I will start by saying the room is really very nice. Huge windows, white walls, double aspect, chrome fixtures. And that corner spot right on the end of Exmouth Market is a bit of a coup – a leafy pedestrianised street, flanked with restaurants and bars and good-looking Londoners with jobs in “creative marketing” and “brand strategy”. It should be impossible to have a bad time in here – at least if you are the sort of person who thinks courgettes and cold soup are interesting (sue me!).
I am at Vesper in Clerkenwell, central London, for lunch and I have brought you with me because I am told by every influencer-drone that Vesper is the best new opening in the city. I have seen more pictures of its grilled Atlantic prawns than I have of my own family. One professional critic called it “London’s horniest new restaurant”, which was enough to make even this open-minded correspondent feel like Mary Whitehouse. But with all the hysteria and hagiography I felt a pull – no, an obligation – to look those prawns in the eyes myself. To tell you, loyal reader, if this really is (ugh) “London’s horniest new restaurant”.
Far from Silver Spoon to wallow in pedantry. But I am not sure if a restaurant called Vesper should even be allowed to open at lunch. I would not eat dinner at somewhere called Matinée for the same reason. Nor would I eat fish on an industrial estate, or drink tea out of a Champagne coupe. Never mind – I will magnanimously forgive their jarring incongruity. Just the kind of person I am. We order: the “house” burger, the prawns seen around the world, some courgette and beans, what they’re calling a “pizzette” but I know to be fried bread, two glasses of house white and, accidentally, a pear cider that goes undrunk.
I will start with the euphemistically named “pizzette” – it’s topped with Straciatella (tick!) and mortadella (tick!), and then? Mostarda. That is pineapple jam, between you and me. And I can tell you this: jam belongs on rice pudding, which then belongs in the bin. It definitely has no place alongside ham and cheese, and its mere presence undermines any claims this dish has to the pizza taxonomy. And if you are tutting at my juvenile, unchallenged tastes, then I suggest you stop it because I am not the one putting spoons of jam on my starter.
As for the prawns – they came unshelled, in a neat row of four, grilled I suspect somewhere close to the Earth’s core. When cooled (eventually) I de-shell one with the determination of a raccoon and flick prawn-head juice on the couple sitting at the neighbouring table. They didn’t seem to notice, or were too polite to comment. But reader, if it was you (Friday, 12.37pm), I am sorry. I think they were technically good prawns but as a lifelong prawn-sceptic I can only defer to others. “Pretty good,” my dining companion shrugged.
There was a burger drowned, plunged, drenched, deluged, overwhelmed by and then soaked in a Gorgonzola sauce (an ingredient believed only by arrivistes to be sophisticated). Everything I ate from there on tasted like blue cheese, my dreams that night were blue cheese-inflected, my hopes too. The light scallop I tried to eat for dinner didn’t stand a chance. Welcome to Vesper: I hope you like Penicillium glaucum.
I don’t think Vesper is a particularly bad time – what did I say about the room! – but what I found was a grandiloquent menu that never quite landed, and a restaurant mismatched in its ambitions and capabilities. So what the hell, then, is going on? The buzz, the scene, the march of the food influencers – one chef friend whose taste I respect loved it too. What if I am wrong? It has not happened before but I know people for whom it is a regular occurrence – my opposite number at the Spectator, for example.
Silver Spoon lives close to the edge of white-eyed insanity and this might be enough to push me over. Is everyone gaslighting me? Do I sound like a paranoid schizophrenic? I cannot be the only person in this city who does not like jam and cheese. Human beings are mimetic creatures, and that accounts for our shared tastes, too. And so I cannot help but think that everyone loves Vesper because, well, everyone loves Vesper.
[Further reading: What we owe to bread]
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This article appears in the 12 Aug 2026 issue of the New Statesman, A Very British Scandal
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentI am not suggesting the author is wrong about Vesper, but they do need some basic gastronomic education before being let loose on restaurant reviews.
The author has obviously never encountered genuine mostarda in Italy: it is not jam! At least look it up.
Also, it is an absolute abomination to drink champagne from a coupe.
Agree that Mostarda is NOT jam. It’s usually served with mascarpone. Doesn’t go with stracciatella.
It is a spicy concoction made from apples/pears and mustard seeds.
Totally understand the critic on the “problem “ of Gorgonzola.
Sounds like Vesper needs an Italian to check the recipes.
I’m not a foodie so can’t comment on that but I love your sense of humour!