A review of Wild Honey

Wild Honey
Feb 2010

So you’re in central London, Regents Street say on a Saturday lunchtime, and you’ve been doing a bit of shopping and Hamleys is too much to bear and you’re feeling a bit peckish. Well obviously you could go for a panini in Costa, or a sandwich, or even a MacDonalds. But let’s just say you fancy a nice, little, well priced restaurant for three courses and a bottle of wine, what are your options?

Well there’s Sketch, if you can get a table, and oh yes, I said well priced didn’t I? OK what about Hibiscus, no, although it’s great and has a really well priced set lunch, it’s a bit too high end with their two Michelin Stars. What you need is Wild Honey. Not far off Regents Street, an intimate oak panelled galley of a restaurant, eat at the bar for the sweet and savoury menu or do like the Mrs and I did, book a table.

On a Saturday it seems to be full of ladies who lunch with their delightfully scrummy daughters, mothers and sons and a few business types. The set lunch menu is compact but at £18.95 is great value for a Michelin Star restaurant. The menu ran like this: starters potato soup (I beg your pardon, isn’t that just really watery mash? - er no actually it’s really good intense potato flavour with a mushroom duxelle - er isn’t that really a mushroom soup? Well, yes sort of but it was very nice) or pressed chicken and smoked eel. Mains were risotto of wild sea bass and venison cottage pie and for afters there was a floating island or a piece of cheese.

Strangely for us the Mrs and I went for different options on each course, so we had the lot. The potato soup was a triumph, the chicken and smoked eel light but intense. The risotto was really green, the greenest green I’ve ever seen, and for no real reason it seemed, it was delicious but it didn’t taste of green. My cottage pie was full of flavour and a great use of leftovers. I will always order a floating island when I see one, I love it, and I loved this one, so much that the table next to me sensed my delight and ordered it too. The Mrs had the cheese, this seems like an anti-climax but it wasn’t, I think it’s a really good idea to have one of the house cheeses on the set lunch menu.

This is not Wild Honey’s only good idea. All of their wines (with the exception of the really pricey ones) are available in a third of a bottle carafes. This means that you can select a good selection of wines to match you courses at an affordable price. Another good idea is the Sweet And Savoury menu available at the bar, good nibble and drinks at a good price in a wonderful environment.

Oh yes, Wild Honey is the name of a play by Anton Chekhov and it would be his 150th birthday. Good work Anton, and good work Wild Honey.

ADDENDUM
I have since revisited Wild Honey (Dec 2010) for lunch with my Mum, and apart from being very crowded it maintained its high standards, the cheese-board was excellent as was a really imaginative pear and prosecco aperitif.