Tonight:
9°c
Some fares could fall by more than a third when Oyster is extended to every national rail station in London, it has emerged
More...
New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
David Sexton's rating
Reader rating
Description: The summer-2007 offshoot of Arbutus offers essentially the same foodie-pleasing formula of well-priced cuisine, and interesting wines by the carafe, but in the more elegant surroundings of a panelled Mayfair dining room; on an early-days visit, the cooking was rather inconsistent.
Food: 
Service: 
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7758 9160
Website: http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk
Open: Open daily, noon-2.30pm (12.30-3.30pm Sunday) and 5.30-10.30pm (9.30pm Sunday)
Dress code: Smart
Good for: Business, Good food, Ambience.
Payment options: All major cards accepted
Seat yourself: diners can either book a table or eat at Wild Honey's bar
Choice is, I think, enormously overrated in almost every aspect of life. For one thing, as soon as you've made your choice, your choice is gone. I once had a very sweet girlfriend who could never bear to let the choice go in restaurants. After a tremendous amount of dithering about what she'd really like to have, we'd finally order. Then, almost invariably, she'd call the waiter back so she could change her mind, usually more than once.
Though dementing, I think this behaviour grew from a touching wish to somehow keep all the possibilities open for as long as possible, rather than settle for the limitations of any one thing. on the other hand, a nasty woman I used to know made choosing in a restaurant into psychological warfare, like everything else she did. She would only ever make her choice after knowing what mine was and then, rather than simply going for what she actually wanted, her response was somehow meant as a put-down. Naturally, in the terminal stages of this relationship I'd lie about what I intended to have until ordering so as to wrongfoot the enemy.
There is a simple solution to such horrors: the set menu - the straightforward, sane meal that only places committed to feeding their customers well, repeatedly, rather than showing off once, tend to get right.
By common consent the restaurants offering the best-value set lunches in London are sister restaurants Arbutus in Soho and Wild Honey on the Mayfair side of Regent Street, run by Anthony Demettre and Will Smith. Their cooking is all about using undervalued, good British ingredients in a sophisticated French cuisine - so the economies of a set lunch are the perfect expression of their style.
Three courses, with two choices for each, cost just £15.50 and there is absolutely no skimping on the care and skill of the cooking or the generosity of the portions. Nor the service or décor - Wild Honey, where Marco Pierre White's Drones club used to be, is a particularly handsome oak-panelled room with inviting banquettes and cosy booths.
Yet, much as Demettre and Smith evidently believe in these set meals, they must be intended as loss-leaders too - showing people what the restaurant can do knowing that they are then likely to come back and perhaps explore the more profitable carte.
For these lunches don't seem to alter much - it's not at all a menu of the market or a plât du jour set-up. For starters there might be either a vegetable soup or a sliced meat: last week, at Wild Honey, "thinly sliced lamb breast, celeriac remoulade", served warm, fatty and tender, with dashes of emerald green parsley purée decorating the plate and a mound of first-rate remoulade in the middle, with emphatically long strands of celeriac in a mustardy dressing. It was excellent but the cut was familiar from another meal at Arbutus in the spring, where it had been served with pecorino cheese in place of the vegetable.
For main courses there is fish - often pollack, it being a considerable testament to the kitchens here that they make this fish seem, at least temporarily, worthwhile - or meat. "Rabbit leg à la moutarde, carrots and gnocchi" was fantastically good - five smallish chunks of farmed rabbit, scented with tarragon, with a classically mild, slightly creamy sauce, perfectly textured gnocchi, small carrots with a little green left on top, and some fresh peas and skinned broad beans in the mix too.
Timings are precise here: both the vegetables and the meat were so differently flavoursome, yielding but not oversoftened.
For puddings there seems almost invariably a choice either of a yummy "floating island, pink praline" or a single cheese from La Fromagerie - last time at Arbutus, Morbier, this time at Wild Honey, Montgomery cheddar, served with three kinds of oatcake, grapes and a perfumed but slightly pointless dash of wild honey for a signature.
Both restaurants have inventive wine lists, offering nearly 50 bottles by the 250ml carafe, the measure now of one big pub glass but enough for two sober tightwads to have a splash each - and the cheapest red, Pegoes, Santo Isidro Tinto, from Setúbal in Portugal, is rich, ripe and full, great value at £4.25. So, drink this and tap water, and the bill, £35.25 plus 12.5 per cent service, will be under the £40 mark for two. You can then leave feeling happy in every way, as if you've been indulged yet modest.
It can't be said this amazing value hasn't been fully discovered. Wild Honey is pretty busy, but you can also walk in and eat the same food at the handsome onyx bar. Your choice. Mine, too.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I agree 100% with Scott.
- Gaye, hove
"By common consent the restaurants offering the best-value set lunches in London are sister restaurants Arbutus in Soho and Wild Honey on the Mayfair side of Regent Street, run by Anthony Demettre and Will Smith."
This is far from agreed. Cheap is not the same as good value. Just as expensive is not bad value exclusively either.
By common consent, and reference to any number of foodie websites etc. the most common name is Le Gavroche for value set lunch.
- Scott, london
