we waved goodbye. After agreeing that Medlar would be on our shortlist of places to return with the group, after a year of less.
Information from Ask Gemini, Wikipedia,
