LIV – Contemporary Restaurant | Review

[Ad- gifted experience] Our entire family was invited to check out LIV, a contemporary restaurant located in Belgravia, London. This venue is bright, spacious and offers a lovely menu of dishes from British artisanal suppliers. Very much relaxed fine dinning experience, the menu is one full of beautiful plates, interesting ingredients and higher end meals. It’s a pretty limited menu, allowing the chef to focus on the meals set and made. The food is really the star, even with such a wonderful, well decorated venue.

LIV now has a children’s eat free offer, on weekdays from 4pm to 7pm on weekdays. If you’ve got some adventurous children interested in trying new foods, this offer is amazing. The menu children get to pick from is the same as the adult menu for dinner, but there are plenty of side dishes and small dishes that fit well for kids. We have a picky eater and two who will try anything, but there was enough to accommodate all of them and allow them to try some spectacular new foods.

Grilled Sourdough and Mediterranean Olives

From the Small Nibbles section, we decided to order to little things to eat while waiting for the rest of our meal to come all at once. Olives are always a hit with the children, so we picked some Mediterranean Olives, which were a bit hard to pick up with our forks, but very flavorful. The sourdough bread came with miso butter, something we all had not tried previously. Kai started dumping his bread into mounds of butter, but soon was corrected to the fact that this was not a big dip. We then started buttering our bread, which went down as a real treat. The butter was soft and creamy, with a lot of flavour – every last bit was eaten up by the lot of us!

Salt & Pepper Crispy Chicken, Prawn & Chicken Dumplings, and Gorgonzola Croquettes

We looked to the Smaller Plates section to pick some mains for the children and ended up with Salt & Pepper Crispy Chicken for Amelia, Prawn & Chicken Dumplings for Kai and Gorgonzola Croquettes for Robin. Starting with the chicken, the sauces that it came with were a sweet soy mayo that we all seemed to like and a spicy BBQ-esque sauce that had a touch too much heat for the kids. The chicken was more crispy then we figured, which was a real treat as it made for some delicious and crunchy bite sized pieces. The Prawn and Chicken Dumplings were Jupiter’s favourite of the children’s bites; they were not very fishy at all and came in a spicy yet tangy sauce that really complemented the flavors of the meat. Dann’s favourite of the children’s bites were the Gorgonzola croquettes, which were cheesy, melty, and very moreish when warm. They came with this interesting ketchup that was too dense to dip in, so we spooned some on top of each bite. There was a lot of cheese in these croquettes, so much so that they almost fell apart when picking them up!

17-Hour Wagyu Beef and Tomahawk Pork Stake

When it came to the adult mains, there was a special that caught Dann’s eye. The dish of the day was a Tomahawk Pork Stake with some slow-cooked applesauce and a salad. The server had said that they only had two of these specials left, as they had a big lunch rush where most of them had been ordered. With that information, we just had to try it. This pork did take a bit longer to cook then the rest of the meal, according to the server, however it came out a touch colder than we would have liked. The flavor of the pork was wonderful to make up for this and the cook was perfect – not over cooked in the slightest. The apple sauce was fruity and sweet – the only wish was that there was a bit more to tuck into. The salad also had apples in it, which was a good tie-back to the dish.

Jupiter went the Wagyu beef route, because who can resist a nice bit of stake. This came with a Japanese salad which had a lot of sprouts and purple cabbage. She’s a big fan of beef, so there were high expectations when it came to Wagyu. The price of the beef is very affordable, especially for the amount and quality of the dish. Under a massive, refreshing salad there were big bits of tender, falling apart beef that really hit the spot. Fork tender is the best way to describe how perfectly cooked this dish was, and the seasoning on the beef itself was very simple, letting the flavours shine through.

Shoestring Fries, Boulangere Potatoes, and Ratatouille

When it came to sides, we grabbed a few different items. The Shoestring Fries were for Robin, who ended up sharing with Amelia. It’s a simple dish, perfectly fried, thin potatoes with a nice herbaceous salt on it. The Boulangere Potatoes was something that seemed particularly interesting. Kai called them ‘potato lasagne’ as the potatoes were very thinly sliced, stacked up and baked to perfection. There were notes of onions and herbs throughout – a truly delightful potato-based experience. The Ratatoullie, which everyone mentioned must be from the movie of the same name, worked well to provide some vegetables for all of the children there. It’s a simple, warm, filling way to get your vegetables in – though the presentation, of course, isn’t like the movie at all. This Ratatouille came out like a stew of vegetables and tasted great to boot.

Crème Brûlée, Ice Cream Sundae, and Purbeck Ice Cream

The kids were pretty pumped about dessert, as they always are. Amelia went for a scoop of Strawberry ice cream, where as Robin went for a vanilla which had specs of chocolate throughout. These were good portions for younger children, to be honest. Kai went a little overboard and ordered an ice cream sundae, which had chocolate, nuts, raisins, an entire candy bar, and more probably all over the top. He wasn’t able to finish this (and shared some with his sister) but it was a very large, very full of interesting items type of sundae. As we weren’t the biggest fans of dessert, we opted to split a Crème Brûlée. Let me tell you, this was the most delicious Crème Brûlée we had ever had. The custard was perfectly smooth, flavorful, and just delicious. The top cracked nicely. It was just delicious. On the side, there were two slices of Biscotti, which were good to eat throughout, but the focus was on that delicious, delicious Crème Brûlée.

LIV’s service and staff were all very friendly. Despite such an upper class tasting and feeling menu, the atmosphere was casual and relaxed, but I can totally see people taking each other on expensive dates there. The price point isn’t cheap, but is reasonable for the quality and type of food that they serve. Having a kids eat free option is a very interesting idea, especially as there isn’t a kids menu. If you have any children who want to try some new, interesting foods, LIV is a great opportunity for them to experiment. You can book a table right through their website if you’d like to plan a head or just walk in one evening and see whats on the menu.

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