Fay Maschler reviews Kitty Fisher's

Lucy Lockett lost her pocket / Kitty Fisher found it / Not a penny was there in it / Only ribbon ’round it”. As a child this puzzled me — how could you lose a pocket? — but now I discover that I was turning my skipping rope blithely oblivious to the fact that the story concerned a barmaid, her virtue, a famous courtesan and a punter they squabbled over. These days there’s less skipping, more munching but I’m pleased to be reacquainted with Kitty Fisher — a voluptuary painted more than once by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The eponymous corner premises house a sort of restaurant trend reverse ferret — everything sounds salacious once you start to think too hard — whereby a chap recently cooking at Climpson’s Arch in London Fields has come to Mayfair. Boyish Tomos Parry, Young British Foodie Chef of the Year 2014, is joined at the wood-fired grill by Chris Leach, whose previous post was sous-chef at Pitt Cue Co.

Their open kitchen part illuminates a downstairs dining space carved from vaults that held cast-iron ovens — still on show — from when the premises was a 19th-century bakery. Over one the legend “H. Smith and Son, 23 York Street, Lambeth” and a royal warrant of appointment is traceable but its deep cavern is now lit by candles. Dickensian is a word that floats easily to mind, especially at Christmas time.

The weird time-lapse effect of the period referred to as the “holidays” means I visit Kitty Fisher’s more often than I usually manage with a new restaurant. Its pleasingly concise list of dishes is thoroughly mined. And I can’t wait to go back.

Ruth Reichl, a former restaurant reviewer of The New York Times recently writing about how restaurants might find favour with critics, mentioned that surprisingly few places understood the importance of the initial contact. Everyone I speak to when booking at Kitty Fisher’s is upbeat, helpful, even funny. It is the opposite of the not unusual sensation that you have got through to a call centre in Bratislava. Of course not every restaurant can be backed by affable coves, one of whom is the son of the building’s owners. That helps explain how a 40-seater establishment with a possible gently priced route through the menu can thrive.

The wood-fired grill designed by Mark Parr of The London Log Co leaves its mark on most of the assemblies, starting with grilled bread and burnt onion butter. The butter is whipped — de rigueur these days and suitably racy here — dusted with onion ash and served with pieces of crusty loaf anointed with oil and burnished. Before Christmas chestnuts are opened on the fire, seethed in butter and sweetened with London honey.