Hawksmoor turns twenty and takes us back for a taste of 2006

They had previously worked in bars and kitchens in East London, and their plan was simple, if ambitious: offer the highest-quality, properly butchered British beef they could find. After tasting beef from around the world, they concluded that the very best steak came from the UK.

The restaurant took its name from the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose Christ Church Spitalfields looms at the end of the street. Twenty years on, Hawksmoor operates fourteen restaurants across the UK, Ireland and the United States, and has been named the second-best steak restaurant group in the world for the second consecutive year. By any measure, it is one of the great British restaurant success stories.

Hawksmoor Knightsbridge at 3 Yeomans Row is the smallest in the group. The restaurant’s own description is: “Large? No. But glamorous?” Designed by Macaulay Sinclair and inspired by early Viennese architecture and the Art Deco era, the space is an exercise in refined restraint: gunmetal grey marble, polished plaster walls, brass arched windows, and grey leather banquettes.

The location sits just off Brompton Road, close enough to Harrods and Harvey Nichols, with a restaurant-first character that sets it apart. The V&A, Natural History Museum and the Royal Albert Hall are all within easy walking distance. GQ once wrote: “Once you’ve sampled Hawksmoor, you’ll never go anywhere else.”

To mark twenty years, Hawksmoor is releasing a Classics Menu, a living archive of the dishes that made the restaurant what it is today. Priced at £75 per person for three courses, it is available at Knightsbridge and draws together two decades’ worth of greatest hits, each one with a story attached.

It begins with Old Spot Belly Ribs, a dish that has been on the menu since the Spitalfields opening in 2006. The Charcoal-Roasted Scallops trace their lineage to Mitch Tonks, the seafood authority whose influence shaped Hawksmoor’s early fish cookery. The Potted Beef & Bacon with Yorkshire Puddings began as a staff meal before making its way onto the main menu.

At the centre of the main course is the dry-aged Longhorn Ribeye, served with bone marrow gravy, anchovy hollandaise and beef-dripping chips. When Hawksmoor first opened, every steak on the menu came from a single Longhorn herd in North Yorkshire. This year, central to the anniversary celebrations, the restaurant has relaunched Longhorn beef across all its UK sites in partnership with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the Longhorn Cattle Society. The Longhorn Feast arrives as bone-in sharing cuts cooked over fire, served sizzling in a cast-iron pan with roasted bone marrow, slow-cooked onions and watercress.

The Sticky Toffee Pudding has never left the menu in twenty years. The Salted Caramel Rolos are a confection originally served as a petit four. The Birthday Cake reimagines a Grand Rocher in chocolate, hazelnut and gold leaf, and exists purely to mark the occasion. The bar offers three anniversary cocktails: Shaky Pete’s Ginger Brew (a Hawksmoor original), the Grapefruit Picador, and a new 20th Anniversary Martini.