Alfresco Dining On Monday, April 12th, we are allowed to eat and drink outside in groups of up to six people. There will be no early curfew nor will you have to order a substantial meal at a pub. Rural readers will know of many local pubs with beer gardens but London and other cities are short of such spaces. And tables are being booked up. So, don’t miss the biggest street party since the Silver Jubilee….. and be willing to eat mid-afternoon.
Here is a list of restaurants across London which have outdoor spaces. If you can’t get a table, head to Soho because Westminster Council has confirmed that, from April 12th, they will repeat last year’s Open Streets scheme when a total of 60 roads — including 17 in Soho alone — were transformed through temporary closures and pavement widening. Over 500 restaurants were granted pavement licences. Pedestrianised Heddon Street (off Regent Street) is also awash with terrace seating.
Central
Saint Jacques, St James’s
National Gallery Cafe
The Oystermen, Covent Garden
Petersham Nurseries, Covent Garden
Barrafina, Covent Garden
Folie, Soho
Dalloway Terrace, Bloomsbury
Bleeding Heart Yard, Holborn
Truckles of Pied Bull Yard, Holborn
Bentley’s, Mayfair
Hush, Mayfair
Scott’s Mayfgair
The Orrery, Marylebone High Street
Chiltern Farmhouse, Marylebone
The Ritz
North
Drapers Arms, Islington
Michael Nadra, Camden
Red Lion and Sun, Highgate
Smokehouse, Canonbury
South
The Berkeley, Knighstbridge
Wright Brothers, Battersea
Fiume, Battersea Power Station
Pear Tree Cafe, Battersea Park
Seabird, South Bank
Ivy Chelsea Garden
La Famiglia, Chelsea
Polpo, Chelsea
Bibendum, Chelsea
East
Bird of Smithfield
Padella, Shoreditch
Pont de la Tour, Tower Bridge
Coq D’Argent, Mansion House
West
Gold, Notting Hill
Ognisko, South Kensington
The Orangery at Number 16, South Kensington
River Cafe, Hammersmith
Sam’s Riverside, Hammersmith
Villa Geggiano, Chiswick
Soho in the Last Break between Lockdowns - James Pembroke
Prior to the era of Harvey Weinstein, ‘NSIT’ (Not Safe in Taxis) was the epithet awarded by mothers to swathes of young (and old) blades raised on Carry on Cabby. My patient wife, Josephine, has officially dubbed me NSAL (Not Safe at Lunch) due to my overflowing diary over the last four weeks. Literally tens of post-Covid escapers have shone a Fatmansearchlight into the night sky. And, lo, I have arrived at 1pm, napkin a-go-go. David from Chester even brought his friend, Piers the surgeon, for two lunches in a row; the first in my garden which morphed into a takeaway Greek mezze; the second at that temple of joy, Boisdale, with its packed post-prandial cigar terrace.
Apart from that, all my dates were concentrated on sunnier-than-ever Soho, whose table-strewn streets will remain car-free until the end of October. The Editor and I cycled down to Polpo, in Beak Street, owned by Oldie shareholder, Richard Beatty and his chef wife, Florence Knight whose new menuoffers the closest-to-the-real-thing Italian food in Soho. Then, Jim, whose Northern vowels break glass, took me to Vasco and Piero’s, the long-established and under-rated Umbrian restaurant in Poland Street. Joyous Joey from Notting Hell swigged Bloody Marys at Prix Fixe in Dean Street – a bargain set menu in the ultimate bargain menu street. Then, for my birthday, I took the Oldie sales team and art editor to YallaYalla, part of the excellent Lebanese chain, in Winsley Street, which offers a massive mezze for just £19.95 for two. We were all thrilled with the Lebanese Ksara wines at just £24.95 a bottle. Best of all, the manager let me open the bottle of 2014 Chateau Moulinet Lasserre which my lunch guests had generously given me that morning, without knowing that three bottles of the 2015 vintage of the same wine were ready my Safe Six birthday dinner. Even the Editor, who bypassed childhood due to ‘all that nonsense about fairies’, conceded the odds of two near-identical wines in the same day were in the thousands.
Josephine could take it no more, and she chose Lunch of the Month, at the Gay Hussar’s recent reincarnation, Noble Rot, in Greek Street. I was nervous, of course. Why hadn’t they incorporated the old name with the new? Would they have kept Martin Rowson’s cartoons of Labour party regulars like Michael Foot and Roy Hattersley? Richard Ingrams either had lunch there or at the Star Café, in Great Chapel Street. So, countless Oldie staff lunches of Hungarian wild cherry soup and roast duck were devoured under the wicked eye of John Wrobel, the devoted manager. 25 years ago, I booked one of the private rooms to interview the three Goodies for my doomed magazine, Cult TV. My best childhood moment was when I was plucked from prep at my prep school to appear in an episode with the trio. So overjoyed was I by our reunion that I ordered for them. ‘You’ll love the duck. It’s magnificent’, I yelped. ‘I bet it was’, gasped a sullen Bill Oddie, Britain’s most famous bird-watcher. Well, Mr Goodie-Two-Sandals, you must return. Rowson’s cartoons are in the Naional Portrait Gallery but their £18-set menu (smoked trout and sausages) is the best deal in the West End. I ordered a bottle of a Hungarian ‘Aidas Bikaver, in memory of the glorious founder, Victor Sassie who was as Hungarian as I was the fourth Goodie.
