Hampstead Restaurants

Base Restaurant – 71 High Street

Here is a restaurant that plays a double role. During the day, Base functions as a bistro and bar serving breakfast and lunch as well as coffee, baguettes, sandwiches and patisseries. There is also a freshly prepared gourmet food bar offering a wide and diverse range of daily dishes. In the evening the atmosphere changes when Base becomes a fine-dining Mediterranean fusion restaurant. Head chef and proprietor Pierre Khodja specialises in French cuisine with an Algerian twist, resulting in light, delicately spiced dishes guaranteed to delight guests. The restaurant, which is often visited by the odd celebrity or two, exudes a warm and cosy ambience along with a neat and stylish decor. There is live entertainment on Saturday evenings when lovers of jazz can listen to their favourite bands. Base also specialise in outside catering and party hire, either for small dinner parties or for the larger and more elaborate function, with menus tailor-made to suit all requirements.

Bradley – 25 Winchester Road

Husband and wife team Simon and Jolanta Bradley opened their restaurant in 1991, having both previously trained at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane. With the accent on high quality ingredients, cuisine is classed as Anglo/French with the best part of its seasonal produce sourced from in and around the British Isles. All fish arrives daily from Looe in Cornwall, with beef and lamb from the Orkney Isles in Scotland and oysters from Ireland. With a seating capacity of sixty, the decor is tastefully smart yet casual with floral arrangements, wooden floors and burgundy upholstered seating set against a backdrop of soft pastel colours. The walls are adorned with a number of exhibits of modern art painted by local artists. Popular dishes on the menu include saddle of rabbit with caramelised chicory tarte tatin and Dales lamb with boulangère potatoes and creamed flageolet beans teamed with classic desserts such as rhubarb and vanilla soufflé or passion fruit bavarois with coconut sorbet. The extensive wine list which features over 90 different wines from around the world has won critical acclaim from the Good Food Guide.

Gaucho – 64 Heath Street

The Gaucho with its authentic Argentinean cuisine is dedicated to the true essence of its food, wine and culture. Because of the country’s vast production of beef, red meat is an especially common part of the Argentine diet. Due to adequate moisture, mild climate, rich soil and a vast terrain on which it grazes, Argentine Aberdeen Angus cattle do not require hormones and because of its ability to graze freely, Argentine beef contains ten percent less cholesterol and twenty-five percent less intramuscular fat. All steaks at the Gaucho are cooked in the traditional Argentine way by which it is sizzled and turned just once ensuring greater caramelisation and crust formation, thereby sealing the meat and enhancing the flavour. A great favourite with the restaurant is the empanada, a pastry with a beef and vegetable filling and considered to be the national dish of Argentine and Uruguay. The restaurant itself offers a seating capacity for two hundred diners, however, there is also an outdoor barbeque and terrace area that comes complete with an automated canopy, providing an alfresco dining experience for a further fifty guests. The Sunday brunch menus between 10am and 1pm and live music entertainment every Sunday evening are just two of Gaucho’s added specialities.

Osteria Emilia – 85 Fleet Road

Spoken very highly of in culinary circles, this fine Italian restaurant is fairly new to the scene in Hampstead. With an unusual and inspired cuisine from the northern regions, the majority of Emilia’s traditional dishes are from Emilia-Romagna, one of twenty governing areas of Italy which stretches from the eastern border of Liguria right across to the Adriatic in the east. A new project for Renate and Raffaele Giacobazzi, owners of Giacobazzi’s, the ever popular Italian delicatessen just across the road, Osteria Emilia, with its sleek modern lines provides an informal and relaxed setting for diners to experience the wholesome delights of this splendid regional Italian fare. Chef Stefano Lodi-Rizzini, formerly of the Walnut Tree Inn and Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Street Café, cooks with zeal and passion conjuring up fabulous dishes such as guinea fowl with lavender, pike with capers, anchovies, parsley and garlic, rabbit saltimbocca, not to mention the time-honoured grilled calf’s liver with balsamic vinegar and onions. Their ice-cream is sourced from Oddono’s Gelati, a company that provides fresh, hand-made, natural Italian ice cream.