A splendid lunch with friends (review of the Newman tavern)

Some friends and I organised a reunion lunch to mark that fact that our good friends, Simon and Sarah, were home for a visit from LA.  We decided to meet at the Newman Street Tavern in Central London.

On arrival, I was quite taken with the design of the interior which is quirky but comfortable.  Having said that, I was very quickly distracted by a chilled glass of bubbly and an excess of good company.

The staff were friendly and quick to keep topping up our glasses (this is always a plus in my eyes!)  Having checked the restaurant’s website in advance, we had already decided to opt for the fixed price menu (£38.00).  This included a range of starters to share, a choice of main course and a pudding or cheese platter.

The range of starters was home smoked wild trout, charcuterie platter, tomato salad and Colchester rock oysters.  I make no secret of the fact that I can’t bear oysters but everyone else seemed to love them and they were beautifully presented.  Despite having denied myself one of the starters, there was still plenty to be shared from the rest but my absolute favourite was the simplest, the tomato salad.

For my main course, I chose the Spelt Risotto with wild greens and Ticklemore.  I had no idea what ticklemore was but the name tickled me (see what I did there??) and I guessed correctly that it was some kind of cheese (Goat’s cheese in fact).  Another factor in choosing this dish was that I have never, to the best of my knowledge, tried spelt.  Turns out it is highly nutritious grain with a deep nut flavour and really is rather lovely.  The other main choices were new season lamb with peas and broad beans, Helford day boat fish and middle white pork, porchetta style (whatever that means).

Having perused all the options and carried out full inspections of my friends’ plates, I had no regrets about choosing the spelt as it was a truly scrummy dish.

By this stage, I will confess to being more than a little full but as the dessert was included, it really wasn’t an option to forgo it!

We got to choose from Sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce, Ayrshire cardamom Kulfi, lemon cheesecake or cheese.  Bizarrely, despite my fullness, I opted for the sticky toffee pudding, which is never for the faint hearted.  Despite my expectations, it really wasn’t heavy at all and it was both moist and delicious

Overall, our unanimous decision was that Newman Street Tavern had delivered on our expectations and was definitely worth another visit in the future.