10-12 Garrick Street,
Covent Garden,
London,
WC2E 9BH
0872 148 0392
The ViewLondon Review
Four out of
Five Stars
Sit-down lunches are great for putting you in a good mood when your day up to that point has not been a great success. A sandwich in the park may be comforting, but nowhere near as much as a hot plate of food and a carafe of wine. It was such a day when Dr Tom and myself found ourselves in W1 looking for a venue to ease our troubles.
It would be easy in these situations to go for something seriously upmarket, but the bill might be too much to bear, and anyway, it’s supposed to be comfort not celebration. What we were after was a little French restaurant with a bit of charm and plenty of single figure prices on the menu.
There aren’t many of these around nowadays. They’ve either been bought up and converted into ghastly Café Rouge style chains, or else have been undercut by pubs, pizza parlours and pasta joints. One that still exists in all its tiny tables squashed together glory is the Garrick Street Wine Bar.
I guarantee you’ll have passed this place at least two dozen times, but I doubt that you’ve noticed it. It blends into the background of Garrick Street like a fat kid in a burger joint. What’s more, once you’ve eaten there you’ll be able to go back and morph into the background too – very helpful if you’ve skived off work for the afternoon and want to avoid any unnecessary attention.
The menu features a decent selection of French bistro type stuff. There is a daily set menu, which is great value at around £10 for 2 dishes. I had duck pate followed by onglet and chips. Tom had mushroom soup followed by moules. With a large carafe of wine it added up to less that £30, and tasted pretty good. I will be returning…