Medlar

The ravioli that would not leave

The crab ravioli stayed after its trial run. Joe Mercer Nairne, chef at Medlar in Chelsea, London, has sold around 50,000 of them since taking the pass in 2011. He has said it was never meant to remain on the menu, which is often how a dish becomes fixed in a room: not through announcement, but through repeated orders, service after service. Mercer Nairne came to that pass by a deliberate route. He trained at Eton, Oxford University, and Leith's School of Food and Wine, then worked in kitchens at The Savoy Grill, Chez Bruce, and Rockpool in Sydney. At Chez Bruce he rose to sous chef, and the Medlar kitchen still carries the trace of that education in Franco-European weight, clean sauces, and a preference for flavour over display. Since 2011, Medlar has been the place where his wish for his own restaurant became daily discipline.

Classic bones, modern pressure

The cooking here sits in the Modern British fine dining register, with French and European muscle beneath it. Mercer Nairne works through dishes that sound familiar until the details start to stack: crab raviolo with leek fondue and bisque sauce, duck egg tart with red wine sauce, turnip purée, lardons, and sautéed duck hearts, monkfish and squid with sauce vierge, coco beans, and sea aster. The method is not built around spectacle. It is built around reduction, pastry, stocks, terrines, purées, and the old pressure of making a plate feel generous without letting it sag. Medlar has resisted the long tasting-menu habit in favour of flexible set structures, which gives the kitchen a particular rhythm. The pass has to send out opulent dishes and shorter meals with the same grip. Tarte Tatin remains part of the house language, as does a cheese board treated as a course with its own gravity rather than an afterthought.

A quiet room on King's Road

The room on King's Road keeps its confidence low. Medlar is quietly elegant, intimate, and relaxed, with acoustic panels keeping conversation at table height rather than rising over the room. That matters for this kind of cooking. A bisque sauce, a potato terrine, or a duck egg tart asks for attention, not ceremony. The restaurant's small scale helps keep the exchange close. Plates leave the kitchen into a room that feels local in the best sense, not casual, but known.

The long way holds

Medlar's standing in Chelsea comes from steadiness: an independent restaurant opened in April 2011, still built around the head chef who co-founded it and the dishes the room kept asking for. Mercer Nairne also co-founded Cornus in Belgravia in 2024, but Medlar remains the bench where the first intention is easiest to read. The clearest measure is still the crab ravioli, around 50,000 sold and still on the Medlar menu.