There are restaurants you remember, and then there are others that stay with you.

This was my second time at Cocochine, tucked into a beautifully restored mews house at 27 Bruton Place, just off Berkeley Square. It is the kind of place you find yourself thinking about days later – not because of any single moment, but because of the whole of it as it unfolds, floor by floor, like a story. A wine cellar below, cool and cathedral-quiet, holding up to a thousand references – Burgundy, Bordeaux, boutique and small-production wines alongside non-alcoholic ferments, distillations, and cold-brewed Sri Lankan teas made in-house. A 28-seat dining room at ground level, where the lighting is specifically designed to cast no shadow at the table, so that everything before you appears in its truest form. On the first floor, the chef’s counter has its floor covered in a specially commissioned mosaic inspired by Guido Mocafico’s work. In this intimate space, the kitchen is right there beside you, close enough to feel its rhythm and its warmth. And above it all, there is a private dining room with a lounge area, a towering fireplace, and bespoke furniture and art again – quite possibly one of the most beautiful private dining rooms in London. A whole townhouse, dedicated entirely to the act of dining well.

Someone thought very hard about this place. And it shows in every room. The art is not incidental – Cocochine’s walls are home to a remarkable collection of paintings that rewards close attention. Works by Picasso, Matisse, Peter Beard, David Hockney and Bernard Buffet hang alongside the languid, luminous canvases of Jean-Pierre Cassigneul and André Brasilier – the pretty ladies catching the light with a particular, unhurried grace. Art here is not a decorative choice, it’s a collection of serious works, chosen with a collector’s eye, that bring warmth, colour and an unmistakable sense of connoisseurship to every room. The private dining room rotates curated originals, so even on a return visit, the walls may quietly surprise you.

I spent my evening at the chef’s counter on the first floor – and I would not have had it any other way. The kitchen is right there, close enough to feel its rhythm – the quiet focus of it, the warmth, the sense of something being made with real care. It’s not a performance but a way of being allowed, gently, into the process. It is an intimate and oddly moving place to sit.

And then there is the man behind it all.

Larry Jayasekara’s story is not the usual one. He grew up in Sri Lanka, spent his early years surfing, and arrived in England with no culinary training whatsoever – taking work first as a bin man, then chopping vegetables in a Thai restaurant in Torquay, before something lit up inside him. He enrolled at South Devon College, won Student of the Year two years running, and then began one of the most rigorous culinary educations imaginable: Marcus Wareing, Alain Roux, Michel Bras, Raymond Blanc, Gordon Ramsay – kitchens where precision is a way of life. He went on to become head chef at Pétrus in Belgravia, winning the Craft Guild of Chefs’ National Chef of the Year Award in 2016. During the pandemic, rather than standing still, he channelled his energy into providing over 212,000 hot meals to frontline workers at University College Hospitals in London – an act that reveals something essential about his character.

Larry is not a cold technician. He is, by all accounts, a warm and deeply human being – someone who speaks of his team not as staff but as collaborators, who designed the kitchen with natural light so that people would actually want to be there, who says simply that at Cocochine, people don’t work for him – they work together. Watching him from the counter, you feel this immediately. There is a quietness to how the kitchen moves. A generosity in its atmosphere. Larry’s experience spans nine Michelin stars, 26 countries, and two decades. And all of it has accumulated quietly into something personal and original. The food, when you understand the man, makes complete sense.

His cooking is built on classical French technique – precise, disciplined, respectful of tradition – but its soul is Sri Lankan. Not a fusion or novelty, but something far more considered than that. The spice doesn’t arrive as a surprise twist, the coconut doesn’t announce itself like a party trick – they are integrated, woven in, where they belong. The result is food that feels both completely new and deeply inevitable – as though these two culinary worlds were always meant to speak to each other, and someone just needed the skill and the sensitivity to make the introduction.

The ingredients themselves tell part of the story. One of the partners owns 1,100 acres of farmland in Northamptonshire, supplying the kitchen with beef, game, vegetables and more. The seafood, meanwhile, comes almost entirely from a private Scottish island. This is the foundation – a strong one. When a dish is as spare and precise as Larry’s food often is, the quality of what arrives at the kitchen door is everything.

And food excitement starts before you have even properly settled at the counter. Three canapés, each a small declaration of intent.

A devilled cashew – warm, spiced, impossible to stop eating them.

A coronation langoustine, refined and delicate, a nod to British tradition.

And then a cheese and onion crisp crowned with golden Oscietra caviar, which manages to be simultaneously playful and entirely serious. You are already smiling.

The Ceylon King Crab Salad with consommé and apple is almost meditative in its delicacy.

The wild turbot arrives with coconut and a spiced wild prawn sauce – and here you feel the Sri Lankan soul very clearly. It elevates, it integrates, it never shouts.

But the dish that lingers longest is the banana leaf BBQ native lobster. It arrives in a clay pot – warm, earthy, unpretentious – and that vessel tells you everything about Larry’s instincts: no theatre, no flourish, just a wide, handsome bowl the colour of terracotta, cradling something deeply, quietly spectacular. The lobster sits amongst shredded, caramelised fragments of banana-leaf-kissed meat, the whole thing ribboned with a pale, silky emulsion and a warm quail egg, all drizzled generously, almost casually, and finished with a few jewel-bright pearls and the smallest scattering of fresh herbs. It looks like something cooked for someone loved.

And then you eat it, and you taste that love. The emulsion is cool and luscious, yielding completely. The lobster above is tender but still has its own resistance – that gentle, satisfying give of perfectly cooked shellfish. Then something crunchy arrives – and the contrast is almost startling in the best possible way. Creamy against crunchy. Soft against yielding. The herbs lift everything at the last moment with a brightness that cuts clean through the richness. It is a dish that keeps changing as you eat it – each spoonful assembling itself slightly differently, offering a new combination of textures, a new conversation between ingredients. The warmth of family kitchens somewhere far from Mayfair – the deep comfort of it, the memory of it – and yet every element placed with total precision. Rich and bright at once, complex and yet completely, beautifully balanced. The kind of dish you don’t want to end. Sitting at the counter, you can see exactly where it came from, and that somehow makes it even better.

A farm dry-aged sirloin with black pepper and red wine jus anchors everything with depth and clarity.

And then, just when you think you might need a moment of rest, the pre-dessert arrives – a pale, cloud-like pineapple sorbet in a sage green ceramic bowl, set over fresh pineapple, topped with finger lime pearls, dried chilli flakes and a breath of fresh herbs. The chilli builds slowly. The finger lime cuts through everything. It wakes you completely – sharp, bright, unapologetic – and reminds you, with considerable charm, that there is still more to come. One of the best pre-desserts in years.

The Watalappam – Sri Lanka’s answer to crème caramel – closes the meal with crème fraîche ice cream and golden Oscietra caviar. It should not work as well as it does. But that, in a way, is the whole point. Larry is not reaching for a surprise. He is creating dialogue – between cultures, between ingredients, between what you expect and what you receive.

At £189 for seven courses, Cocochine sits confidently where it belongs. But the price is almost beside the point. What you are paying for is a complete package – a building, a painting collection chosen with a true collector’s eye, a cellar of a thousand labels, and a kitchen led by a man who has lived enough of life to know that the best food is never just about technique. It is about memory, warmth, the quiet generosity of someone who genuinely wants you to feel at home. And Cocochine succeeds in this.

Andreja Lajh

The Cocochine

27 Bruton Pl, London W1J 6NQ