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Description: Near the Guildhall, this plain newcomer -- presided over by the former manager of Sweetings -- opened in the summer of 2007; on our early-days visit, prices seemed high, and we weren't quite convinced the club-classics-with-a-twist cuisine really lived up.
Food: 
Service:
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7600 4799
Website: http://www.molloysrestaurant.co.uk
Open: Mon - Fri 12:30pm - 3:30pm & 6pm - 9:30pm
Dress code: Smart casual
Good for: Business, Good food, Ambience.
Payment options: All major cards accepted
Owner Patrick Molloy describes his latest venture as his ideal restaurant
Despite living in loud, louche, lovely London for an eternity, the City remains a foreign land to me. This geographical Temple of Mammon holds on to its secrets, only unfolding them for the favoured few who roam its streets with stern-browed intent during the day and boozed-up raucousness at night.
Armoured in dark, sharp suiting and purposeful shoes, they're a race apart - maybe it's something to do with the multi-nought bonuses.
Even the restaurants and drinking dens seem somehow separate from the rest of town. Where regular London has embraced all sorts of designery, fusiony nonsenses, the City's establishments come across more like members' clubs: masculine, impenetrable, shrouded in eccentricity and tradition.
Where else would somewhere such as Sweetings thrive? Where you can only eat on weekdays between the hours of 11.30am and 3pm? Where it's regularly rammed with redfaced chaps jostling for unbookable seats at the bar - and where the house tipple is the arcane Black Velvet, half champagne, half Guinness, served in a metal tankard?
The City is a place where Irish émigré Patrick Molloy clearly feels like a native. Previously chef and then manager of the venerable Sweetings, he also has what he describes as his 'ideal restaurant' in Molloy's - again in the heart of The Square Mile, in an attractive block looking on to the Guildhall.
On a sultry evening, the area seems even more foreign than usual. Gresham Street is deserted apart from a clot of suits outside a featureless office block pub. If a ball of tumbleweed drifted past us, we wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Quite often, as an inevitable part of this gig, I find myself eating at the only occupied table in a new restaurant. On a school night in this most early closing part of town, we resign ourselves to a solitary dinner.
The ground-floor bar, a long pale expanse, is predictably deserted. We are swiftly wafted upstairs to the dining room by Molloy himself and - surprise - it is bustling with diners. Molloy's satisfied Sweetings customers have clearly followed him like happy sheep. Hardly surprising: he's the most avuncular and suave of hosts, making you feel like a treasured regular even when he's never previously clapped eyes on you.
The room itself is rather lovely (apart from some slightly dodgy light fittings): an almost austere, high-ceilinged, creamy space with great windows open to let in some of the steamy night air. Molloy appears to have scooped up some of London's longest-serving staff, such as head waiter Antonio Mendes, a pleasantly lugubrious chap who worked for two decades at Odette's in Primrose Hill before it was fancified. It's quite nice to be in the hands of an old pro for a change.
Chef is Steve Evenett-Watts, whose CV includes stints at Villandry and the legendary River CafÈ. Despite admitting that City tastes are something of a challenge for the ambitious chef - yep, all that stuff about the money men loving comfort food is, it turns out, true - his monthly changing menu is a quality doc. Produce is key (steaks, for instance, are hung for 28 days) and Evenett-Watts's trick is to turbo-charge apparent simplicity with some killer ingredients.
So the deceptively banal calf's liver with onion gravy comes with a slab of the most glorious bacon I've tasted; half an inch thick, it's smoky, tender and quite magnificent.
I kick off with foie gras, seared into toasty stickiness and plonked on a disc of very thin, very friable pastry; it comes with bittersweet caramelised endive and a slick of apple jam - almost dessert-like in its richness. Smoked salmon (there's that simplicity thing) is of unimpeachable quality.
OK, so its accompaniments of blini and horseradish cream verge on the hackneyed but all clichés come into being for a reason - the combination works like a charm. Something of the locals' love for nursery food must have rubbed off because we both have puddings: luscious, home-made ginger ice cream and lemon tart with excellent flavour but soggy base.
Only one dish really doesn't work: cod (I don't ask about provenance because I'm too worried that sad-looking Antonio might weep if it's not from sustainable sources) served with pungent, heady, smoked garlic cream. Sadly, its cannellini beans are tough little bullets - either not soaked for long enough or salted too early in the cooking process. Big tick for not using tinned, however.
Molloy has the amazing knack of being on hand at all times, perhaps a legacy from his crowd-control days at Sweetings.
He's definitely enamoured of his new venture, rhapsodising about the bacon, enthusing about the jazz club which will be opening in the basement (with separate entrance) at the end of the month and making sure that everyone in the room is having a good time. It appears they are.
Marina O'Loughlin
A meal for two with wine, water and service costs about £110. 48 Gresham Street EC2.
Tel: 020 7600 4799. Tube: Bank
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
