Dover Street Counter serves room service energy

Dover Street Counter is rammed when we arrive, which is always a promising sign. Or, at least, it’s usually a sign that you’re about to have a good time. Usually.

I’m here with my sister, which means two things. One, we’re hungry. Two, we’re ready to talk for hours, and food is simply the delicious vehicle for the catching up.

Dover Street Counter describes itself as a laidback neighbourhood restaurant with rebellious energy, and the restaurateur has apparently framed the menu as being inspired by the eclectic mix you might see on a hotel room service menu abroad.

Which is… an interesting ambition.

It’s also, sadly, quite accurate.

Quick info on Dover Street Counter

• Restaurant: Dover Street Counter
• Location: Mayfair
• Style: counter dining, casual plates
• Cost: around £35 per person for 2 courses
• Best idea on paper: DSC French dip
• Biggest disappointment: spaghetti all’assassina
• Overall: busy, but not for us

Read the full Dover Street Counter restaurant review below to find out more.

The vibe is right, the food is… confusing

First, let me give Dover Street Counter its flowers.

The service is quick and polished. The room has that cool new restaurant sheen. It’s the kind of place you could imagine popping into for a casual dinner after work.

But once the plates start arriving, the excitement begins to drain.

It’s not that the food is really bad. It’s more that it’s strangely joyless. Or strangely unfinished. Or strangely impractical. Sometimes all three.

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Purple potato crisps and salsa that are like a background actor

This sounds fun, right. Purple crisps with salsa and lime sour cream. San Marzano tomatoes, no less. It has all the right words.

The reality is more disappointing.

The crisps are mostly tiny pieces, which makes scooping difficult. You keep trying to get a good dip-to-crisp ratio, but it evades you.

The dip is layered. On top, a cream that’s meant to be lime sour cream. Underneath, a cold tomato salad situation.

I keep eating the crisps with the cream and thinking, okay, this is fine, and then I hit the tomato layer and the whole thing becomes less enjoyable. It tastes colder, more vinegary, and not particularly cohesive.

Also, I don’t taste lime at all. And lime would have helped. Lime would have lifted it. Lime would have given it some personality. Maybe.

Do the disco fries slap though?

Lunch at Dover Street Counter continues with disco fries. They’re short fries, bitty, and dressed with pickled chilli and ginger, mayo, and something called disco jus.

My sister takes one bite, raises an eyebrow, and says, is it really giving disco?

Her eyes say no, even as she shovels another mouthful in. The wet slapping continues. We do finish them, to be fair, but it’s absent-minded finishing.

So far, this isn’t the kind of food you make a detour for.

They taste pickly. Gingery. Slightly soy-ish. Not bad. Not great.

I tell you what though, if these fries arrived at 3am after a late night, I might actually love them. But in that situation, I love maccies nuggets too.

At lunch, they don’t sparkle.

DSC French dip is a delicious idea with a truly impractical execution

Moving swiftly on to mains at Dover Street Counter.

We try the DSC French Dip because it sounds so damn good. The Dover Street Counter menu says there’ll be sliced roast beef, beef ragu, taleggio, pickles and jus. A gravy boat for dipping. Hubba hubba.

And then the sandwich arrives and it’s so huge and unwieldy that it becomes a logistical problem. Do I want a logistical problem at lunch?

You’re meant to dip the baguette into the jus. But the gravy boat is narrow, and the sandwich is wide, and reality hits hard.

We try to dip and the filling starts tumbling out. The baguette is crunchy, but the crunch works against you because the whole thing needs more pliability to be biteable.

We cut it into smaller pieces, but it’s still not really working as an concept.

Taste wise, I like it. The sandwich is meaty and rich, and the beef has a slightly spiced exterior that reminds me of shawarma-style seasoning. The pickles bring tang. The jus is savoury and comforting.

But eating it is hard work. Especially on a counter, where you’re sat slightly higher and the angle makes the whole dipping operation even more awkward.

I persevere with knife and fork. My sister gives up entirely.

This is one of those dishes that could be great if it were simply smaller, better structured, and designed for actual human mouths.

Spaghetti all’assassina (the dish of my TikTok dreams that tastes like burnt toast)

The spaghetti all’assassina at Dover Street Counter is the dish I’m most excited for.

Spaghetti all’assassina is meant to be crunchy pasta in tomato sauce, cooked from raw in a pan with tomato broth added gradually so the pasta fries and blackens in places. Online, it looks filthy in the best way. Charred. Crisp. Addictive.

Dover Street Counter’s version is.. not it.

It’s not crunchy enough to satisfy the craving that brings you to this dish in the first place. Parts of the pasta look turgid, a little too thick, a little too soft, and the texture becomes confused rather than thrilling.

Flavour-wise, it’s strangely narrow. First you taste almost nothing, then suddenly you get a slap of chilli that lingers, and that’s basically it. The basil on top is a useless garnish because it doesn’t carry into the dish at all.

And then there are the blackened bits.

Instead of tasting charred and smoky and intentional, they taste burnt. Is that how this is meant to taste? Burnt like the last piece of toast you forgot about and scraped off in annoyance.

This version makes me wonder if spaghetti all’assassina might be better left as a TikTok fantasy. Ephemeral. Unreachable. Possibly safer that way.

Overall thoughts on lunch at Dover Street Counter Mayfair

Look, we pay about £35 each, which in Mayfair is practically a bargain. And Dover Street Counter is clearly doing something right because it’s busy, it’s buzzing, and plenty of people seem to be having a great time.

But for us, this lunch doesn’t land.

None of the dishes make me want to return. None of them feel like something I’d recommend a friend go out of their way for. And the overall effect is more confusion than satisfaction.

I leave wondering if we ordered wrong. Whether the French dip was always destined to be impractical. Whether the disco fries are just menu word salad designed to draw you in. Whether the assassin spaghetti is simply a concept that doesn’t translate well in restaurants.

We decline dessert firmly. In a world as confusing as ours, I don’t need lunch to give me more questions.

Dover Street Counter Mayfair might be a fun place for a drink. It might be a place that works better later in the day when you’re less hungry and more in the mood for chaos.

But as a lunch destination, this Dover Street Counter review lands on one word.

Disappointing.

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Dover Street Counter review
Address – 31 Dover St, London W1S 4ND
Nearest Tube – Green Park