Douglas Blyde visits a London eatery hiding a mighty fine wine list

Fronted by bowed cabinets stocked with six-litre bottles of finery...
Douglas Blyde7 June 2018

Hide is ‘a three floor, wine lover’s mecca connected by a spiral staircase’, says wine director, Piotr Petras.

The master sommelier lets me in via a discreet entrance ordinarily reserved for VIPs leading to one of four private rooms featuring plasterwork of vines and corkscrews. It was once home to Fakhreldine, an average Lebanese with a memorable floor show of bellydancers. Now the brightened site, with cork-bound pillars and a kitchen door with wine bottle-shaped window, is a game-changing collaboration between Evgeny Chichvarkin and Tatiana Fokina, the minds behind London’s most glamorous wine shop, Hedonism, and chef Ollie Dabbous, a protégé of Raymond Blanc.

Petras’s favourite space unravels beneath the busy Piccadilly pavement. Fronted by bowed cabinets stocked with six-litre bottles of finery, the lights of the cellar automatically brighten on entry, while the humidity system hums like a liner. Here, bottles such as 1889 Château d’Yquem, recorked 100 years later and yours for £10,880, and halves of hallowed Hermitage la Chapelle 1961 (£11,850) slumber on felt-lined knot-free shelves. However, Petras is at pains to point out that with more than 100 wines on his list costing less than £50, and glasses beginning at £5, not all options are rarefied. ‘There’s no white gloves here.’

Upstairs, Petras and his 16-strong sommelier troupe serve the street-level ‘Ground’ restaurant, which has a sparkling wine fridge amply stocked with champagne dating back to the 1950s ‘and English wine, but no Prosecco!’ beside a bakery. On the mezzanine is the Michelin star-inclined ‘Above’ restaurant. Beside a weighty cheese cart, Petras opens a leather-bound tablet, revealing the venue’s USP — a wider portal to Hedonism’s stock half a mile away, meaning bottles may be couriered to table within 15 minutes of ordering, ‘sometimes half that time’, then funnelled into shapely decanters. For £30 ‘corkage’, guests have access to a jaw-dropping 6,000 lines from the store.

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