Luso, London: ‘It could become a place of pilgrimage’

Photographs Sophia Evans

Now I am back at the same address and, like me, the restaurant is starting afresh: I’ve abandoned my kids on a sugar high; Mendes has left to pursue projects in Lisbon. According to the website, as of September, Lisboeta is now Luso, marking “a new chapter in contemporary Portuguese dining”. I arrive to find the name – inspired by Ancient Rome’s word for modern day Portugal, Lusitania – scrawled in black script on a brightly painted exterior: a bright dawn announced in butter-yellow.

Still, it’s unclear whether this is a wholly reimagined restaurant or the same place nipped and tucked. The site, management and much of the staff remain. Last time I sat in a serene upstairs dining room, but tonight my table for two is downstairs. The corridor-like dining space I walk into on the ground floor is even narrower than I remember. Where once there was a marble bar with stools for counter dining, there are now tables around which charming but harried staff weave like agility dogs at Crufts.

My table looks on to shelves of shiny glassware and the servers’ workstation. The pros here are also the cons: we have plenty of attention from staff who are forthcoming with menu advice (the consensus: order the clams and, definitely, the sea bass), but there is no escaping the hubbub. And then there’s the flashing dishwasher in my line of vision, which I sense has nowhere else to go in this long, thin room. If it wasn’t flashing so much, I might feel sorry for it. In any case, upstairs is definitely the better place to sit.

The chef now is Kimberly Hernandez, with Mendes’s protegé Leandro Carreira as “consultant executive chef”, and a menu that boasts an elevated take on traditional fare: here you will also find the likes of British wagyu croquettes and grilled chouriço. And with its predilection for, among other things, fish, pork, fire cooking and lashings of olive oil with (almost) everything, Luso continues what it calls 30 Charlotte Street’s “legacy” with Portuguese cuisine, albeit without Mendes’s surprising flourishes. This isn’t a dramatic reinvention in the way of a Spice Girl becoming high fashion, or the Terminator moving into US politics, but a gentle segue into the more familiar version of Iberian cuisine that I suspect London craves – less pork-fat custard, more piri piri chicken.

As instructed, we order the clams and the sea bass, but not before peixinhos da horta, a plate of moreish tempura runner beans with paprika mayo. Together with a glass of Quinta da Romeira Bruto, a fizz from Portugal’s Bucelas region, they allay any guilt I might have about leaving the kids with my mother-in-law after a piñata party. Next up, a brill crudo with apple and red pepper vinaigrette. The fish is exquisite, but lacks chemistry with its co-star. For me, it over-indexes on the capsicum and needs an acid kick.

The clams, or amêijoas à bulhão pato, however, really deliver. Cooked in the Portuguese southern style, with coriander, garlic and white wine, they arrive in a deeply comforting liquor, shellfish’s answer to Jewish penicillin. I soak it up with sourdough from Cornwall’s Coombeshead Farm. Meanwhile, the dishwasher has finished its cycle, now not just lonely but ignored by staff without a bar to conceal its demands. Bar removed, I miss the theatre of seeing my drinks being made. I eschew the cocktails – negroni with mezcal, martini with olive oil (of course) – and head for the wines. In particular, two from Herdade do Cebolal, which are aged in lobster cages in the Atlantic to mimic, says one server, the motion of the wine’s historic passage to Britain. These emerge from the cellar in bottles that give pirate grog vibes – though grog this isn’t at £32 a glass. I love the white, an Arinto, with its briny and mineral finish.

Next, we share the wild sea bass baked in a thick salt crust, a technique that seasons and just-cooks the fish into a thing of fleeting beauty. As you would expect of a restaurant led by a fishmonger-chef (Carreira owns the bougie Chelsea fish-shop-cum-restaurant, The Sea, The Sea, which is handily supplying Luso), there is a deep reverence for ocean fare, treated lightly and served with things that create less debate than, say, whipped lardo might. We ate the bass with flaxen crispy potatoes and a tomato salad with wisps of onion, a trifecta of unarguably delicious things.

I made sure I had space to try toucinho do céu (“bacon from heaven”, aka almond tart), which felt mandatory, but so too is a heaving portion of chocolate mousse dressed with flaky salt and, yes, more olive oil. More peculiar is the chilled pineapple pudding, in which slivers of the fruit crown the set custard beneath it – not so much a happy marriage as a cordial cohabitation.

Will I pay it the compliment of going back? In its past iteration, despite a great meal, I never returned. I can’t help but compare Luso to the Pixar film I know my children are watching, again, at home. It’s the holy grail for any restaurant – to be the Toy Story of eateries: to do something so well that people go back for more, many times, and find something new to love on each visit. It’s a status which Lisboeta never quite achieved.

As for Luso? I may never have sea bass so good again in London, and the fragrant clams firmly plant it firmly in my mental GPS. But I’ll have to navigate back to find out if there’s more to love – through the downstairs corridor, to the upstairs dining room.

Luso, 30 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NG (020 3830 9888; luso.restaurant). Snacks from £4; small plates from £10; desserts from £10; wines from £39