The Dining Room
Thirty-eight seats beneath the old skylight, close enough to hear the pass. À la carte through the evening, with a short list of plates that change as the season turns.
Around 2 hours
Reserve a tableRiverbend Quarter · Portland
Seasonal cooking, quietly done
Thirty-eight seats beneath an old printworks skylight, a menu rewritten every six weeks, and twelve growers we know by name.
- Hours
- Dinner Tuesday – Sunday, from 5pm
- Address
- 214 Halden Row, Portland
Welcome
We cook what arrives, and not much else
There are usually nine dishes on the menu. Any more and we would be buying to fill a list rather than cooking what is genuinely good that week.
The kitchen opens onto the room, so the first thing you hear is dinner being made. It is a small restaurant and we would like it to feel like one.
More about the restaurantFrom the menu
Three plates we are proud of this season
The full menu changes as the deliveries change. These three have earned their place for now.
Hand-Cut Beef Tartare
$24Grass-fed sirloin, pickled shallot, cured yolk, rye crisp.
Line-Caught Halibut
$42Charred leek, sorrel, brown butter and capers.
In seasonBurnt Honey Custard
$15Wildflower honey, thyme, olive oil, sea salt.
The room
A letterpress shop that never quite stopped working
Forty years of print left marks on the floor we decided not to sand out. Long iron windows, a skylight the surveyor wanted closed, and enough height that the room stays quiet even when it is full.
Service starts at five with the staff meal, the same food, at the same tables. Everything after that is the evening finding its own rhythm.
Ways to dine
Choose how close to the kitchen you sit
The same cooking, told at three different distances — from a table in the room to a seat at the pass.
Seasonal Tasting
Seven courses drawn from the week's best deliveries — written on Monday, cooked until it runs out. The clearest picture of what the kitchen is thinking right now.
Around 2.5 hours
Reserve the tastingChef's Table
Six seats at the marble counter facing the kitchen. Courses handed over as they finish, with the cooks explaining what changed since yesterday.
Around 2.5 hours
Enquire about the counterSourcing
The delivery decides the menu
Crates arrive on Monday morning and the menu is written after them, in pencil, from whatever came. When the last of the quince is gone, so is the dessert.
Trim becomes stock, stock becomes sauce, and what is left feeds the team before doors. It is not a policy so much as the only way a small kitchen adds up.
Reservations
Tables open four weeks ahead
Book online for parties up to six. For larger tables, the Cellar Room or the chef's counter, write to us and we will arrange it by hand.
- Tuesday – Thursday
- 5:00pm – 10:00pm
- Friday – Saturday
- 5:00pm – 11:00pm
- Sunday
- 12:00pm – 3:00pm, 5:00pm – 9:00pm
- Monday
- Closed
Find us
Halden Row, behind the old chimney
Six minutes on foot from Riverbend station. Look for the green door and the light in the window — there is no sign above it.
Getting here
Six minutes on foot from Riverbend station. Leave by the north exit and follow Halden Row past the old printworks chimney.
Full directions and contact details