Style Points: 4/5
Price: £££
Overall: 4/5

Selfridges’ roof top has been transformed for the festive season into a wintry green wonderland. Forest on the Roof is a beautiful pop-up restaurant serves a menu inspired by the produce found in Britain’s woods, with a focus placed on foraged food. Running till early 2016, it also includes a cabin bar featuring  outdoor lodges and a ‘hot’ drinks list that includes 'choctails'!

The entrance to this winter wonderland is through a hallway lined with glittering fairy-lights and in a similar manner the whole journey to the restaurant has been made into an experience, from the special express lift to the logs and lanterns marking the route.

Would I Want Seconds?

Once seated we took a look at the immensely tempting menu and there were quite a few dishes we all wanted to try.

For starters, we ordered the baked Cornish brie, truffle honey, ancient loaf which arrived as a delectably melted block of brie with a bowl of delicious sticky honey. This was combination that worked very well and made for a scrumptious starter. We also tried the blue cheese fondue with garlic toast, which was served with a rather large bowl of melted cheese.

We had also ordered the crumpet benedict, with avocado and with smoked salmon. Although this were mouth-wateringly good, they would have been much more well-suited to breakfast and in fact no amendments were made to the dish to make it more suited to dinner. All these starters were immensely heavy which meant we didn't have very much room for our main courses!

For our main courses, we ordered the woodland mushroom linguine, dry aged burger with russet apple slaw, butter bun and coal charred ribeye with king oyster mushroom and peppercorn sauce. All the dishes were well prepared and tasted divine, and thank fully on this occasion they weren't large portions either.

By this point we were so stuffed there was no way we could even consider ordering a dessert, even though the ‘chocolate forest’ did look tempting!

Could I Afford Seconds?

As with many other Selfridges pop-ups, the food and drink does not come cheap. The starters ranged from £5 for essentially bread and butter to £17 for scallops. Main courses were even pricier with the vegetarian linguine costing £15.50 and the rib eye at £29. This meant that we happily passed on dessert with would have added another £6 to the bill.

Additionally, Forest on the Roof has a heavenly sounding drink menu which includes concoctions such as Truffle Martini, Fancy Nogg and Gingerbread Choctail, however didn't try these and instead stuck to soft drinks because each of these drinks were priced at approximately £13. As a result of the extreme prices here, we had to limit what we ordered to keep the final bill to a reasonable amount!

Overall:

Forest on the Roof serves hearty and wholesome comfort food which champions seasonal British produce from the forests, seas and wilderness. This also means that many of the dishes, particularly the starters, are quite heavy to stomach. If you’re a light eater then I would suggest passing on the starter in order to fit in a main course and dessert.

The whole experience was very festive but sadly I won’t be going back, at least not until pay day!

Website: www.forest-restaurant.co.uk
Address: 400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB
Closest Tube Station: Bond Street