Adjacent to the Museum of London, a simple but satisfying City brasserie that makes a better than usual adjunct to a cultural day out.
We have so many cultural facilities in London, many of them ‘world-class’, but how many of these come with dining facilities to which that epithet could similarly be attached? Various Tate restaurants are famous for their setting or their wine, but not for their food. The V&A, accepting reality, and given up marketing its café as a dining destination with a rather nice museum attached. Too many of the leading facilities elsewhere, such as those at the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection are in the dead embrace of Oliver Peyton. (Why do the trustees of such places keep falling for his particular brand of blarney?) It is a pretty dismal picture.
Occasionally, a bright spark comes along, and we all hope that the mould is being broken. History suggests that we are all usually wrong. So let’s hope for better from this new venture by the ‘Benugo’ brothers. One cause for optimism is that it isn’t actually part of the Museum of London, but next to it. Within the cultural ambit, but not suffocated by it, perhaps.
But where is custom going to come from, apart from Museum visitors, to seek out a brasserie lost among the walkways on the approaches to the Barbican? Well, on the basis of our early-days visit, it seemed that local workers, and perhaps residents, had already found it.
What are the attractions, then, bringing in the locals? This is just a pleasant-all-round bar/diner/brasserie. It may be ‘decorated’ in the rather uninspired industrial look du jour, but the setting is airy and relaxed, and the staff are trying hard. The menu, too, is sensibly pitched for the said locals and workers, and also for families wanting to make a proper day out of a trip to the (fascinating) museum.
We didn’t eat a great deal from the wide-ranging menu here, just a risotto and a tasty flatbread sandwich. But everything was entirely in keeping with the rest of the experience: thoroughly pleasant.
How dull, you may say. The very phrase damns with faint praise. But that it not how it is meant at all. If you’re going on a cultural trip, a thoroughly pleasant lunch is a very sensible concomitant, and it’s achieved better here than at most of the obvious competition.
