Lasdun

Ingredient led, simple and tasty

The pie arrives as a working proposition, pastry first, then steam, then the cut. Jon Rotheram, chef-owner of Lasdun in Southbank, London, keeps that kind of plain pressure on the room: food with enough structure to sit inside the National Theatre, and enough appetite to avoid becoming theatre food. Since 2023, Lasdun has extended the register he established at The Marksman across a second London address. His route into ownership began lower down the hierarchy, as kitchen porter at Fleur De Lys in Essex, before the responsibility of head chef at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen and, later, his own name on the door in Hackney in 2015. Rotheram has described The Marksman as a wager without romance, life savings in, years ahead, every year taken as it came. At Lasdun, the same discipline reads through a brasserie menu built on British produce, seasonal pies, buns, shellfish, whole fish and a tart that has followed him from one address to the next.

Pies, buns and the oyster bar

Lasdun works in the brasserie grammar of choice rather than ceremony: à la carte, set menus around performances, the bar as its own station, plates that can carry a full evening or sit tightly beside the curtain time. The kitchen keeps familiar Marksman shapes in play, including Cornish crab with salt lemon and saffron bun, chicken, wild garlic and leek pie, and brown butter and honey tart. Around them, the program leans on smoking, curing, grilling, baking whole fish, and the slower craft of making pastry serve a filling rather than decorate it. The marble oyster counter and smoked fish fridge give the seafood its own visible discipline, with London-cured smoked salmon and smoked eel sitting close to the bar. The wine list is curated toward organic, biodynamic, natural and low-intervention bottles from around the world, a cellar chosen to meet oysters, eel, chops, pie and honeyed pastry without turning the table into a lecture.

Concrete, banquettes and the theatre floor

The room belongs to Denys Lasdun's National Theatre building, completed in 1976, and the restaurant does not try to soften that inheritance away. Exposed concrete, sparse modern décor, black-leather banquettes and a dark marble bar make the craft feel public, almost bench-side, with the pass, the counter and the floor all reading as part of the same machine. Lasdun occupies the former House Restaurant space and has its own entrance, but the theatre remains present in the pace: early tables, late drinks, conversations kept at a level that lets the room work. On select evenings, live jazz adds another layer without requiring the kitchen to change its register.

A second London address

Continuity across two sites defines the venue. KERB curated the National Theatre food offer for 18 months before Lasdun opened with The Marksman team, bringing Rotheram's cooking into a larger room of 90 guests and a public building with its own architectural weight. End the meal at Lasdun with brown butter and honey tart.