A South Ken £36 and a Deptford £25, both new this week
Two very different rooms, two new reasons to book lunch
Two set menus joined All Set this week, at opposite ends of both the city and the price range. One is a three-course lunch in a South Kensington gallery townhouse for £36. The other is two courses and a drink for £25 in a Deptford listening bar, and it disappears on 15 August.
Between them they cover most of what a good set menu can be: the quiet weekday lunch worth crossing town for, and the short-run residency you catch before it goes.
01 · The Lavery
South Kensington
Three courses for £36 in a Cromwell Place townhouse, lunch or pre-theatre.
The dining room sits on the first floor of the Cromwell Place galleries, in a Grade II-listed townhouse that a celebrated Anglo-Irish painter once worked in: white plasterwork, arched mirrors, a marble fireplace. The set runs Wednesday to Friday, either midday to 2pm or 5pm to 6pm, and reads well beyond its price. Sorrento tomato tonnato with piattoni beans and capers, linguine with artichoke pesto and Amalfi lemon, then a Lavery mess. Our first South Kensington listing.
02 · Jazu Bar
Deptford
Two courses and a drink for £25 on Wednesdays, until 15 August only.
A hi-fi listening bar on Deptford High Street, horn speakers and a wall of vinyl, currently hosting a three-week Mallorcan kitchen residency. Every Wednesday evening until 15 August there is a £25 set: two courses and a drink, from a menu that runs to grilled octopus in a brioche bun with mojo rojo, squid-ink black rice with cuttlefish, and angel hair pasta baked in fish stock under charcoal-grilled prawns. The last ones are 5 and 12 August.
The Lavery is on All Set year round. Jazu comes off on 16 August, when the residency ends.