Bistrot Bruno Loubet, The Zetter

Press Reviews (12)

• Jasper Gerard (7th June 2010)
  8/10
  
  “I found it delightful. For London it's exceptional.” Not much to dislike, it seems, at the new Clerkenwell bistro of Bruno Loubet, a star London chef of the ’90s, recently returned.
• AA Gill (26th April 2010)
  Food 4/5 stars, Atmosphere 4/5 stars
  
  More praise for the “modern, functional and crowded” Clerkenwell bistro, where dishes from the “short and brilliantly desirable” menu are “rustic combinations that grabbed you roughly by the ears and stuck their tongues down your throat”. “This was always Bruno’s brilliance, the ability to season not just expertly, but atonally; to join essences that are unexpected and unnervingly intimate”.
• Zoe Williams (19th April 2010)
  8.5/10
  
  Yet more praise for the “brilliant” Clerkenwell bistro, where “[s]tarters especially read like a thriller”, accompaniments are “all spot-on”, meat is served “at exactly the right temperature” with “magnificent” gravy, and cherry ice-cream is “mind-expandingly good”.
• Jay Rayner (19th April 2010)
  
  “Bruno Loubet is a defibrillator made cheffly flesh. For many years, despite the efforts of skilled restaurateurs, the dining room of the Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell looked like the kind of place where polite conversation went to die...The place finally has a beating heart”. Loubet's cooking reveals “that sweet marriage of exquisite technique and huge, robust flavours, which has brought the crowds back”. “It's what restaurants are meant to be like”.
• Nick Lander (12th April 2010)
  
  The critic is impressed by his visit to the eponymous Clerkenwell bistro, where cuisine demonstrates the chef's ability “to take simple ingredients and extract the maximum flavour”. Alongside an “enterprising wine list”, particular attractions include guinea fowl boudin, trout Grenobloise, pollock with a pistou sauce; and a mille-feuille of apples and quinces.
• Marina O'Loughlin (8th April 2010)
  4/5 stars
  
  “The dish I’m eating is the richest, stickiest, most savoury thing I’ve eaten since I absent-mindedly sucked a teaspoon of Marmite. It is a visceral, butch number; the sort of thing you fantasise about finding in the utopian provincial French bistro, where the stock pot bubbles for decades and the meat lives out in the back garden”.
• Matthew Norman (6th April 2010)
  
  Yet more praise for M. Loubet's eponymous bistro – “a light, warm, uncluttered, relaxing space” in Clerkenwell. With the exception of hare royale (in “a sauce as dark as Darth Vader and twice as menacing”) and rhubarb tart that's “a shade too sour”, the critic is impressed by the “gutsy, high-end bistro menu”. “[R]evised” Lyonnaise salad a particular highlight: “delicately dressed salad leaves of deep-fried pig's trotter as creamily unctuous and gooily gratifying as that porcine extremity should be”.
• Lisa Markwell (22nd March 2010)
  17/20
  
  M. Loubet's eponymous Clerkenwell bistro is fast becoming the rave of the season, its praises sung – for example – by ‘both’ Independents on consecutive days. “[Loubet is] back, in every way’, says this particular critic, “and London is the richer for it”.
• Tracey MacLeod (22nd March 2010)
  Food 4/5 stars, Ambience 4/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars
  
  Cuisine which “takes bistro dishes in interesting new directions” and “favours personality over prettiness” wins yet more praise for Bruno Loubet's Clerkenwell bistro, where “everything about the place exudes urban good taste of an unchallenging kind”. Despite some rather nervous service from a waiter “who seemed to be experiencing some kind of mini-meltdown, triggered by a glimpse of my notebook”, the critic enjoys dishes which tread “a sure path between artlessness and finesse” and concludes “[t]here's nothing bistro-ish about the scale of BBL's dining room; it's a buzzy, bustling place which already feels like it’s been around for ages”.
• Guy Dimond (18th March 2010)
  5/5 stars
  
  “Thoughtfully constructed” cuisine “to satisfy novelty seekers”, but that “won't scare off the conservative palate” wins yet more praise for Bruno Loubet’s Clerkenwell bistro, where he “[embraces] North African and Asian flavours” but remains “grounded” by “his interest in French cuisine de terroir”. Top marks for service too for the staff – “charming, all smiles, very efficient” and an overall operation “working calmly and smoothly despite an almost full house”.
• Giles Coren (14th March 2010)
  8/10
  
  Perhaps it’s the excitement – “Bruno Loubet’s return to Britain is the most exciting comeback since Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus just hours after the Crucifixion” – but, sadly, the critic seems to have forgotten his only-recently-announced pro-veggie campaign. Anyway, the largely carnivorous delights of the Clerkenwell newcomer lead him to believe that “[this]is what a bistro is supposed to be”. “We are very lucky to have [Loubet] back.”
• Fay Maschler (11th March 2010)
  4/5 stars
  
  The much anticipated return of Bruno Loubet to the UK, from Down Under, pleases the critic on both her visits to his eponymous bistro - “one of the significant restaurant launches of 2010 – and the year is young.” Despite a few presentational qualms, and certain ideas having “lost whatever lustre [they] once had”, the critic enjoys some “effortful” and “masterful” dishes, with onion soup and “unassailable” desserts attracting particular praise: “[I]t is great that Bruno is back— and at prices that are eminently fair”.