London,

Andrew Edmunds

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Cuisine: British, Modern
Average price for a meal for two: Lunch £25; Dinner: £27

Service Charge: Optional 12.5 per cent on bills of over ?50

46 Lexington Street, W1F 0LW

Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus

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Charles Campion
Fay Maschler

 

Description: It may be small and "cramped", but this "eternally popular" Soho townhouse -- with its "quirky", "snug" and "Bohemian" charm -- remains many a Londoner's "No. 1 choice for romance"; its "lovely" staff serve up "simple", "straight-up" food, plus an "exceptional-value" wine list.

Food:    Service:    Ambience:   

Phone: 020 7437 5708

Open: 12.30pm to 3pm Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday 1pm to 3pm. Monday to Saturday 6pm to 10.45pm. Sunday 6pm to 10.30pm

Dress code: Casual

Good for: Romantic meals, Good food, Ambience.

Payment options: All major, except Diner's

 

 

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Grape expectations from Andrew Edmunds

 

Bottled up: Andrew Edmunds strikes the right balance between food and wine

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There are lots of reasons why a person might not like Andrew Edmunds: it’s small, busy and cramped; all the best tables are upstairs; downstairs, it’s poky and under-ventilated; outside there are just two tables exposed to a busy street.

The furniture is pretty haphazard. The tables are rickety, the pews a bit hard and the wicker seats of the bar stools fraying. There’s not much room anywhere, bags and coats get in the way, and you can hardly help but eavesdrop and be eavesdropped on in return.

And the service, although intelligent and friendly, can be pretty direct, the atmosphere being very much that you’re eating with people you know or might know, rather than that you’re the punter and they’re the nameless slavies. So if you don’t like that, you could very well not like Andrew Edmunds.

You might even find the food lacking in ambition if you’re the kind of chump who demands a lot of fuss and complication on your plate every time you eat out. There’s a limited kitchen here so the handwritten menu is short, the dishes are straightforward and there can be waits between courses. Food can even be served a bit tepid sometimes, which mysteriously infuriates some patriots, although it’s the best way to eat.

So, all in all, you probably won’t see, say, Michael Winner regaling himself here. What you will see instead are many of the more amiable faces of literary London, happily spending their own money, as they have been doing now for years. Plenty of these people find Andrew Edmunds about the most sympathetic venue in all London.

Being an old building, wood-floored, wood-ceilinged, with candles in bottles and paper tablecloths and napkins, it’s naturally romantic. The ambience is Hogarthian, not just Dickensian. But there’s more to it than that. Conversations tend to be intense here — maybe partly just because it’s so higgledy-piggledy and hugger-mugger.

The food is pretty good, though not the main point. From the starters recently, ranging from £3.25 for soup up to £7 for smoked halibut, a big baked king scallop (£6.75), on the shell, with chopped bayonne ham and lots of crunchy and very garlicky breadcrumbs, was delicious and disappeared in a flash. A tender, quite bloody pan-fried wild pigeon breast (£5.75) — Andrew Edmunds is big on game in season — came with a good watercress salad and “quince aïoli”. I last encountered this rawly garlicky paste served with the cheese course at Fig, quite inappropriately; here, it went surprisingly well with the meat.

From the mains, a big and well-judged piece of “Parmesan & parsley crusted line-caught cod fillet” (£14.50) was served simply with braised butter beans, spinach and salsa verde.
Roast rump of lamb (£17.50, the top price) was huge pink chunks, just right, with some Savoy cabbage and a yummy but again very garlicky dauphinoise.

A leg of farmed rabbit (£13.50) had been braised until soft with pancetta and white wine and came with mash and broccoli. Sane food, this, home-cooking done right, all good.

And it serves as a fine foil to the real focus — the great wine list. Andrew Edmunds offers really good value, mostly French wine at all levels. There aren’t many by the glass, because that would really be a waste, when the bottles appeal so much.

On the standard list, they open cheaply enough — the lovely southern red, Château Roubaud, Costières de Nîmes, is £15 a bottle, say, while the gloriously sappy Château Fouquet Dom Filliatrea Saumur is £17.50.

But then there’s a long, second list of “additional” wines, as they are understatedly described, which offers exceptional bottles at prices that seem scarcely marked up from auction, let alone retail, including many older vintages.
For oenophiles who want a memorable evening, it’s simply a much better deal to come here — where the food can’t go much over £30 a head — and put out on the wine list, than go almost anywhere else. They have the relative importance of food and wine right.

Likewise, it’s tempting to take your pudding in a glass here, too, when the list is so astonishingly varied and appealing — going all the way from an Antinori Vin Santo at just £2.35 for a small glass, via a Quarts de Chaume, some Eisweins, and a Jurançon, all the way up to two vintages (1983 and 1988) of Lafaurie-Peyraguey and finally three vintages of Château D’Yquem (’84, ’94, ’99) in half-bottles, at prices ranging from £90 to £105.

Bliss here, really. And, though it’s always booked out, they only take reservations a week in advance, day by day, so it’s not impossible. Although I hope it doesn’t suit everybody.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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