The original construction at 22 Bishopsgate was for a building called The Pinnacle. But the project was abandoned in 2012 due to the recession.
When the new owners – French international powerhouse AXA – resumed construction in 2017 they didn’t give it a new name. Today, Britain’s second highest building remains known only by its postal address: 22 Bishopsgate.
This is a bit of a risk. Londoners are pretty quick to come up with our own nicknames for bland building names – 20 Fenchurch Street, “The Walkie Talkie”, 30 St Mary Axe, “The Gherkin”, 122 Leadenhall Street, “The Cheesegrater”. For some reason we haven’t done so for 22 Bishopsgate yet. Perhaps we should run a competition. Though I’m not sure Brits can be trusted with that kind of thing. Second Tallest McTall? Actually, this isn’t laziness. Smart thinking suggests that a neutral name is a better blank canvas to attract high-profile brands. And when it comes to restaurants there is perhaps no higher-profile brand than Gordon Ramsay. No doubt the most internationally recognised UK celebrity chef alive today. Perhaps ever.
He’s taken over the top two floors at 22 and put a grill on one of them. And that’s where I’m heading for dinner. I arrived a few minutes early and looked up. Your brain can’t properly compute the magnitude. It feels like you can reach out and touch it but you know it could take you an hour to climb. And somewhere up there, touching heaven itself, is Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen.
Starting your journey at street level you arrive at an elevator door with no buttons. But somehow the lift knows you are there, knows where you are going, and is rushing down to whisk you skyward. This is a nice touch. It says, “You don’t have to worry – we already know who you are and what you want and we’re going to deliver it. We got you.” A clever intro to an elevated, ha ha, dining experience. At the other end of the ride you come out into a hallway, with no view at all. This is also a great piece of build-up which I’d like to credit to the designers, though I suspect it has more to do with the fact that elevators go up the middle of buildings like this. Either way, you are forced into an anticipatory walk around a corner before the view is revealed.
And there it is. Almost 360 degrees of London from the skies.
Any attempts to be blasé about this don’t last. It’s first breathtaking and then great fun. Pretty soon we’re playing the game usually reserved for aircraft window seats of trying to work out what and where the hell landmarks that you know intimately from the ground are. If you can tear your eyes from the view, the rest of the joint has had a grand design. Airy, high ceilings with exposed utility tubing, dining tables round the windows and what feels like a sports bar in the middle. Presumably, if you’re watching the cricket you don’t need a window seat with a view. City folk in dark chinos, pencil skirts and collared shirts gather at the bar enjoying the after-work drinks of champions.
OK. That’s the space. What about the real reason we came? I would quite honestly forsake the entirely wonderful, bird’s-eye experience to have more of the food. It is quite delicious.
It’s called the Bread Street Kitchen so let’s start with some bread – smoked aubergine on stracciatella and sourdough. For those (me) who thought stracciatella was a chocolate gelato, that iteration came later, though they share the same meaning of “torn up”. This is shredded mozzarella curds in cream. Rich and delicious. The smoked melitzane is wonderfully smoky – it’s like eating honey in a log cabin by an open fire.
But the highest praise must be reserved for the lobster prawn toast. Crisp stuffed parcels of expertly seasoned and spiced lobster with a tobiko mayonnaise – an egg-yolk mayonnaise enriched with flying fish roe – with a sensational three-day-cured egg yolk, frozen at minus 50 and then shaved on top. It is knockout. It’s a pleasure to look at too – as many yellows as a sunset. Reason enough to visit on its own.
Entirely in the service of our readers, I assure you, we ordered a third starter between us. And thank goodness we did. Seared tuna with a knock-out truffle citrus ponzu soy dressing. The ponzu combines soy, citrus and dashi and is as richly sweet and salty as that sounds. It’s a Japanese loan word from the Dutch “punch” (as in a beverage made of fruit juices), but this lives up to its other English meaning. There’s wizardry in how to get so much flavour into such a light dressing. Then they go and top the whole thing with crispy shavings of mushrooms that look like slivers of fried onion and taste like heaven.
For main I had an Aussie Wagyu picanha – aka a rump cap or a pointe de culotte. I looked forward to whether they went for the closely trimmed French style or the fattier Brazilian style – where it is the most popular cut in the country. I was delighted to see they took their inspiration from across the Atlantic and produced a wonderfully seared dark steak with a nice, thick, charcoally band of fat. Other diners can always cut it off if they want, but I love the indecent luxury of it. And the meat chef had this one cooked to perfection. Neither fatty nor crackly, it lived in that liminal space that has only a few seconds’ window to get right in the kitchen. And of course Australia is fast becoming one of the world’s finest producers of Wagyu. Deservedly.
As good as the steak was, the other main was exceptional – a 10-inch long prawn in half an open shell. It’s done on the grill with a shiso salsa verde and chilli lime butter. The gigantic prawn is tender – much more like a meaty fish than its smaller more common cousins. At this size in the wrong hands they can get chewy, but as we know, they’ve got precision timing up here on the 62nd floor and ours was perfect. Using shiso in the salsa verde gives it much brighter, more aromatic notes than other similar dressings, lifting above the barbecued warmth of the grilled prawn. And tying it all together is the chilli lime butter — again with spice and citrus elevating the luxurious dairy. It is a delight.
Just in case this was all getting too lofty, we got real with a side of mac and cheese. Made with a deep smoked applewood and some bacon bits thrown in for good measure. But even this attempt to ground us didn’t quite work. The result somehow manages to be elevated comfort food. When you go (I urge you to), don’t skip it. I could write another page about the creamed spinach laced through with nutmeg but you get the idea by now – this chef knows what he is doing. Funny that.
By now we had witnessed ten different weathers over various bits of London. I gazed down imagining the lives of millions of people going about their evening down there, while we dined like gods up here in the glowing summer sun. Because of its extreme elevation difference, even the sun sets later up here on culinary Olympus than down with the poor souls of mortal earth. I was starting to wonder if I was dreaming when I was yanked out of my reverie by the dessert menu.
A rich, dark treacly sticky toffee pudding you could smell coming at fifty paces, and a light Meyer lemon cheesecake. The cheesecake is fun – it’s shaped like a real lemon – in vibrant, just-picked yellow. They pour a fruit compote over it and when you cut it open there’s more fruit inside. It’s absolutely beautiful to look at and while they’ve sacrificed some of the biscuity base for the theatre of the whole thing, that’s OK just this once. Dessert is supposed to be either luxurious or fun. And with our selection we got both.
Coming back down, in every sense, from a delightful evening we found ourselves in the darkening canyons of the Square Mile. Heading towards the darkening Tube station, I stole a glance back at the peak we’d been at only a few moments earlier. The sun was still shining up there. Of course it was.
Bread Street Kitchen, 10 Bread Street, London EC4M 9AJ – 020 3030 4050 – Bread Street Kitchen
Opening hours:
Monday-Wednesday
6:30am-1am
Thursday-Friday
6:30am-3am
Saturday
11:30am-3am
Sunday
11:30am-11pm