Restaurants: a near perfect lunch at Chez Bruce, Wandsworth Common, London
Website: https://www.chezbruce.co.uk/
What do you want from a restaurant experience? It really depends. Sometimes you want gastronomic challenge. Sometimes you want comfort. You always want appropriate service and expertise in the kitchen. Sometimes you want good value, other times you are not so price conscious. Personally, I always want a good wine list, and that doesn’t mean a big wine list with fancy or rare things on it, but a wine list appropriate for the establishment, with a well chosen selection. The perfect meal is multifaceted and elusive, and is much more than flavours on a plate.
Yesterday’s lunch at Chez Bruce in Wandsworth came close to being the perfect meal. [Close enough is good enough for me: I don’t like to call anything ‘perfect’ without some sort of qualification, in case I meet something better.] It was a horrible, grey day with incessant rain, and Wandsworth Common is a schlep from just about anywhere, but immediately we arrived it felt like somewhere special. I’ve been to Chez Bruce many times, but it felt so reassuring to be sitting in this place again. It’s fancy but approachable: white tablecloth, but easy. Accessible, but very professional.
This is the neighbourhood restaurant that every neighbourhood wants. Since 1999 it has held a Michelin star, and this takes some doing. [Stars, of course, aren’t everything, and I’m not someone who seeks out three or two star places. One seems to be the sweet spot; gain a second and expectations and prices rise, and something changes.] Fortunately, Chez Bruce have enough lunching locals to keep this place busy at both lunch and dinner. And over the years the experiences I’ve had here have been consistently good, and consistency is everything in a high-end restaurant.
So, to lunch. During December, there’s no discounted lunch menu (normally it’s £39.50 for two courses and £47.50 for three), so you pay the full whack price of £67 for three courses. This, of course, is not cheap, but the cooking lives up to this, and beyond it. Variety, presentation, execution and flavour all combine on the plate, and service is spot on, too.
How do you describe the food here? Modern, with creative twists on classic themes. French influenced, but not French. It’s not experimental, but it’s deeply reassuring and delicious.
The wine list is legit. Every bottle here earns its place, but the overall feel of the list is classic. There are some lovely wines here, but the closest it gets to straying into more natural territory is with a couple of the Beaujolais choices. This is a wine list put together by someone who knows a lot about wine, and it isn’t going to scare the locals. Margins are enough to keep the lights on, but not gougey. The cheapest bottle is in the high thirties, but most of the action is in the £70-£110 range where you can’t go far wrong. Again, this isn’t a place to come to eat and drink cheaply, but it’s absolutely worth it if you have the budget.
We ate very well. Starters were an old friend, the miso-glazed aubergine (pictured above), which is insanely good, and a confit rabbit cavatelli which was also insanely good.
Then for the main course, two beautifully executed dishes. Flavourful, textured chicken and a nicely cooked piece of cod with a crusted top. Both dishes had accompaniments that worked really well, and sauces that added without overpowering.
Then desserts that were surprisingly good. I say surprisingly, because it’s rare that you taste desserts and they come out on top in terms of skill and execution on any menu. But these were out of this world.
Wine? As always, so hard to choose just one bottle, but we went for the Never Been Asked to Dance Chenin Blanc 2022 from Duncan Savage. Duncan is probably better known these days for his reds (which are certainly in the very top tier of South African wines), but he gained his fame at Cape Point with whites, and this Chenin is in a very tight peer group with the best from the Cape.
I’d absolutely recommend Chez Bruce for anyone who wants to see just how good restaurants can be in London, without shelling out insane amounts for the trendiest tasting menu joints. [Also highly recommended is sister restaurant La Trompette in Chiswick, which is under the same Poole/Platts-Martin ownership, as was the excellent Glasshouse in Kew which sadly closed a few years back.]
