My daughter has an eye for offers on Top Table, and choosing upper end restaurants. It was suggested that we would meet her and her boyfriend for dinner. As this restaurant brasserie is bang slap in the middle of the City, just by Bank station, it is not somewhere we would normally have chosen. Comments on TopTable say
"With an extraordinary domed ceiling by Pietro Agostini, the Brasserie at 1 Lombard Street is ideal for business and leisurely breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Our private room can be used for a variety of corporate and private events. Evenings have a unique atmosphere, with an unrivalled selection of cocktails and champagne. Authentic tapas and oriental bites can be enjoyed at the bar and surrounding intimate booths." You get the idea, and this is a place that is normally full of city types. I would not say it looked as if it were full of bankers, but judging by the papers carried, it might be legal and insurance types.
The restaurant's own web site says "Lombard Street is where the City meets for breakfast, lunch and dinner, launches new businesses, signs deals and celebrates profits. And it's even where the City gets married."
There is a web site which you can check out on http://www.1lombardstreet.com/ .
My wife and I were definitely the oldest people there, and the young staff seemed unused to dealing with suburban clients. They did not want us hanging around the entrance, and fiddled about before sitting us down.
The atmosphere is extremely good, and there was an exhibition called Destinies by Louis Boudreault. You can just about see this in the background. I picked up a price list, and you could buy one of the paintings for between £15000 to £38000. No doubt they would have put it on the bill and added a 12.5% service charge.
The top table menu is short (and there can be supplementary charges), and the staff probably are used to diners for whom a deal has another meaning. Like many London stylish eateries, they adopted a serving style which could easily be interpreted as 'doing you a favour'. The main menu and set meals are not reflected in the top table deal.
For amuse bouche, a small demitasse cup of leek and potatoe soup of mouthful quantity was served.
I was very brave and took it on trust that what was in there was not dead crane flies, but was probably a dried herb or vegetable.
For starter, I selected the morteau sausage salad. I asked the waiter to explain the nature of the dish, and he declined saying he had only been working there 3 days. The more senior Maitre d' came over and tried to explain that it could be hot or cold or luke warm, and on this occasion it was going to be cold. Fair enough. As long as I know what I am dealing with. Before the dish was delivered, he came back over, and said that as a special concession the chef would have it served warm.
This was actually very good, and it is a smoked garlic type sausage. You can find more about this kind of sausage on Internet, and it is a bit of a French specialism, but with no identifiable bits of animal. This was also, as described, luke-warm, but I had been warned.
For main course, I chose the chicken supreme
A small portion of well cooked chicken in jus, with rice and spinach. It was adequately hot at 8.2 on the CHOF scale.
For desert I chose the clemantine fool
This was an interesting mix of textures and strong flavours, and was very good. Sometimes fools are a bit like frothy mousse, but this was a smooth gelatinous mixture of excellent taste. Recommended.
My wife and I were not typical customers, as could be judged by who was in the house that night, and the staff did nothing to make us feel comfortable. They created an atmosphere of dominating proceedings and fussing over food in such a way that the only term I can think of is 'rectalism'. That does not mean for one moment that the meal was not excellent, as it was, but it was expensive for what it was once a bottle of wine was added (but representative of the location and type). The staff seated us out of the main atrium of the restaurant, which was probably a good thing, as we wanted to talk, and the atmosphere was adequately subdued. On atmosphere is scores very highly.
If you want to eat within spitting distance of the Bank this cannot be faulted for the quality of the food, but it helps if you pass the audition at the foyer.
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