[title]
Presumably trying to capitalise on its Trafalgar Square location, Walkers of Whitehall aims to cover all bases. The first floor is a pub, the second floor is a sit-down dining room and below all that is a cocktail bar. Unfortunately, it’s a textbook jack of all trades, master of none.
The whole place was unnervingly quiet on a Friday evening; our fellow diners were mostly tourists, consulting tell-tale maps over plates of fish and chips. Regular pub grub aside, there’s a wider menu featuring dishes such as chicken with rose harissa and preserved lemons, plaice with capers and brown butter, and ’nduja croquettes with aioli.
Promising stuff, but alas – the croquettes were blandly lacking in spice, the aioli bereft of garlicky kick. Worse still was a portion of green beans, served with a dollop of that same aioli, and a dry short rib of beef that would probably have been salvaged with a more generous helping of gravy. Much better were the scallops, complemented by a scattering of samphire. But it was too little too late. Those tourists, it seems, had the right idea.