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One of 14 brasseries rolled out by The Ivy, the St John’s Wood Café has all the gorgeous art deco detailing, monogrammed tableware and slick service that’s made the brand’s aggressive expansion such a roaring success. You might not rub shoulders with an actual celebrity the way you would have done back in the original Covent Garden Ivy’s heyday, but visiting this branch still feels like a treat.
The food though? The Ivy’s never had pretensions to haute cuisine – the speciality here is top-notch British comfort food – but a lobster and prawn cocktail was distinctly average and shepherd’s pie, an Ivy classic, had great flavour, but seemed a little small.
A beautifully zingy duck and watermelon salad made up for things though, as did the deservedly famous chocolate bombe. A perfect sphere of dark chocolate atop a bed of milk foam, it arrived with a dainty silver jug of hot caramel sauce. Honestly, pouring that sauce is better than sex – the bombe collapses on impact in a kind of ecstasy of creamy molten lava. The whole thing tasted like praline-laced heaven.
Niggles aside, this Ivy Café’s ambiance definitely hits the sweet spot. So, go for that, and don’t forget to order that explosive bombe.