Sael

Sael opened in St James’s Market in 2024, and it’s worth correcting a common mix up straight away: this is Jason Atherton’s restaurant, run through his Social Company with chef Dale Bainbridge, who also serves as executive chef at the Michelin starred Pollen Street Social, not an Adam Handling project, despite Handling’s name sometimes being linked to it in searches. Atherton’s wife Ihra co-directs the venture, and it was developed in partnership with the Crown Estate as part of the wider St James’s Market redevelopment.

The concept is a British brasserie built entirely around British Isles produce, and the room sits within that redevelopment close to Trafalgar Square, convenient enough to work as a pre or post theatre option. Wood fired cooking runs through much of the menu, including native lobster and a prawn and scallop lasagne alongside more traditionally comforting dishes, and the kitchen makes a point of naming its British suppliers on the menu itself.

The signature desserts are where the kitchen has its most fun: a Marmite custard tart, jam roly poly and a bread and butter pudding all lean into a specifically British nostalgia that suits the brasserie framing better than anything more internationally inflected would, and they’re the dishes most likely to come up in conversation afterwards.

It’s described by its own team as affordable and unconstrained by stuffy fine dining conventions, and reviews broadly support that positioning, a relatively relaxed brasserie rather than a formal Atherton tasting menu experience. That relaxed framing does mean it lacks some of the precision and occasion of his more serious restaurants elsewhere in London, and diners expecting Pollen Street Social levels of polish should adjust expectations accordingly.

A solid, well located choice for a British focused brasserie dinner near Trafalgar Square, best approached as comfort food from a serious chef rather than as a destination restaurant in its own right.