Harden's survey result
Summary
“A chocolate-themed restaurant is a good idea in principle, but some dishes work better than others” is the general verdict on this Borough Market outlet inspired by a St Lucian farm owned by Hotel Chocolat, which “uses cacao in every dish”. “Chocolate mac ’n’ cheese”, anyone? What does work is the “fantastic hot chocolate”, and the café/bar has a “fun atmosphere” in the evening, while “the breakfast menu is really tasty, too”.
Summary
“A chocolate-themed restaurant is a good idea in principle, but some dishes work better than others” is the general verdict on this Borough Market outlet of a St Lucia plantation owned by Hotel Chocolat, which “users cocoa in every dish”. “Chocolate mac ’n’ cheese”, anyone? What does work is the “fantastic hot chocolate”, and the café/bar has a “fun atmosphere” in the evening, while “the breakfast menu is really tasty, too”.
Summary
The “quirky menu” of “unique cocoa-based cuisine” at this Borough Market venue was developed at a historic St Lucia cocoa plantation owned by Hotel Chocolat, and is rated a middling success. The big deal here? – “They serve amazing hot chocolate… well worth the calories!” It’s also “a lovely place for an informal coffee”, or “after work it turns into a bar, so you can have cocktails”.
Summary
“The huge vat of melted chocolate is the big draw” at this “curious concept” in Borough Market: “a cafe styled like a St Lucian cocoa plantation”. There are cakes for afternoon tea, “chocolate fusion cuisine”, and “a proper bar at night in case you fancy a cocoa-infused beer or gin”. The only unqualified success, however, is the “wonderful hot chocolate!”
For 31 years we've been curating reviews of the UK's most notable restaurant. In a typical year, diners submit over 50,000 reviews to create the most authoritative restaurant guide in the UK. Each year, the guide is re-written from scratch based on this survey (although for the 2021 edition, reviews are little changed from 2020 as no survey could run for that year).
Have you eaten at Rabot 1745?
Restaurant details
Rabot 1745 Restaurant Diner Reviews
"This place makes the best hot chocolate in London! The cakes are always good, too. They offer a delicious breakfast menu on the restaurant terrace overlooking Borough Market. The pancakes taste healthy and delicious."
Prices
 Drinks |
|
|---|---|
| Wine per bottle | £25.00 |
| Filter Coffee | £2.75 |
 Extras |
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|---|---|
| Service | 12.50% |
Harden's says...
Rabot 1745
Owned (but not too obviously) by the Hotel Chocolat people, a really welcoming Borough Market bar/bistro where everything comes with cocoa, not that you'd really know; we thought this one of the nicest all-rounders we've been to for some time.
Don't we all love a 'backstory'? And the story behind this particular story - or rather restaurant - is more interesting than most. Highlights: it's owned by the Hotel Chocolat people, named after their Caribbean cocoa estate, and notionally entirely themed around that estate and its product.
If you just stumbled into the place, though, perhaps on a weekend trip to Borough Market, you wouldn't know anything about the backstory, and might just feel that you'd happened upon a rather more-atmospheric-than-usual industrial-chic bistro, with charming service' and rather good food too. Yes, you can buy some Hotel Chocolat-branded goodies on the way out, and, yes, you do get roast-on-the-premises cocoa beans (peel before eating) instead of preprandial nuts, but otherwise theming is mercifully absent. Or perhaps it was just too subtle for us to notice.
But - ooh! ah! - don't they put cocoa in everything? Well, so they say. If that's what they say, we're sure that's what they do - but if no one bothered to point it out, we'd guess you wouldn't actually notice. We just had a notably relaxed and pleasant bistro lunch from a short menu on which pretty much everything shouted 'eat me'!
Doing such justice as we could to this command, we sampled two of the three starters and of the main courses, and one of the puddings. Everything was really good, simple and direct. 'Faites simple', as someone once said, and the chef here seems to have been listening. Our guest's beautiful and generous chunk of fish, for example, glistened as if in a TV advertisement, and he duly noted that the degree of precision in its cooking was of a level rarely found.
Service was charming too, and 'engaged' in a way that makes this feel like an ambitious small-scale venture rather than any sort of marketing gimmick for a chain with some six dozen shops around the UK.
At the end, though, they do give you some delicious small pastilles of Rabot 1745 chocolate - a bit of cocoa placement that really is worth waiting for.
2-4 Bedale St, London, SE1 9AL
| Number of Diners: | |
| Required Time: | |
Opening hours
| Monday | 8 am‑4:30 pm |
| Tuesday | 8 am‑4:30 pm |
| Wednesday | 8 am‑2:30 pm, 2:30 pm‑11 pm |
| Thursday | 8 am‑2:30 pm, 2:30 pm‑11 pm |
| Friday | 8 am‑2:30 pm, 2:30 pm‑11 pm |
| Saturday | 9 am‑2:30 pm, 2:30 pm‑11 pm |
| Sunday | 9 am‑5 pm |
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