Five new set menus, from a £24 Soho lunch to The Savoy
Five rooms added to All Set this week, from £24 in Soho to the grill room at The Savoy
Five set menus landed on All Set this week, and they are a long way apart. A Soho bistro cooking off a family farm, an art deco grill room inside The Savoy, a French warehouse down a Smithfield mews, a Mayfair dining room that rewrites its lunch every month, and the Covent Garden conservatory that turns up on every most-romantic list in London.
Prices run from £24 to £64, so this is a list you can read two ways: the Tuesday lunch you book that morning, and the one you plan a fortnight out. Every price, day and window below came off the venue's own menu.
01 · Sussex
Soho
The Farm-to-Fork lunch: two courses £24 or three £28, Tuesday to Friday, 12pm to 4.30pm.
The cheapest of the five and the one with the most unusual promise printed on the menu itself: served under one hour. Sussex sits on Frith Street and cooks wild, foraged and locally grown produce over a BBQ grill, with livestock coming off the family farm the room is named after. The current Farm-to-Fork menu opens with London burrata, garden peas, radish, mint and a cucumber gel, or Hampshire cured trout with Arundel cucumber and herb oil. Mains are roasted fennel with dressed puy lentils, tahini and orange, or a Tamworth pork chop with garlic confit and jus, and a filo millefeuille with oat chantilly and strawberry gel closes it. The window runs to 4.30pm, which is generous for a lunch set. One thing worth knowing: the beef Wellington everyone photographs belongs to a separate £52 per head menu for two, not this one.
02 · Savoy Grill
Strand
Two courses £57 or three £64, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 5.45pm.
The grandest room on the list, and the one with the longest window. The Savoy Grill is the art deco dining room off the hotel's front hall, all crystal, red banquettes and a fan-patterned carpet, four minutes from Charing Cross and a short walk from the Strand theatres. What makes the set unusual is that it does not change gear at five o'clock. The set lunch runs Monday to Friday from midday to 5.45pm, and the pre-theatre card carries the identical price and the identical window, so £57 for two courses or £64 for three covers the whole afternoon in one go. A chicken and mushroom terrine with coppa ham and mushroom ketchup, chalk stream trout with fine bean relish and watercress mayonnaise, or a tomato and red pepper gazpacho to start. Then slow cooked pollock with vadouvan and a sesame and leek dashi, confit pork belly with aubergine chutney and crackling, or an allium risotto with crispy shallots. Amalfi lemon tart or Tunworth cheese to finish. Beef Wellington is on the set menu but carries a £26 supplement.
03 · Le Café du Marché
Smithfield
Two courses £48 or three £57, lunch Tuesday to Friday and dinner Tuesday to Saturday.
A converted warehouse down a cobbled mews off Charterhouse Square, five minutes from Barbican, and largely unchanged since 1986. There is no separate set menu here because the entire carte is the set menu: £48 for two courses, £57 for three, and every main course arrives with sharing frites. Starters run to a soupe de poisson with rouille, gruyère and croûtons, a white onion tart with grilled crottin and chive beurre blanc, or pâté de campagne with pistachio and cornichon. Mains include bavette with Roquefort butter and red wine jus, whole Cornish sole with French beans and a caper butter sauce, or shakshuka with poached egg and feta, alongside a poisson selon le marché and a plat du jour that move with the market. Desserts are a tarte, a bavarois or the dessert du jour, and there is live piano from 7.30pm. Two dishes sit outside the price: the côte de bœuf and the rack of lamb are both for two with a £20 supplement.
04 · Corrigan’s Mayfair
Mayfair
The Lunch du Jour: two courses £34 or three £38, Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2.30pm.
A Mayfair dining room off Grosvenor Square built on British and Irish produce and game, and the only lunch here that is rewritten every single month. The August card is headed for the month by name, so what you read now is not what will be there in September. This month it opens with a tomato gazpacho with courgette cream and a soda bread crisp, torched Cornish mackerel with brown crab mayonnaise, piperade and green apple, or a Hereford beef tartare with oyster cream and shallots. Mains are potato gnocchi with smoked aubergine, tomato and preserved lemon, roast pollock with peas, smoked eel and a roe butter sauce, a Cornish crab omelette with spiced brown crab butter, or confit duck leg with crispy potato, sweetcorn and hazelnut. A chocolate delice with cherries and malted milk, or a floating island, to finish. Six days a week, bookable for up to eight in the main restaurant, and the £34 line stands on its own if you leave the supplements alone.
05 · Clos Maggiore
Covent Garden
Two courses £29.50 or three £34.50 at weekday lunch, with a glass of bubbles included.
The King Street room with the blossom-covered conservatory and the retractable roof, three minutes from Covent Garden, and a fixture of London's most-romantic lists for two decades. It runs three separate sets rather than one: weekday lunch at £29.50 for two courses or £34.50 for three, Monday to Friday from midday to 2.15pm; weekend lunch at £37.50 and £44.50 on the same window; and a pre-theatre at £32.50 and £39.50, every day from 5pm to 5.45pm. All three include a glass of bubbles or a non-alcoholic cocktail, which is not something you often see attached to a £29.50 lunch. The menu itself is properly seasonal: stracciatella with watermelon, tomato and basil, grilled Morteau sausage with a salad of Provençal peach and white beans, or a smooth duck parfait with fig and sultana chutney. Then Sutton Hoo chicken with mushrooms vin jaune style, sea trout with courgette purée and a courgette flower tempura, or a tortelloni of crushed peas and mint. A crisp choux bun with crème diplomat and Scottish raspberries closes it out.
All five are on All Set with the full menu, the serving window and a direct booking link on each. Clos Maggiore and the Savoy Grill are the two to book ahead for.