Vegetarians, vegans and everybody else

Why there is no separate menu

Because a separate vegetarian menu is where restaurants put the dish they did not think about. It is usually one risotto, it has been on since 2019, and everybody at the table can tell it was an afterthought. Putting the vegetables on the main menu forces the kitchen to make them good enough to sit next to a dry-aged sirloin and be chosen over it, which several of them are.

Vegetarian

The wood-roasted carrots, the winter squash soup, the roasted cauliflower, the leeks with hazelnut and the mushroom and barley are all vegetarian as written. That is a starter, a soup, two oven plates and a main — a full meal without asking anybody to change anything.

Vegan

Fewer, and we will be straight about it: this kitchen cooks with a lot of butter. The greens with garlic and chilli are vegan as they are, and the grain bowl at lunch is vegan as it is. Two or three other dishes can be made vegan by leaving something out, and the kitchen will tell you which ones on the night, because it depends on what is on that week. If you are vegan and want a proper three courses, telephone a day ahead and Marcus will cook you one — that is a genuine offer and not a brush-off.

What we will not do

• Take a dish apart at eight o'clock on a Saturday and rebuild it as something else. Ask when you book instead and the answer is usually yes.
• Serve a substitute we are not proud of. If the honest answer is that the dish does not work without the cheese, we will say that rather than send out a worse version of it.
• Describe anything as safe for a medical allergy. That is a different question from a preference and it has its own page.

One kitchen, and we will not pretend otherwise. We cannot make this kitchen allergen-free, and any restaurant that tells you it has is either using a separate room you have not seen or is not being careful with the word. There is one kitchen here. Flour is worked on the same bench that later holds a plate. The fryer that cooks the fries also cooks nothing else, which helps, but the tongs, the pass and the air are shared. What we can do is tell you precisely what is in a dish, and leave a named component out where the dish survives it. Those are real, useful answers. "Safe for a severe allergy" is not an answer we are able to give truthfully, so we do not give it.