Frog by Adam Handling

High quality cooking

Adam Handling’s Covent Garden flagship is a crowd-pulling destination full of noise and action, with an organised open kitchen serving up what the man himself calls ‘British food, inspired by London’. Bare tables, hard floors and counter seating are par for the course, while the culinary focus is now on a 10-course tasting menu that aims to take the chef’s zero-waste, ‘sustainability agenda’ to the next level. Proceedings begin with a series of precise, flavour-heavy snacks, ranging from an oyster tartlet abundant with caviar and tempered by cucumber in various guises to a wagyu beef tartare that arrives inside crisp pastry shells, daintily garlanded with flowers. Although most ideas are newly minted, Handling’s signature ‘bread with chicken butter’ remains. After that, there might be a dish of flaky cod (‘with just a suggestion of the sea’), accompanied by a lemongrass foam, celeriac purée, a tapioca cracker and green herb oil. Oddly, the same condiment reappears yet again in a dish of supremely good wagyu beef served with a 'welcome dose of greenery', a blob of English wasabi and a bordelaise-style sauce. The full experience is interspersed with the usual savoury and sweet interludes (including a palate-cleanser involving ice-cold cherry tomatoes sitting beneath a green tomato granita). Dessert itself might be a 'tellingly sound' piece of pastrywork combining white chocolate, pandan and strawberry. Readers have been bowled over by it all (‘course after course of perfection’), while we agree, some dishes are confusing, and the excessive use of herb oil isn’t to our liking. That said, there’s no denying the buzz of the place or the attentivenss of the staff, while the drinks list offers heady cocktails alongside a global wine (and sake) selection that divides up into categories such as ‘quintessential’, ‘esoteric’ and ‘maverick’.

3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence

You certainly can’t fault the ambition of Adam Handling. The Scottish chef trained at the famous Gleneagles hotel, made it to the finals of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2013 and oversees a group of venues that includes a highly sustainable Cornish cafe and a pub and restaurant with rooms in Berkshire. Frog by Adam Handling is his flagship site and despite being a stone’s throw from Covent Garden’s busy central square, is anything but a tourist trap. The aim here is for fine dining without a stuffy atmosphere, and Frog ably achieves this, having benefitted from a makeover at the start of 2023 that has breathed fresh life into the dining room, with new bespoke artwork and furniture. Handling’s menu is focused on creative British dishes with international influences, and presentation ranges from elegant to more theatrical. A tasting menu (and a vegetarian version) is available with the option of three wine pairings. There are also a number of supplements, including a signature dish of waffle, sour cream and caviar, and when truffle season is in full swing the restaurant also goes to town. The downstairs Eve Bar is a darkened drinking den serving up a menu of hugely creative cocktails that befit The Frog’s close attention to detail in everything it does.