London’s best sustainable restaurants: The Coal Shed, London Bridge

Located in the heart of a new luxury development near Tower Bridge, superficially the Coal Shed is exactly what you would expect from a top-class steak restaurant, but there’s soul behind the rich-wood, emerald marble and huge slabs of meat.

This is a steak restaurant for meat-lovers with big appetites. Yet surprisingly, it’s the pleasant smell of seafood that wafts from the kitchen when you first walk in.

This is the third restaurant from executive chef Dave Mothersill, who now splits his time between them all. The Coal Shed in London combines the best of his other two restaurants in Brighton – his original steak restaurant The Coal Shed, and fish restaurant The Salt Rooms.

The rare-breed steaks, signature Moroccan spiced-smoked Goat, and British seafood are all cooked over charcoal, in the closed barbeque Spanish oven known as the Josper Grill.

Mothersill says: “We’re trying to deliver uncomplicated food with a love of cooking stuff over fire.”

The result is melt-in-your-mouth meat and fish, that really pushes the flavour of the star ingredient.

Do not be misled by the title of London’s best “sustainable” restaurants, the design and atmosphere of The Coal Shed is city-slick. Split over two floors, those on the ground-floor get a window into the workings of the kitchen, while upstairs the backdrop is one of (reclaimed) leather belts showcasing wine bottles, illuminated by globe pendant lighting.

The service is friendly but professional and the tables are nicely spaced apart, so you can enjoy intimate conversations or laugh loudly while enjoying the buzz created by the kitchen, bar and other diners.

After sharing a starter of oysters and bream ceviche, followed by 900 grams of 60-day dry-aged Herefordshire steak and a trio of (divine) desserts, we left feeling extremely full.

I also felt more than a little guilty about how much I had consumed. This, clearly, is not a sustainable way to eat on a regular basis and bringing home a token slither of steak in a doggy bag for my partner did little to alleviate the guilt. Admittedly, two or three slithers would have been more favourable – and, I’m sure, more gratefully received.

However, if you’re going to have a treat then do so in a restaurant like this. The superior sourcing of the ingredients what gives this place its sustainable credentials.

The meat is sourced from farms that specialise in rare breeds. This means the beef is slower-grown and predominantly grass-fed, which leads to more depth to the flavour as well as being more humane.

“It’s about quality but it’s also about the future,” says Mothersill.

In a similar vein, the wild fish is sustainably caught by day boats with wild monkfish and turbot from the Cornish and Sussex coast. The Rope grown mussels are from St Ives, the prawns from Ireland, the lobsters Native and the scallops hand-dived.

Good for: Meat & fish-lovers

Cost: ££££

Sustainability rating 3/5

Lizzie Rivera is the founder of London’s ethical lifestyle website: bicbim.co.uk