Trivet

Trivet is tucked into a courtyard off Snowsfields in Bermondsey, close to the same stretch that put Story on the fine-dining map a decade earlier, and the entrance is genuinely easy to miss: an unmarked glass door rather than anything facing the street. Inside, Fat Duck alumnus Jonny Lake and co-founder Isa Bal run a kitchen that has picked up two Michelin stars while doing something rarer at that level, offering a proper à la carte menu rather than tasting-only.

That format matters. It means diners can order as much or as little as they want rather than committing to a set multi-course journey, and the international influences across the menu, red mullet with pici and artichoke among them, show a kitchen confident enough not to need the safety net of a fixed structure. The Hokkaido potato dessert, served with sake and white chocolate mousse and a sake gelato, is a genuinely inventive way to close a meal. The drunk lobster noodles, served in their own small sake bath, are as much theatre as they are food, and good with it.

The room has a Scandi-leaned warmth, light wood floors and tables, some exposed concrete, an open kitchen working to a jazz soundtrack, that avoids the stiffness some two-star restaurants carry. Service strikes a good balance between polish and genuine warmth.

Mains upwards of £30 mean this is not an inexpensive night out, and the à la carte format, while a strength, also means the bill is less predictable than a fixed tasting menu price, easy to spend considerably more than planned once wine is added. The Bermondsey location, while increasingly well-trodden by food-focused diners, still requires a specific trip rather than being on the way to anywhere else.

For technically excellent cooking with a genuine sense of personality rather than formula, it is one of the better two-star restaurants currently operating in London.