Le Cafe Anglais

The notes below are from the soft opening in November 2007. 

Tables are admittedly quite small, so much so that when our main course arrived they had to put the wine and bread basket on the neighbouring table (no fear, this was still within easy reach). Starters are mostly around £7, main courses £15 - £21, with vegetables extra at £3, desserts are £4.50 - £7.50. Bizarrely there is a cover charge of £1.50, an unpleasant habit I had hoped had died out. All you get for this is some white or brown slices of (decent but unexciting) bread. There are in fact several hors d’oeuvres, but these are £3 extra. I tried the mackerel teriyaki, a rare departure from the fairly classical menu, and this had good mackerel, a quite light version of teriyaki sauce and a roll of slightly pickled cucumber (15/20). 

Service was amiable but disorganised. Wine was erratically topped up, and when I left most of my dessert (see later) the waiter merely smiled and removed the dish without asking whether there was any problem. The wine list is entirely old world, with France and Italy featuring and a few German wines e.g. we had the excellent Maximin Grunhauser Riesling Spatlese 2000 Von Schubert for £36 (retail price £8.58 if you look carefully). Louis Roederer champagne is £55, Jaboulet 2004 Petite Hermitage 2004 £65 (retail £24.83). They had the annoying habit of selling dessert wine by 100ml measures rather than 125ml without declaring this, though they were very nice about it when I pointed this out, and perhaps this will change (editor's note: it now has).

A starter of eel salad had frissee lettuce, smoked eel served unusually as thin slices, and a few pieces of bacon. This was pleasant enough, though I’d have preferred the eel in more conventional pieces, where its texture in particular would be more apparent (13/20). Pumpkin soup tasted of pumpkin, but had a watery stock base, and was a little over-sweet. This was served with pieces of cheddar cheese and good croutons as garnish (12/20). Dover sole was roasted correctly and attractively presented whole at the table; it did not have especially great taste but was served with a good bearnaise sauce (14/20). My French partridge was the best dish, nicely roasted, served with Savoy cabbage leaves that unfortunately suffered from the top one being burnt to a crisp, with some more bacon (15/20 if I pretend the cabbage did not happen).

Further reviews: 27th Jan 2014 | 01st Aug 2009 | 01st Dec 2008