Balthazar

Keith McNally’s London outpost of the famous New York brasserie occupies Covent Garden’s historic Flower Cellars building, and it commits fully to the Parisian bistro look: high ceilings, gold trim, mirrors and a long, impressive bar that anchors the room the moment you walk in. It’s one of the more photogenic dining rooms in this part of London, which is exactly the point.

The menu is French brasserie through and through, built around an extensive shellfish selection, seafood towers and platters de fruits de mer alongside the expected steak frites, onion soup and moules. A £25.50 set menu, available Monday to Friday all day and from 5pm on Sundays, is genuinely good value given the surroundings and worth knowing about if the à la carte prices feel steep.

The wine list runs long and leans French, and the room’s energy, loud, busy, full of conversation bouncing off hard surfaces, is either part of the appeal or a genuine drawback depending on what kind of evening you’re after. This isn’t a restaurant for a quiet, intimate dinner; it’s built for people watching and being seen as much as for the food itself.

Mains run £18 to £38 depending on the cut or the seafood chosen, and a full dinner with wine will land around £60 to £80 a head outside the set menu window. It suits pre-theatre dinners given the location, groups celebrating something, and visitors who want the archetypal Covent Garden brasserie experience rather than somewhere quieter and more residential feeling.

The honest reality, echoed across a lot of reviews, is that Balthazar trades partly on reputation and setting rather than consistently exceptional cooking, portions can feel inconsistent between visits and prices sit on the higher side for what is, at its core, solid rather than outstanding brasserie food. Go for the atmosphere and the room, keep food expectations realistic. Reservations run through OpenTable and are recommended well ahead for weekend evenings.