Intimate surroundings and friendly staff make Hollands Wine Bar a great venue to enjoy a couple of drinks or a bite to eat in the classy environs of Holland Park.

The Venue
Located a short walk up from Holland Park tube station on one of the most exclusive residential streets in West London, this Portland Road eatery is easily located at the start of the road, surrounded by estate agents and classy boutiques. Inside, Hollands Wine Bar is divided into a downstairs casual seating area with comfy, heavy, brown leather sofas and contemporary art on the walls, and a more formal dining room layout upstairs with tables and smart plastic chairs. The rooms are both quite small, which can sometimes make downstairs feel a bit chilly with people coming in and out, so best stick to the upstairs if you’re eating and save the downstairs for when you’ve enjoyed a couple of warming glasses of wine.

The Atmosphere
Hollands Wine Bar is mainly a local stop off for a drink or fairly casual bite to eat. It attracts a crowd of Holland Park and Notting Hill dwellers, made up of trustafarian rich kids, thirtysomething bankers in suits and older, wealthy bohemian types. It is not an especially sociable set up, being geared more to food than drinking, but the staff are friendly and chatty and possibly slightly more knowledgeable about the wine list than they are about the food menu. Things liven up on Fridays with regular jazz nights, so look out for these if you like to enjoy a busier atmosphere, but it’s usually possible to just pop in the rest of the week without reserving a table.

The Food
Serving an unusual modern mix of Thai, Spanish, French and British fare, the menu at Hollands Wine Bar is certainly varied, though it doesn’t seem very cohesive or easy to follow with options seemingly from all over the globe. A good choice to start if you enjoy a more sociable option is the crudites and dips, a selection of salad, carrots, peppers and torn pitta breads served alongside hummus and taramasalata. Though there should be more on the plate for £11, and the dips don’t really have that homemade flavour, it is a good way to help everyone at the table chat and share food and start the evening off in a convivial manner.

The main course menu is a bit hit and miss - you can eat well here, but you need to choose carefully. The French effort at boeuf bourguignon is a great, meaty dish with top notch beef fillet and a fruity red wine flavour, though the accompanying roast potatoes are more disappointing, tasting deep fried and soggy. A dish to avoid is the barbecue chicken with cheese and bacon, a predictable pub dish that’s out of place at this price range (main courses here are between £12 and £20), with flat-tasting cheddar cheese and bacon that needs more time under the grill.

The Drink
Hollands Wine Bar do a better job at the drinks menu than they do at the food, with a good selection of around thirty wines from all over the world priced from just £12 a bottle, which is something of a bargain in this locale. The bartenders seem inexplicably more confident with the wine menu than they do explaining the more convoluted food choices.

The Last Word
Hollands Wine Bar makes a better stop-off for a drink than a meal, with a classy W11 crowd and intimate, quiet surroundings.

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