Sorrel Restaurant by Steve Drake

Balance at the glass-walled pass

Texture and temperature set the brief before the plate leaves the pass. Steve Drake, Chef at Sorrel Restaurant by Steve Drake, London, has built the house’s cooking around that control, working from Dorking in Surrey inside a former schoolhouse rather than a city dining room. His route to this station began with bacon sandwiches in a café, then moved into kitchens where repetition and pace were part of the discipline: culinary staff under Keith Stanley at The Ritz London Hotel, chef under Nico Ladenis, chef under Tom Aikens at Pied à Terre, chef under Marco Pierre White at The Oak Room, and sous chef under William Drabbel at Aubergine. He later led the kitchen at Drake’s on the Pond in Abinger Hammer and became chef proprietor at Drake’s in Ripley, a role he held until 2016. Since 2017, Sorrel has carried his more personal register: flavour first, then the structure that lets it land cleanly. Drake has described his food as “flavour focused” and his style as balancing “flavours with texture and temperature.” The phrase is plain enough to be useful. At Sorrel, it means the hand-dived scallop can meet ponzu and langoustine sauce without losing its sea-sweet centre; it means intensity arrives by adjustment, not weight.

A tasting menu built by contrast

The program at Sorrel works through a Discovery tasting menu, offered in 6 or 9 courses, with a smaller lunch format on Fridays. The cooking is Modern British in its produce base, but the method makes room for British, European, and Japanese inflections where they sharpen a plate. Past dishes give the clearest map of the kitchen’s concerns: Chicken Chantilly with Vadouvan, quince, and pickled cucumber; Cashel Blue Pillow with rosewater and tarragon; Buckwheat with 28 day Aged Beef, koji, smoked egg yolk, and ox tongue. These are not flourishes placed beside one another. They are pressures. Sweetness, acidity, fat, smoke, and ferment have to be held in proportion, course after course. The same logic runs through Green, Green, Green and Orkney Scallop with pumpkin, nasturtium, crushed apple, and roasted fish sauce, where the plate moves between freshness, vegetal depth, and the darker pull of the sauce. The open kitchen matters because it lets the room see the method without turning the cooks into theatre. The bench remains a bench. The pass remains a pass.

The old schoolhouse and the open kitchen

The room sits at 77 South Street in Dorking, inside a 300-year-old Grade II listed beamed building that was previously a schoolhouse. Low ceilings, exposed timber, and divided upstairs dining spaces give the house a close grain; the modern counterpoint is the glass-walled kitchen, where the team works in view of the tables. That contrast is useful. The room keeps the old building’s scale, while the kitchen gives the service its present tense. Fresh foliage and bell jars with vegetables bring the produce into the room before the first course arrives, not as decoration alone, but as a quiet reminder of what the menu is handling. The atmosphere is intimate rather than hushed. Service can carry formality without stiffness because the room has already set a lower voice.

The work continues through the station

Sorrel holds a Michelin Star, first appearing with that recognition in the 2019 Michelin Guide, along with AA Restaurant of the Year for England 2018-19 and Four AA Rosettes achieved in September 2019. Awards sit outside the plate, but they mark the standard the station has had to repeat. The better close is still at the pass: scallop, ponzu, langoustine sauce, and the temperature of the dish as it reaches South Street.