Lilibet’s, London W1: ‘Pure joy, high drama, camp as heck’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

My new favourite restaurant

Until last week, Punk Royale was easily the strangest restaurant I’ve been to all year. “We’re all wacky here!” cried those Copenhagen punks with pans, as covered in my review here a month or so ago. But they’ve already been usurped by a spot in a repurposed office block less than half a mile away.

The fabulously bizarre Lilibet’s opened her doors with little or no fanfare in mid-September, beckoning us into her world of strange. Behold the antique fireplaces, the floral chairs and wallpaper, the multitude of gilt-framed, 18th-century French paintings, the pretty etched glassware, the monogrammed napkins, the tall dinner candles. Lilibet’s has about it the air of how the palace of Versailles would look if its designers (in Lilibet’s case Russell Sage Studio) had been allowed really to let their hair down. The restaurant, by Ross Shonhan, ex-Nobu executive chef and founder of the Bone Daddies ramen chain, is named after our beloved Queen Elizabeth II, God rest her mortal soul. Apparently, our former monarch was born in this very building on 21 April 1926, when the site was still a Mayfair townhouse.