Birthdays & celebrations at Hawksmoor

A booth. Martinis poured bracingly cold before anyone’s taken their coat off. The steak chat, where the waiter talks you through each cut and what you’ll get out of it. Sides ordered for the table, because the “one starter, one main, one side” routine has never once been our style.
Then the sticky toffee sundae arrives in a tall glass with two spoons, and whoever said they weren’t having pudding picks one up anyway.
Ten of you, or six, or two. Tell us in the booking notes whose birthday it is and we’ll make sure the room knows.

Big ones and round ones

Eighteenths, twenty-firsts, thirtieths, and the ones with a zero on the end that people pretend not to mind. We’ve done a lot of them. The thing we’ve learnt is that the fuss should match the person, so tell us how much of it you want and we’ll pitch it right. Some tables want the whole room turning round. Some want a candle and nothing said out loud.

Birthday lunch

Not every birthday needs to be an evening. Our lunch and early evening set menus start at £20, same beef, same grill, same people, just a shorter window. Good for a birthday that has to fit around a working day.

Or go all in at Borough

Downstairs at Borough, in the old hops warehouse, there’s a private room with its own kitchen. Up to twenty-two of you around the table, chefs a few feet away, and the Beef Feast cooked in front of you as you eat it. Panzano tartare. Beef tea with bread and butter. Roast oysters, lobster and bone marrow. Then 35-day dry-aged prime rib with dripping chips and a steamed ox-cheek and tail pudding. Black Forest baked Alaska, coffee, Rolos.

It’s the most over the top way to have a birthday with us, and we mean that as a recommendation. Drop us a line here.

More than fourteen of you, or want four walls to yourselves? We’ve got private rooms for that, make an enquiry here.

The Guardian described it better than we could: “A secluded, flatteringly-lit table for two, a hunk of rare ribeye with anchovy hollandaise and some triple-fried chips, then the clotted cream and sticky toffee pudding sundae, which comes in a tall glass with two spoons, glistening with almost too much sauce.”

Not our words. We’ll take them.

First dates, fortieth anniversaries, and the ones in between where the occasion is really just “we haven’t sat down together in a fortnight”. Our restaurants are built for lingering. A little low lighting, some tasteful music, laid-back service, and nobody hovering to turn your table.

Tell us if it’s an anniversary. We like knowing.

Some celebrations you host. Others you send.

A Hawksmoor gift card hands the decisions over: which restaurant, which date, whether it’s a quiet lunch for two or a Sunday that quietly turns into the evening. It’s digital, so it lands in minutes, which is handy if you’re the sort who remembers these things on the day itself. From £50, and good at any of our restaurants.

Which covers most of what the year throws at you. Valentine’s, when a table across from someone beats flowers that die by Friday. Mothering Sunday, and we feel strongly about this one, so make a fuss, and don’t forget the mother-in-law. Father’s Day for the dads who insist they don’t want anything and very obviously do. Graduations, anniversaries, new jobs, retirements, and the ones with no occasion attached at all. Then Christmas, when one less thing to think about is a present in itself.

And for the people who’d rather be at the stove than the table, there’s Hawksmoor: Restaurants & Recipes. Will and Huw on the restaurants, the beef and the drinks, with the recipes so they can have a proper go at it themselves. Unlike socks, it gets used.