The story
Just off Dean Street in Soho, Aulis London is a deliberately small, intensely focused restaurant. The dining room seats exactly twelve guests, and the experience is built around a single, open kitchen counter. Every dish is prepared in front of you, explained as it’s made – a format that turns dinner into an ongoing conversation between chef and diner.
The restaurant was awarded its first Michelin Star in the 2024 UK & Northern Ireland Michelin Guide, a recognition of the precision and clarity of the cooking. The guiding philosophy is Simon Rogan’s farm-to-fork ethos, with ingredients sourced predominantly from his own Lake District farm, Our Farm. Executive chef Oli Marlow and head chef Charlie Tayler translate that produce into a multi-course tasting menu that changes with the seasons.
The current tasting menu is priced at £195, taken as pre-payment, with a separate selection of wine pairings and drink packages. A discretionary 15% service charge is added at the end. Because the menu is built around a small supply of hyper-seasonal ingredients, the restaurant asks for 14 days’ notice of dietary requirements.
In spring 2023, Aulis London reopened with a refreshed look that includes a dedicated lounge. The space is designed to be relaxed and convivial – a place to enjoy a drink before heading to the counter. The atmosphere is intimate but unpretentious, the kind of setting where culinary conversations start naturally.
Aulis is open for dinner Tuesday to Saturday and for lunch Friday and Saturday. The entire chef’s table can be booked exclusively for 12 guests with no extra fee, though minimum charges apply. For larger groups or special occasions, the private hire option makes the restaurant feel like a personalised dinner party. Gift vouchers are also available for the tasting menu and wine pairing.
The restaurant’s location on St Anne’s Court, a quiet alley off Dean Street, gives it a hidden-in-plain-sight feel. It’s a deliberate choice: a small room, a single counter, and the full attention of the kitchen on a dozen plates at a time.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
High quality cooking
Tucked in an alleyway linking Wardour Street and Dean Street, this offshoot of Simon Rogan’s Aulis in Cartmel (home to L’Enclume) has undergone a thoroughgoing makeover. Expansion into the small shop next door has created a proper entrance leading straight into a tiny bar-lounge where pre-meal drinks and snacks are served. The reconfigured kitchen continues to offer high-stool counter dining, although the seats themselves (now 12 in number) are better spaced and more comfortable. The style remains the same, an astonishing, multi-course tasting experience prepared and explained in front of you (there’s is no printed menu), with dishes passed over the counter. Unfussy, serene and slightly spartan, it’s run with relaxing warmth by charismatic head chef Charlie Tayler and sommelier Charles Brown. Regular deliveries from Rogan’s Cartmel-based farm are supplemented by tip-top produce from elsewhere in the UK, and Tayler's supremely assured culinary approach is all about inherent simplicity, clever balance and pinpoint precision. Snacks are bijou masterpieces of the genre, from a brilliant mini truffle pudding caramelised in birch sap with fermented black garlic and a heap of shaved Welsh black truffle on top to a nugget of Launceston lamb belly glazed in ‘our miso’ with perilla and ‘capers’ (a clever riff employing pickled green elderberries). To follow, Newlyn crab custard is a deft conceit involving a sauce infused with rosehip vinegar, plus dabs of marinated trout roe adding pops of saltiness, while a raw, sliced Orkney scallop surprises with its rich, buttery, smoky sauce of wild chamomile, buttermilk and smoked pike roe. And then there is the turbot, served with a wondrous sauce created from a stock of smoked turbot bones and swirled with lovage oil. On the side is a tiny English muffin to mop up juices, while heavenly oven-fresh Parker House rolls (made with 100% beef fat) accompany a piece of 45-day dry-aged Hereford Breed beef garlanded with kale leaves. Like everything else on offer here, desserts are seasonal, clever and innovative – standouts at our last visit being frozen Tunworth cheese ice cream drizzled with London borage honey (so simple yet so satisfying), as well as a joyous summertime assembly of strawberry (fruit and sorbet) with buttermilk custard and apple marigold. With no menu to consult, knowledgeable wine advice comes as standard. Charles Brown’s recommendations are always fascinating, whether you are seeking guidance or opting for one of his suggested wine flights.
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