Caractère

Caractère is the Notting Hill dining room of Emily Roux and Diego Ferrari, a husband-and-wife partnership who opened it in 2018 and hold a MICHELIN star. The cooking draws on Emily's French roots and Diego's Italian ones, and the room reads the same way: relaxed rather than formal, warm rather than austere. Sand-toned exposed brick runs the length of the walls, hung with framed artwork and full-height gilt-edged mirrors, while red and green velvet chairs and low banquettes give the single open-plan space its colour. A glass-fronted bar and wine display anchors one end.

There is a single dining room here, and it can be taken exclusively for a private lunch or dinner, seating up to sixty-two. For smaller gatherings the restaurant lays a single long table for as many as twenty, a format that suits a milestone celebration or a private dining party without a separate room. Whole-restaurant hire is arranged directly with the events team.

The scale is intimate and the setting is a working Michelin kitchen rather than a function suite, so this is a room for a considered private dinner or a celebration among a smaller circle rather than a large reception. What it offers is the whole of a one-star restaurant, given over to a single table of guests for the evening.