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'The whole thing is outrageously lovely, the stuff of sticky dreams and abandoned diets'
The small, black, cast-iron baking tray and its contents look innocuous enough. Glossy liquid laps around the sides of the corn bread – for it's that most pedestrian of items – but by the time we cut into the loaf seconds later, the liquid has been slurped up. It's butter, melted, slightly sweetened (with honey, I think). With the help of the roasting-hot metal tray, it gives the bread nutty, caramelised edges and the most seductive exterior crispness. The cornmeal is slightly coarse, so the texture is squidgy-crunchy, oozing with that butter. The whole thing is outrageously lovely, the stuff of sticky dreams and abandoned diets, and the desire immediately to order another to replace the one that's mysteriously disappeared in seconds.
That chef Brad McDonald takes such care with a side dish is enough to make me all a-quiver. The Lockhart has been around a while, concentrating on a more familiar-to-us iteration of "American" food: I have fond memories of its mac'n'cheese and lobster nachos. But new recruit McDonald comes with more serious credentials: born in Mississippi – hence the new deep south-influenced menu – and draped in plaudits from a couple of NYC hotspots. So far, I haven't managed to try gumbo in its native Louisiana, but I've eaten McDonald's duck and fingerling potato hash at his former gaff, Colonie in Brooklyn Heights, and I'd say the two American couples who own Lockhart are very clever to have lured him to Marylebone.
His cooking is thrilling: there's a gumbo made from smoked mallard that makes full, palate-flooding use of the wild duck's moody flavours. The rice is Carolina Gold, an unusual new-crop grain with a clean, delicate flavour that acts as a sponge for the meaty roux. There's thickness from okra, a vegetable I loathe but almost welcome here, cubes of confit meat and a little allium crunch from spring onion. Something described brusquely as "liver and onions" turns out to be a chicken liver mousse of such airy lightness, it almost floats off the spoon, the onions a blob of intense jelly, dark and rich as molasses. It's as sophisticated as the best bitter chocolate.
After the gloop I endured at Jackson + Rye, I'm reluctant to order shrimp and grits, but feel I should, for the comparison. There isn't any: these are a different beast altogether, the grits creamy and smooth and ripe with good cheddar, the prawns bouncing about with a party of woodland mushrooms, chunks of crisp bacon and an afterglow of heat. And venison – no, wait, honest, the Appalachians are big on berry-fed deer – comes with red-eye gravy, made from the pan-scrapings of fried bacon with an alluringly murky note: coffee, or tannic red wine, or both. There's apple for lightness. The British meat is rosy velvet, the sauce the closest this place gets to the US "dirty" style, but if you can do bacon dripping with a light touch, they've managed it.
I don't hold with deconstructed desserts, but "lemon meringue pie" that turns up as a scoop of vibrant, custard-thick lemon ice-cream, buttery "graham cracker" crumbs and a ring of toasted Italian meringue as blowsy as a Scottish teacake is enough to make me hold my tongue. "Calas", little fried beignets, lightened with cooked rice and more usually seen on New Orleans breakfast tables, are ambrosial. They're dusted with fennel pollen – such a Brooklyn ingredient, that.
This is all just great. But I wish the restaurant itself were a little more user-friendly. I don't mean the staff, who are brilliant, but the layout – some tables appear to be (brrr…) communal; some, with high, padded seat-backs, are almost part of the kitchen; others, such as ours, are marooned in the middle of the wide space, leaving us feeling chilly and exposed. It wouldn't take much – a booth or two, a little reorganisation – to imbue the space with the same warmth we're getting from the food. But that's just shallow of me. And, like McDonald's cooking, it seems it pays to go deep.
• The Lockhart22-24 Seymour Place, London W1, 020-3011 5400. Open Tues-Sat, noon-2pm, 6-10pm. About £35 for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10
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