Evening Standard
David Ellis was underwhelmed by the new venture from Isaac McHale of nearby heavyweight The Clove Club, this one a self-styled “European restaurant” with mostly Spanish and some French dishes in a similar vein to Tomos Parry’s Mountain.
The food was no more than “all right. Definitely all right. Just the sort of stuff you don’t talk about the next day”. Or, as David’s dining companion put it more bluntly, “the place is a molehill next to Mountain”.
The real problem, though, was a price-point more suited to exceptionally ambitious cooking (Clove Club, perhaps) rather than a “slighty rackety” bar with white plates, posters on the wall and squeezed-together tables: “£309 for two. For a night of fried chicken and snails and no pudding. For God’s sake.”
David Ellis - 2025-02-16The Guardian
Grace Dent headed to the new casual offering from nearby Clove Club’s Isaac McHale, a modern European restaurant where everything is informal except the prices, which are “very much still wearing tuxes, cummerbunds and spats”.
“Watching the old guard of enfants terribles noughties Michelin chefs do ‘informal’ is all rather fascinating,” Grace noted. “These people flew in the face of formality over a decade ago, chipping away at all the stuffiness and forelock-tugging, and making dinner at the Ritz seem like a prison sentence. Now those same chefs are opening places like Bar Valette to show us how to be truly relaxed while paying £11 for a bowl of kale.”
The final straw was a piece of plastic her dining companion found in a plate of Spanish pork stew that cost £26. The waiter apologised and headed off the kitchen – but “no explanation is forthcoming, and the stew stays on the bill”.
Grace Dent - 2025-03-23
Drinks
Extras
