Lady of the Grapes has launched a new restaurant in London Bridge, offering an expanded menu that celebrates exceptional dining and unique organic wines crafted exclusively by female winemakers. With inviting decor and attentive service, this destination promises an unforgettable culinary experience.
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ou may have heard of Lady of the Grapes, an organic wine bar in Covent Garden opened in 2018. The powerhouse minds behind this bar have come together yet again and created a new restaurant in London Bridge that offers a fuller menu, as opposed to the sharing and cheese plates you’ll find at the smaller Covent Garden location.
Lady of the Grapes’ mission is to ‘[create] exceptional dining and wine experiences in a warm and welcoming atmosphere’, and they’ve simply knocked it out of the park. Not only can you enjoy delicious foods and unique wines here, but you can also feel good about whom you’re supporting and the ingredients you’re consuming. Lady of the Grapes champions wines exclusively made by female winemakers around the world, with a focus on organic, biodynamic, and minimal-intervention wines. For those of us who aren’t certified sommeliers, this means that their wines have little to no added sulphites and no unnecessary additives, so you’ll find interesting colours and flavours in this wine that you may never have tried before.
Walking into Lady of the Grapes’ new location, you will be immediately greeted both by staff and by their stunning interiors, where industrial warehouse meets rustic farmhouse. Their gorgeous, vintage wooden floors are complemented by exposed brick, white steel structural beams, and hanging wine bottle lightbulbs made by owner Carole Bryon herself.
The staff is incredibly welcoming, with both host Alexander and waiter Oscar tag-teaming to help meet our every need and answer our every question. They’re ready and willing to walk you through the menu, both the food and wine sides, providing recommendations and giving a history of the ingredients and the wine-making processes.
We began with aperitifs and fresh Utah Beach oysters from Normandy, France, served alongside a house-made mignonette. A strong start to the meal, the aperitifs were crisp, bubbly, and not too sweet, and the oysters were incredibly fresh, smooth, and paired beautifully with the acidic vinaigrette.
Next up we had the pissaladière on toasted sourdough; typically a flatbread or tart hailing from Provence, pissaladière is topped with caramelised onions, olives, and anchovies. I had two expectations in seeing this dish: that the thick-cut sourdough crust would be difficult to cut through, as it often is, and that the mix of both anchovies and olives would render the dish too salty. I was immediately proved wrong on both counts. This dish is perfectly balanced, buttery, rich, and has a stunning umami from the Cantabrian anchovies. The sourdough is soft and lightly crisp, and the dish just toes the line of too much salt but hovers exactly at the correct amount.
The brioche au pistou equally blew us away; a homemade slice of pesto-infused brioche bread smothered in pea salad, a poached egg, and a heap of shaved parmesan, this dish is the epitome of simple food done well. The bread is herbaceous and buttery, balanced by the fresh, light pea and radish salad, pulled together by the superbly runny egg, and salted by the parmesan snow. It’s summery, fresh, light, and everything you want in an appetiser.
For mains, we ordered the poached trout and the monkfish in bouillabaisse, paired with glasses of their house Grüner Veltliner. The wine was unlike any white we’d had before; it was cloudy in appearance and almost tasted of a cider, the result of a lack of filtering and additives I imagine, but was also extremely mild, mellow, and refreshing. The trout arrives expertly cooked sitting on a bed of corn, mussels, sea beans, and butter sauce. The flavours are nothing short of outstanding; the butter sauce is luxurious, the corn adds a fresh sweet pop, and the mussels and sea beans add an oceanic salinity that transports you right to the coast. The monkfish was intriguing; while it wasn’t initially a favourite, once you get a bite that includes the fish, the sautéed rainbow chard, the bouillabaisse, and the rouille (a garlic-saffron mayonnaise of sorts), the genius of the chef truly shines through. You may not love to eat these components on their own, but creating such a symphony from such interesting and contrasting flavours is an absolute feat. Sometimes referred to as the ‘poor man’s lobster,’ monkfish is quite meaty unlike other, flakier white fish options. It stands up well to the robust, smoky bouillabaisse, the hearty greens, and the rich rouille. The Isle of Wright tomato salad was recommended to us as an accompaniment, and it is anything but an afterthought. The tomatoes are fresh and sturdy, doused in a delicious, herbal, acidic vinaigrette.
Of course, with a French head chef in the kitchen, the dessert course comes with high expectations. Chef Matyas saw those expectations and said, ‘Joke’s on you—it’s going to be even better.’ To start with third place: the frangipane tart at any other restaurant would have been great, but at a place that set our standards so high, it fell ever so slightly flat. Reading ‘frangipane tart with seasonal berries’, I pictured an almond-forward tart with some berries on the side. This is more akin to a berry tart with a few dollops of frangipane inside. It’s quite tart on its own, making the tangy side of crème fraiche redundant and rendering the dish overly sour.
Madeleines are one of my favourite desserts, so obviously I had to order one—and the wonderful thing is that you can order just one for £3. I did a self-guided tour of Parisian bakeries recently, hunting for the best madeleine; this one was a thousand times better. It was crisp on the outside, fluffy and warm on the inside, and had a delicate vanilla touch.
But the star of the night, the apple of my eye, the dish that will be dancing in my dreams for weeks to come: the Paris-Brest with hazelnut cream. Made with two layers of pâte à choux dough—an incredibly difficult dough to master—and generously filled with a hazelnut cream and some sort of caramelly almond butter-esque drizzle, this dessert is a revelation. The cream is addictively nutty, the perfect cold temperature without becoming too firm, and decadently creamy. The toasted sliced almonds on top add a gorgeous, slight bitterness which rounds out the bite flawlessly.
Lady of the Grapes is undoubtedly a destination worth travelling for. They say that ‘At the heart of everything we do is a passion for authentic and memorable experiences,’ and that’s precisely what they’ve created here. And circle your diaries, because come September there may or may not be a speakeasy opening in their basement…
