As someone who loves food and lives in a t-shirt and trainers (lots of different ones, mind), the rapid rise of casual fine dining has treated me very well indeed. I’m fortunate, perhaps, that I wasn’t born a couple of decades earlier, when I would have had to shine a pair of shoes and don a suit just to get a decent meal. Starchy, old-fashioned fine dining has never really suited me, and as I walk into Xier with my plus one I feel a slight back-of-the-neck prickle; the staff are smartly-dressed in suits, there’s gentle piano music in the background, the tablecloths are immaculate. It’s all of my dining fears rolled into a single package.
Before long though, any misgivings I have have disappeared; Xier is very smart but there’s no stuffiness about it. Our waiter for the evening is utterly charming, and possesses an uncanny ability of being present at all the right moments. The menu is daring and ambitious, but everything works seamlessly. A dish of raw Orkney scallop, trout roe and elderflower miso dashi is a masterful balance of flavours. Rose-cured salmon with foie gras could be a car crash, but unusual elements come together in harmony, married by sweet figs and roasted hazelnuts. The desserts are stupendous – a faultless trio of picture-perfect patisserie creations that deserve to be exhibited as sculptures.
We’re not the only people who have had a revelatory food experience at Xier. When Guardian food critic Grace Dent visited the restaurant last May, she compared it to The Ledbury – Brett Graham’s magnum opus in Notting Hill. ‘It’s not just one star,’ she said of the cooking. ‘It’s more like two.’ This sort of consensus made Xier somewhat of a favourite to win a Michelin star on debut, but when the Michelin awards arrived Xier was a conspicuous absentee. ‘When we’re down in the kitchen, our goal is to try and blow everyone away,’ explains head chef Carlo Scotto. ‘We’re doing everything correctly by our standards, but it’s still hard to know how people are receiving it. When Grace Dent gave us ten out of ten and said we were at a two-Michelin star level, I was like, ‘wow, are we really that good?’’