Whiteleys Kitchen

Whiteley’s Kitchen is part of the Six Senses hotel development that is located in the former Whiteley shopping centre. It opened in March 2026. It serves modern British cuisine, the kitchen led by executive chef Eliano Crispi and Spanish head chef Jose Jara. Mr Crispi was formerly executive chef of the Café Royal, and led the opening of Eataly London. Mr Jara worked as head chef at Eneko London and also at Joia and at Aqua. Neither were in the kitchen tonight, but there was a Spanish chef that uses to work at Humo in charge of the kitchen. The dining room is on the ground floor, and seats sixty or so covers. It is quite smartly decorated though also unevenly lit, quite dark in some places but with other tables reasonably well lit. 

As I examined the menu, the “vegetable-forward, sustainable British menu” theme seemed to be a bit stretched as a concept. Dishes like chicken wing sui mai, lamb koftas with nduja, mussels with chicken dashi and gnocchi with cavalo nero are not quite what I recall in my rural upbringing in Somerset. Still, perhaps that is their perception of British cuisine given that the three senior chefs are Italian and Spanish. 

The wine list was not available online, but since there was no corkage possible, you need to wait until you get to the dining room to see the list, which had about 250 references. Sample wines were Epicuria Domaine de la Zouina 2023 at £68 for a wine that you can find in the high street for £23, Black Cook Winery Nightjar from Clayhill 2023 at £76 compared to its retail price of £27, and Jobard Morey Meursault Les Tillets 2022 at £221 for a wine that costs £72 in a wine shop. At the posher end of the list, Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 2013 was £345 for a wine that retails at £155, while Alvina Pernot Bienvenues Batard 2021 was an optimistically priced £1,589 given that its current market value was £449.

 Milk bread with garlic and parsley (£5), accompanied by beetroot hummus (another regional British favourite I must have missed growing up) was made from scratch in the kitchen. Unfortunately, it was rather dry whereas milk bread should be light and fluffy. That old British classic, cured black bream with dried yolk and gazpachuelo (£16) was quite prettily presented but wildly, shockingly salty. The bream flavour was lost amongst the other flavours, which themselves were anyhow overwhelmed by the bracing, searing salt. We tried it, left the rest and explained the salinity problem, but presumably this was regarded as a mere eccentricity on our part since it was proudly left on the bill in full (8/20). Chicken wing sui mai (£12) with Dorset crab and sriracha, a chilli sauce that dates back to Thailand in 1932, and again seemed not entirely related to the sustainable British theme. The crab seemed absent without leave, though the chicken wing itself was decent, and the chilli flavour subdued (11/20). 

Dover sole was the special of the day, announced by our waiter and not on the menu. He conveniently forgot to mention that the small fillet of sole that appeared, with some decorative pea shoots and herb sauce, was priced at £100. The kitchen left the skin on one side, presumably either in an absent-minded moment or as an artistic flourish. This was edible but the small fish itself had limited flavour. Oddly, given the searing levels of salt in the sea bream dish, this didn’t appear to be seasoned at all (11/20). 

Pred Suffolk pork chop (£36) appeared as slices of pork that were a little overcooked and dry.  These came with mustard jus and shio koji, a Japanese fermented grain marinade that is inoculated with aspergillus and then dried. It has a slightly sweet flavour, which I am not sure was especially well suited to the pork (11/20). 

Easily the best dish of the night was feather-blade beef with barley, cottage cheese and chives (£42). Feather blade is a cut of beef from the shoulder, named after the feather-like connective tissue that runs through it. This is a meat that needs slow cooking to render the fat, and the version here was actually cooked slowly and well. The barley gave a suitable textural contrast (13/20). On the side was hispi cabbage (£8) with kimchi jam and burnt leek dressing that was fine (12/20). We also tried “crispy smashed potatoes” (me neither) with sour cream (£8). The initial batch arrived and had reverted to the ”let’s start with half a bag of salt and go from there” seasoning technique experienced earlier. We sent these back and an edible version duly appeared in due course.

Desserts were coconut lime meringue rice pudding with amazake, a sweet Japanese drink made from fermented rice. The meringue was actually quite capably made (12/20). Chocolate coffee mousse with milk ice cream was pleasant, with reasonable texture and a decent level of coffee flavour (13/20).

The food was somewhere on the 11/20 and 12/20 border, and objectively just about made it over the line to 12/20 despite the errors that we encountered. Service, was well meaning. However, the bill was a thing to behold: £430 a head, albeit with two bottles of nice wine and 14.5% service. If you consider the food alone, that came to £291 plus service for two people. This was, overall, a pretty disheartening dining experience. The menu concept seems at odd with the dishes on that menu, the cooking was, to put it politely, mixed in standard, and seasoning was, to say the least, eccentric. Admittedly we went on a quiet night, but it was unsurprising that there was just a sprinkling of other diners in the room. The value for money factor here is absurdly offkey. Even if you could find a cheap wine to share from the list and ordered more abstemiously than we did, you would probably end up spending about £125 a head or more. This kind of price is just way out of line with the level of food delivered, based on my meal.