'I paid £250 for my lunch at David Beckham's swanky 50th venue – and left hungry'

Daily Mirror

03-05-2025

The who's who of A-listers are dining with the football ace on his big birthday. But anyone can eat at the fabulous Notting Hill restaurant – as long as they pay a minimum of £200 a head, and that's without wine…
David Beckham is throwing a lavish 50th birthday party for his famous family and hand-picked A-lister friends in London's ritzy Notting Hill – and I got a taste of the special chef-designed gourmet dishes his guests will be served.
The ex-England captain and Manchester United ace can afford to hold his once-in-a-lifetime birthday celebrations anywhere in the world, but he chose his latest favourite foodie haunt and hired out the entire 55-seater fine dining space for the intimate dinner.
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Beckham's Instagram account is mostly pictures of his biggest fan – himself – but a year ago he turned food blogger when he posted pictures of his lobster dinner at Core by Clare Smyth, praising the 'amazing team' and their Northern Irish owner chef Clare Smyth.
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The first British woman to win a coveted three Michelin stars for her food, chef Clare Smyth is ex Gordon Ramsey, where the Hospital Road establishment became renowned for impossibly long lists of ingredients in dishes which turned up as reductions and foams. I once asked the waiter where the partridge was that I'd ordered, and he pointed to the smear on the side of my plate.
But chef Smyth has added her own twist with lots of nods to the humble spud from her home county of Antrim, where she grew up on a potato farm. The emphasis is on natural sustainable food sourced from UK farmers and fishermen, and her fine dining restaurant is up there with some of the best in the world.
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However, for 'fine dining' read 'tiny portions at eye-watering prices' and we paid £457.50 for lunch for two with just one glass of wine. I had a glass of lovely fresh Albarino white wine, which at £14 a glass was the cheapest on the 74-page wine menu which charges £4,000 for a bottle of Petrus or Pomerol.
It's the sort of place where they put ££££ beside the listing because the seven course seasonal tasting menu costs £265 per person without wine, while the three courses we ordered from the daily menu sounded like a bargain at £195pp.
I meant to ask one of the friendly and attentive waiters in their Harrods green bell-hop suits which part of the lamb my starter dish of sweetbreads came from after making that mistake once with 'prairie oysters' which turned out to be genitals.
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But I got distracted by staff suddenly surrounding the table saying, 'Your amuse-bouches, madam,' seconds after we'd ordered, before placing a selection of small rockery, mossy garden knoll and beach-themed terrariums on our cream-leather bound table.
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In fact the main dining room looked like the interior of a well-upholstered luxury car, which is how I suspect the local Kensington glitterati like to arrive.
For me it was a good 15-minute walk from the tube station on one of the hottest days of the year so far, and I probably needed hosing down once I'd arrived, flustered and sticky, to this haven of calm.
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The exquisite amuse-bouches turned out to be tiny toasted seaweed shells of jellied eel, lobster roll, mini seeded taco shells filled with microscopic cubes of chicken jelly, and pea and mint gougere (cheese puff to you and me) – all served up on what looked like fairy bonsai planters to reflect the sea and soil they had come from.
Not everything is edible though, as I realised crunching down on what looked like a pebble – and turned out to be… a pebble.
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In the end it didn't matter which part of the lamb my sweetbread starter was from because it arrived crispy and deep fried with honey and mustard on shavings of kohlrabi – frankly you could deep fry carpet underlay and I'd happily eat it.
But my main course of Cornish turbot with smoked mussels on a bed of apple and cabbage was simply cooked and delicious. My only complaint was that the portion size was clearly for customers on slimming jabs.
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Before pudding arrived, we were served the chef's signature dish – a Core 'apple' amuse-bouche which looked like a scene straight out of Disney's Snow White.
I'm sure the waiters said it was toffee apple and I imagined one of those apples dipped in glazed orange toffee you get in Sainsbury's – but was disappointed to find it was just mousse in a jelly skin with apple pureed filling.
I thought the craze for serving up food on bits of wood or slate had gone out of fashion along with hipster beards – and to be fair, Core's main dishes were served on elegant white plate – but our final amuse-bouche of mini jellied eggs made from sweet Sauternes and Banyuls wines were placed on what looked like a sacrificial horn from a May day dance.
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In Tudor England the rich were obsessed with having food elaborately crafted to resemble other dishes for entertainment, especially at feasts.
And it seems we haven't moved on in 500 years because when my pudding of wild strawberries finally arrived, they were freeze-dried and made to look like a mini tomato and mozzarella salad. Very amusing, but I was looking forward to tasting fresh wild strawberries, and as with the Disney apple, I felt slightly cheated.
After two and a half hours of marvelling at food made to look like other food, head chef Jonny Bone waved us off and we thanked the white-aproned chefs in the restaurant's open kitchen profusely, telling them, 'It was fabulous, thank you.' But honestly, I could have murdered a burger an hour later.