The East Room, EC2
London's best alfresco dining
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By Time Out Editors
Posted: Tue Jun 16 2009 -
Everyone loves a spot of outdoor dining and drinking, and London has plenty of cafés, bars and restaurants that let you take it outside. Though for every rose-trimmed terrace there's a caff with tables plonked next to traffic lights - so it helps to know where the good ones are. Here's our area-by-area alfresco guide
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Amphitheatre Bar Restaurant & Terrace
Royal Opera House, WC2E 9DD
Run by museum caterers Searcys 1847 on the upper floor of the Royal Opera House, the Alfresco Terrace isn’t well known to ordinary Londoners - but it’s open to anyone during the day, before being surrendered to ticket holders only in the evening. The L-shaped, covered terrace is divided between a bar area, where you can snack on marinated artichokes and olives or hams and terrines from the deli-style bar counter, and the 50-cover restaurant section where you can tuck into a special three-course summer lunch menu for £18.47. Views are impressive from both: you dine opposite Covent Garden’s covered market, and the Eye can be seen over the rooftops. The Mediterranean-slanted summer menu is now being served: try the likes of gilthead bream with sun-ripened tomatoes or Casterbridge onglet steak with watercress, finished off with mango and lavender trifle.
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Clerkenwell Kitchen
27-31 Clerkenwell Close, Clerkenwell, EC1R 0AT
Ever obliging, this daytime café will ring you if the weather turns nasty after you’ve booked one of the 25 courtyard tables. Take the risk: the alfresco area, in a quiet courtyard surrounded by tall office buildings, has a lovely flowerbed and perky sun umbrellas to enhance your enjoyment of the daily changing, seasonal, organic fare. You might catch roast pork belly with braised lentils and aïoli or chargrilled squid with potato, slow-roast tomato and black olive salad. Summer puddings are irresistible - try the meringues with strawberries or a ginger beer float. The Kitchen is licensed - a glass of house wine with your meal costs £3.25. Service is friendly and the atmosphere relaxed. If evening dining is more your style, check out the Thursday night openings. Read more
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Gallery Mess
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, Chelsea, SW3 4LY
The Saatchi Gallery has just opened this fabulous new brasserie. You can sit inside, surrounded by modern art, but the grounds outside are littered with portable tables until 6pm, if the weather’s fair. The catering is by Rhubarb, best known for its very upmarket event catering; no wonder our dishes looked like overgrown canapés. For example, a chargrilled chicken breast arrived with a mug-sized frying basket of chips (nicely moist inside, oil-free on the outside) for an added bit of ‘ooh’ factor. The lunch and dinner menu includes the expected salads, pastas and burger, but the specials are far more ambitious. Steamed salmon was served up in a yellow ‘curry’ broth that tasted like 1970s kedgeree; a playfully flavoured dish, with the fish nicely cooked. Saddle of lamb was presented like a steak, drizzled with a zigzag of yoghurt; beneath it was couscous flavoured with red pepper and jasmine-infused sultanas. For dessert, the knickerbocker glory was a triumph. The sundae glass was stuffed with good quality fruit-flavoured ices and topped with a freshly made, buttery shortbread biscuit, instead of the usual cardboard-like wafer. Read more
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The Modern Pantry
47-48 St John's Square, Clerkenwell, EC1V 4JJ
Anna Hansen’s Clerkenwell restaurant, situated in a magnificent Grade II-listed Georgian building, boasts a smattering of alfresco tables deployed on St John’s Square. Far enough from the noise and exhaust fumes of Clerkenwell Road but still close enough to people-watch, this is a great option for a spot of outdoor dining (particularly once they get their sun umbrellas, possibly in July). The globetrotting menu is particularly suited to dining in the sun - Hansen’s signature sugar-cured prawn omelette speaks of South East Asian sunshine, while refreshing flavour combinations, such as pan-fried cod with umeboshi and beetroot purée, are summer on a plate. Read more
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Serpentine Bar & Kitchen
Serpentine Road, Hyde Park, Mayfair, W2 2UH
Although our meals here in recent weeks have been hit or miss, the location is still delightful. The Garden Terrace, right next to the swans, ducks and pedalos of Hyde Park’s Serpentine lake, is the real stunner. The Perimeter Terrace, which is wrapped around the premises, offers a little shelter against inclement weather. In total, up to 300 park-lifers can be accommodated. The decor is pleasingly countrified: rustic wooden crates and baskets of fruit, floral lampshades and colourful bunting; tin buckets of fresh herbs and flowers on the tables. Most exciting is the way caterer Benugo is planning to cope with the inevitable peak-time crowding. A classic Citroën H ice-cream van and Garden Bar should be providing outdoor service later in the summer, and until then, on weekends, a series of gazebos will be serving cuts from a whole pig, slow-roasted overnight in a wood-fired oven and stuffed into buns with rocket. The latest innovation? A tuk-tuk Thai rickshaw dispensing coffee. Read more
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The Terrace
Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, WC2A 3LJ
It’s officially first-come, first-served for the dozen alfresco tables at The Terrace, an eco-conscious, kit-built restaurant by the tennis courts of dappled Lincoln’s Inn Fields. On weekdays it’s the legal fraternity that makes the most of chef Patrick Williams’s menu of crowd-pleasers (caramelised onion tarte tatin with goat’s cheese, seared salmon with poached egg and bacon), enlivened by occasional forays into modernised Caribbean dishes (jerk chicken with mango salad, curried mutton with rice and peas) or simply Caribbean inflections (mussels with sweet potato and coconut broth, rum-and-raisin cheesecake). This is also a great destination on balmy evenings and before work, when breakfasts of pancakes, eggs and yoghurt are served, but you can also linger over a three-course lunch for £18.95. Read more
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4 comments
Yep...interesting places but far from best alfresco fine dining...
I'd suggest Coq D'Argent (Bank tube) - amazing beautiful terrace and great food...Check out 'In the Park' - lovey there! (St James) ....The Salt House (Abbey Road)...+ many more
NW - NW- NW- NW
Wow, Glad that North London is getting typical comprehensive coverage...
Good Job to be honest,
But I am pretty sure that N4, N16 and N5 exist.... but not in the ultra cool world of Timeout...
Just how do you get a job as a Timeout reviewer?
I'm sure I could do it, as long as I had my imagination removed.
I also do not see the RIBA restaurant and cafe's gorgeous terrace on the list. I was there yesterday and it is like a grand oasis on a hot day.
I can't believe you've overlooked the Tree House in your dining outside piece. It's easily the best food in easily the best setting.
Please send someone and do a proper review if you don't believe me.