Does the old City still exist? A City full of chaps? The sort of City where chaps wear suits? The sort of City where chaps wearing suits can order a few glasses of port after lunch, with no one batting an eye-lid?
When you go up the stairs to this cramped and bustling dining room above Leadenhall Market, it doesn’t immediately seem such a place. Indeed, there are even women present, in a dining room that’s almost completely full. Well, some. On further inspection, though, many almost give the impression of being present ‘by invitation’. As the service rolls on, they make their excuses. Come 2pm, they’ve pretty much all gone.
Perhaps it was the menu that put them off. Steak, steak or steak is not quite all that’s on offer, but those are the first three main course choices before you get to the duck. And then a very small number of (in the nicest sense) old-fashioned fish dishes. Oh, you’re a vegetarian? You’d possibly be rather better off elsewhere.
Can there be a market for this sort of thing, in the thrusting 21st-century City? You bet. The end of the official ‘lunch hour’ may have come and gone but no-one seems to be in a hurry to go anywhere. Time, perhaps, for some port.
So what is the special attraction? The setting is in lively classic Gallic style, but it’s also pretty uncomfortable. The food is very solid’ or, to put it another way, pretty unremarkable. And the service – almost exclusively French – is efficient enough, but no more.
Maybe the point is the prices. The chaps have come to spend their own money not their employers’. And everything really is very reasonable.
