Lord’s

I used to be the first one to try a hot new restaurant, but those days feel long gone. I usually make it to the “cool” places, but now it takes me some time after arranging childcare and finding friends who haven’t abandoned me for the burbs. That’s why I’m impressed with myself for making it to Lord’s relatively soon after it opened. This spot is buzzy and not cheap, but the food was fabulous. And I’ll never complain about feeling like I’m in an English countryside gastropub. I might as well have been Cameron Diaz in that scene in The Holiday.

We started with drinks and bread. The bread was extra (don’t love when they do that), but I’m glad we ordered because the butter was sitting in a pool of olive oil. Fat on fat – and let me tell ya, that’s the way to do it. For my first cocktail, I went with the tiny snap pea ‘tini. It’s smaller (hence the $12 price tag), but they are happy to make it full size. I’m not a gin drinker, but I found this to be delicate, herbaceous, and yummy.

Let’s also take a minute to note the glasses and dinnerware. And collection of teapots – how perfectly British.

There were four of us, and we were all drooling over pretty much everything on the menu…so we ordered pretty much everything on the menu. For apps, we got the oysters, which were lightly charred. The scotch egg had a perfectly cooked yolk and was made with curried lamb – a nice lil spice update. I loved the crab toast with uni and Meyer lemon. We also got the white asparagus with sorrel and bottarga, the snap pea salad, green olives & sheep’s cheese, and the veal sweetbreads with hen of the woods & watercress. Everything was crazy good and let the fresh herbs and seasonal ingredients to the heavy lifting.

For the mains, we got steak with fries and duck with ramps. Yum and yum. We also got a cobbler for dessert and no complaints there.

Lord’s takes British classics and modernizes them ever so slightly so they feel lighter, fresher. And with the interior moody, mismatched, and full of corners, it has just enough character to make it a great date spot.