Whitechapel Gallery Cafe-Bar

2 Reviews on “Whitechapel Gallery Cafe-Bar”

• Gabriela Oliveira

  The service was a little slow but the food was quite good. Nice place.

  March 23, 2012, 3:38 pm

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• NunheadNeil

  Great food, lovely dining room.. We had visited the Whitechapel Gallery Dining Room earlier this year when Maria Elia was the head chef and we had a lovely meal. It’s now headed up by Michael Paul but we had heard good things so we decided to jump on the East London line and head across town for a Saturday supper with our old tennis partner Esther and B’s university chum, the delightful Carmen.As dining rooms go this is one of my favourites. Situated right next door to Aldgate East tube station you reach the restaurant through the gallery entrance and the main dining room is immediately on the right with a small private room, seating about ten, on your left. It’s a small intimate room, with lovely lighting and well-spaced tables which look out onto a very busy Whitechapel High Street. I’d guess it would seat in the region of thirty or so at full capacity but on this particular Saturday it was pretty quiet which is odd given the quality of the food, the excellent dining experience and the reasonable prices.However, this definitely worked to our advantage when Carmen eventually joined us only 45 minutes late with Tory Boy in tow. The lovely waitress Helena, who showed great patience with us all evening, quickly accommodated our unexpected guest by pushing a couple of tables together and we decamped to the other side of the room and set about ordering from the nicely balanced menu which has moved away from the vegetarian focus it had previously when Maria was in control.Esther was slightly gutted as she had been on the web site earlier in the day and had already made her choice from the sample menu they had posted on-line. However, the menu on Saturday night was much changed, with only a couple of the dishes from the sample menu remaining. I took this to be a good sign and there were plenty of great dishes amongst the choice of four starters and four mains to agonize over. Helena was very helpful and provided excellent but unobtrusive advice.I started with the scallops with cauliflower pure and crispy pancetta which was a classic combination, beautifully cooked and presented on a slate platter. I had a nibble of Carmen’s choice of ham hock and fois gras terrine with kohlrabi slaw which was rich, robust and full of flavour. B was also pretty pleased with her beetroot and cardamom marinated smoked salmon.We were washing this down with the 2009 Santo Isidro White which was crisp and fragrant at a very reasonable 14.25 per bottle which made a refreshing change to the entry level wine at 20 plus a bottle which seems to be becoming all too common in London restaurants. As Esther was going to Bordeaux next week and she was thinking of taking her pals some English wine we also tried a bottle of 2009 Chapel Down Flint Dry which was fine but I think you can drink much better French wine at 25 a go.Anyway, we were soon onto the mains and my breast of guinea fowl with a madeira jus was just perfect and even better was the little dish of turnip-topped shepherd’s pie which came as an accompaniment – a touch of genius and extremely tasty. Food envy could have been the order of the day because all the other mains also looked great and Tory Boy was raving about his sea bass with clam chowder. We shared a couple of sides of potatoes and various vegetables which also went down very well. Presentation and execution was again spot on.Very happy by this point in the proceedings we moved on to desserts and while my bitter chocolate tart with a poached clementine was mighty fine I found myself wishing I had gone for the pear and apple crumble with butterscotch sauce as I watched Esther scraping every last morsel from her bowl.It was an espresso for me while the other guys had a variety of herbal teas and I ordered a single glass of a very tasty Pedro Ximenez Triana so the ladies could have a try of this fine digestif.The icing on the cake was that, even on a Saturday night, we could use B’s Taste London card so we got a very helpful 30 off the bill.A great evening and we will, without a doubt, be back before too long.

  February 14, 2011, 8:52 pm

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