The ethos of Native at Browns is ‘sustainable and innovative’, says chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes It didn’t start well. The place was covered in dust sheets, and silent as a morgue. I mean, I’m all for ironically disguised pop-ups and artfully hidden speakeasies, but as I wandered through Brown’s hotel, my footsteps echoing balefully in the empty gloom, the joke began to wear a little thin. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ A smartly dressed man materialises from nowhere, his clipped, polite tone barely disguising the fact that no, the new Native, formerly of Southwark Street and Osea Island, Maldon – the place where the hyper-seasonal and freshly foraged meets the splendidly sustainable – was very much not to be found within Brown’s Hotel Mayfair and no, sir, he had no idea where it may be.