Five new set menus, from an £18 Kensington pub lunch to Le Cordon Bleu
Five rooms added to All Set this week, from £18 in Kensington to £45 on Fleet Street
Five set menus landed on All Set this week, and again they could hardly be less alike. A corner pub in Kensington with the old Princess Victoria lettering still on the facade, a Fitzrovia dining room pricing its birthday menu at the year it opened, a green-tiled Mediterranean room on St James's Street, a hotel mezzanine in Covent Garden where the whole pre-theatre menu is gluten and dairy free, and a classical French kitchen two minutes from St Paul's.
Prices run from £18 to £50, so there is a Wednesday lunch you can book on the day and a pre-theatre table you plan around a curtain. Every price, day and window below came off the venue's own menu this week.
01 · The Holland
Kensington
Two courses £18 or three £23, Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm.
The cheapest of the five and the only pub. The Holland is the corner site on Earls Court Road where the Princess Victoria lettering is still carved along the facade, with dark green woodwork, exposed brick and bare boards in the bar downstairs and a dining room above it set with bentwood chairs and a green floral banquette. The set lunch follows the week's produce rather than a fixed card: this week it runs girolle gnocchi with chicken jus and broad beans, then chocolate mousse with honeycomb. Seven minutes from High Street Kensington, and the window runs until 5pm, which is late for a pub lunch.
02 · Clipstone
Fitzrovia
The 10 Years of Clipstone menu: three courses £20.16, Tuesday to Saturday, 5.30pm to 6pm.
Clipstone turns ten this year and the early evening menu is priced at the year it opened, £20.16 for three courses, in a half-hour window before the room fills. It is a corner dining room with an open kitchen, a bar and a heated terrace, four minutes from Great Portland Street, cooking from a carte rewritten each day. The September card runs duck rillettes with pickled plum, sea bream with brown shrimp beurre blanc, then buttermilk panna cotta with poached pear. If the early sitting does not suit, the set lunch is two courses £34 or three £39, Tuesday to Saturday from midday to 2.45pm.
03 · Riviera
St James's
Two courses £34 or three £41 at lunch, every day, 12pm to 5pm.
Green tiles, a gilded bottle display and tall windows over St James's Street, four minutes from Green Park. Riviera describes itself as a warm journey to the South of France, and the lunch reads that way: burrata with datterini and Taggiasca olives, courgette flower in tempura, a veal ragù rigatoni, then crème brûlée with lavender shortbread. The set runs seven days a week and the window stretches to 5pm, so it works as a late Sunday lunch as well as a weekday one, and a single course is £19 if the pasta is all you want.
04 · Indigo
Covent Garden
The pre-theatre menu: two courses £42 or three £50, Monday to Saturday, 5pm to 6.30pm.
Indigo sits on the mezzanine at One Aldwych, looking down over the hotel lobby, five minutes from Temple and six from Covent Garden, with the Strand and Aldwych theatres on the doorstep. What sets the pre-theatre menu apart is that every dish on it is gluten and dairy free without making a point of it: ham hock boudin, braised Irish short rib with potato fondant, then an English strawberry Eton mess. The kitchen builds the menu on British ingredients, and the 5pm to 6.30pm window is timed for a 7.30pm curtain.
05 · CORD by Le Cordon Bleu
City of London
Three courses £45, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 3pm and again 5.30pm to 6.30pm.
Classical French cooking with real technique on Fleet Street, two minutes from St Paul's and three from City Thameslink, in the restaurant attached to the cookery school. Three courses are £45 at lunch and again at an early dinner sitting: grilled sardine with gazpacho, salt marsh lamb rump with lentils or a slow poached hen's egg with truffle, then pistachio with dark chocolate. It is the dearest of the five and the one to book for a client or a birthday, and the blue velvet and gold pendants of the dining room are the reason it is on the cover.
All five are on All Set with the full menu, the serving window and a direct booking link on each. Clipstone's half-hour window and Indigo's pre-theatre sitting are the two to book ahead for.