Six new set menus, from a £25 pre-theatre in Victoria to a Michelin star
Six additions this week, from a £25 pre-theatre in Victoria to a centenary Michelin star on Regent Street
Six set menus joined All Set this week, and they cluster in two places. Four are hotel dining rooms, three of them within a few doors of each other on Buckingham Palace Road in Victoria, and the fourth beside the British Museum in Bloomsbury. The other two are grand Indian restaurants in St James's and on Regent Street, one of them a hundred years old this year and holding a Michelin star.
Prices run from £25 to £45, and most of these are timed for the early evening, so this reads as a pre-theatre list first and a lunch list second. Every price, day and window below came off the venue's own menu.
01 · bbar
Victoria
Two courses £25 or three £30, seven days, running up to 7pm.
The lowest price on the list and the widest window. bbar sits at 43 Buckingham Palace Road, directly opposite the Royal Mews and about ten minutes from the Victoria and Apollo stages, so the pre-theatre menu runs long rather than squeezing into an hour: Monday from 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday from midday, both to 7pm, and Sunday midday to 5pm. Starters are buttermilk fried chicken tenders with pickled celery, hot sauce and a blue cheese dip, a Caesar with baby gem, anchovies, croutons and Parmesan, or wild mushroom bruschetta with whipped feta and Wiltshire truffle. Mains bring a double cheeseburger with dill pickles, red onion jam and fries, beer battered fish and chips with mushy peas, curry sauce and chunky tartare, or a grilled cheese toastie made with Barber's Cheddar and plum tomato on sourdough. Dessert is ice cream and sorbet, an affogato with an espresso shot, or a baked vanilla cheesecake with seasonal coulis. The card was rewritten this month, so the dishes above are the current set rather than the ones on older listings.
02 · Chutney Mary
St James's
The Express Lunch: two courses £39 or three £45, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 2.15pm.
More than three decades in London and now on St James's Street, with a glass-screened dining space, a bold landscape canvas across one wall and the Pukka Bar alongside it. The Express Lunch is exactly what the name promises: a fixed run of three dishes rather than a list to work through, which is what makes it a genuine weekday lunch rather than a leisurely one. It opens with a Goan crab and fish cake, then smoked Kashmiri chilli chicken chops served with salad and naan, and closes on a Rangpur gin and tonic sorbet. Two courses are £39, three are £45, and it runs Monday to Friday from midday to 2.15pm. The wider weekday carte sits around it if you want to browse instead: corn ribs with lime butter and bombay street masala, a tokri chaat served in a string potato basket, watermelon chaat with spiced tamarind and curry leaf dressing, griddled scallops in Mangalorean sauce. There is also a weekend lunch at £45 and £52, a house dinner menu at £42 and £48, and a seven course gourmet menu at £95 for the whole table.
03 · Veeraswamy
Mayfair
Pre-theatre: two courses £40 or three £45, Monday to Saturday, 5.30pm to 6.15pm.
London's oldest surviving Indian restaurant, opened above Regent Street in 1926, Michelin starred, and marking its centenary this year. It is two minutes from Piccadilly Circus, which makes the pre-theatre menu the most useful thing on its card, though the window is genuinely tight: Monday to Saturday, 5.30pm to 6.15pm, and no later. The menu leans into the anniversary. It opens with an Anglo-Indian mulligatawny, a lentil soup with pepper, lemon and spices that the menu itself dates back to the 1926 card, or a crisped spinach leaf chaat with chutneys and spiced yoghurt. The main course arrives with naan: a roasted coconut chicken curry with malabar shallots, curry leaves and twelve tawa roasted spices, or a Deccani platter of baghare baingan aubergine masala with lemon rice and chettinad potatoes. To finish there is kaala jaam, a warm black gulab jamun with vanilla ice cream, or two scoops from the sorbets and gelati. If the window does not suit, the four course Centenary Menu runs at £60 across lunch and dinner, and weekend lunch is £42 and £48.
04 · The Blue Door Bistro
Bloomsbury
Table d’hôte: two courses £35 or three £40, lunch and dinner, seven days.
The bistro inside The Montague on the Gardens, on Montague Street with the British Museum at the end of it and Russell Square three minutes away. Pale yellow walls, mahogany panelling, white linen and brass lamps, and the only menu here that runs across both services every day of the week. The table d’hôte opens with a chilled gazpacho andaluz, a pancetta and Cumberland scotch egg with coronation mayonnaise, or harissa roasted aubergine with seeds, sultanas, couscous and a roasted pepper dressing. Mains are a corn fed chicken breast with carrot and horseradish broth and wilted spinach, a baked salmon poke bowl with edamame, jasmine rice and soya dressing, or a Mediterranean vegetable linguine in cherry tomato sauce. Dessert is a summer berry pavlova with vanilla ice cream and chantilly, a coconut and matcha rice pudding with toasted coconut flakes, or a chocolate pot de crémeux with shortbread crumble and strawberries. Lunch runs Monday to Saturday 12.30pm to 2.30pm and Sunday from 1pm; dinner runs 5.30pm to 10pm, closing half an hour earlier on Sunday.
05 · The English Grill
Victoria
Set lunch: two courses £29 or three £35, Tuesday to Friday, 12.30pm to 2.30pm.
Two doors from bbar, inside The Rubens at the Palace at 39 Buckingham Palace Road. Deep blue velvet wing chairs, a Murano chandelier, candelabra along a mahogany buffet and a pair of cloisonné lions above it, which is a lot of grandeur for a £29 lunch four minutes from Victoria station. It opens with Cornish crab bruschetta with charred cherry tomato, avocado and pickled shallot, an iceberg wedge Cobb salad with chicken, bacon, blue cheese and avocado, or a roast tomato soup with basil and garlic croutons. Mains are a buttermilk chicken schnitzel with Caesar salad, anchovies and Parmesan, whole butterfly sea bass with a warm caper, cornichon and parsley dressing, or basil potato gnocchi with summer vegetables, smoked tofu and pea velouté. To finish, a baked vanilla cheesecake with seasonal coulis, a dark chocolate mousse with brandy soaked cherries and raspberry compote, or a classic crème brûlée with dulce de leche ice cream. Sides are £8 each and sit outside the price. There is a second set in the evening too, at £49 and £55, Tuesday to Saturday from 5.30pm to 7pm.
06 · The New York Bar
Victoria
Pre-theatre: two courses £35 or three £45, from 4pm to 6.45pm.
The bar in the same building as the English Grill, and a complete change of register: deep red lacquer, gold chandeliers with red shades, red leather stools along a mahogany counter and a row of antique regimental drums above the bottles. The pre-theatre menu is the longest on this list. It starts with gochujang salmon bites with kimchi mayonnaise, buttermilk fried chicken with St Tropez sauce, onion bhaji with mango chutney, wild mushroom bruschetta with whipped feta and Wiltshire truffle, market crudités with jalapeño hummus, or cheeseburger sliders with dill pickles and red onion jam. Mains run to slow cooked beef ragù with rigatoni, smoked pancetta and Parmesan, beer battered fish and chips with mushy peas and curry sauce, a club sandwich with free-range chicken, streaky bacon and avocado, a Caesar, or tomato and burrata with pickled shallots and basil pesto. Then a baked vanilla cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding with banana split ice cream and toffee sauce, a seasonal crumble with tonka bean custard, or three scoops from the homemade ice creams and sorbets. It runs from 4pm to 6.45pm; the glass of prosecco on the card is £15 on top, not part of the set.
All six are on All Set now, with the full menu, the serving window and a direct booking link on each. Veeraswamy is the one to plan around, since its pre-theatre sitting is only three quarters of an hour wide.