Theatre menus get a bad rap.
Seeing a show, we have accepted, means three courses of mediocre food and overpriced house wine gobbled down in 40 minutes in Leicester Square. Either you eat before and panic-sprint to your seats, enduring a first half of dramatic heartburn, or you wait until after the show finishes, ignoring your rumbling stomach. This is unnecessary. Excellent set menus abound in the West End, with dozens of spots offering non-touristy courses of loveliness that befit a person of your theatre-going intellect.
Cafe Murano
By all means, come to Angela Hartnett’s Cafe Murano for the delightful pre-theatre set menu — £20 for grilled leeks with anchovy and bagna cauda, followed by fennel sausages with braised borlotti beans and harissa, is about as good as it gets in Covent Garden. But darling, all the real aficionados know to reconvene here for a gossip after the show, thanks to what is undeniably the chicest post-theatre offering out there: from 9.30pm-11pm, a late night supper of rigatoni carbonara and a glass of wine for £18. (cafemurano.co.uk)
Nopi
You know that irritating person in the audience whose stomach growls as it desperately tries to digest three hastily swallowed courses of meat and carbs? Don’t be them. Go to Nopi. The Soho restaurant has a £25.50 veg-centric set theatre menu of classic Ottolenghi dishes — roasted aubergine with tamarind yoghurt, preserved lemon and cashews; cauliflower and green bean fritters with tahini — all light enough to prevent you spending the first half mentally planning tomorrow’s crash diet. (ottolenghi.co.uk)
Bocca di Lupo
Please don’t go to Bocca di Lupo. Because if you do, I won’t be able to sidle into a seat at the bar at 6.30pm before curtains up and that would be a tragedy. 6.30pm, you ask? Surely that’s cutting it fine for a 7.30pm performance? Wrong. With Bocca’s pre-theatre offer, there’s no messing about. It gets straight to the point, uninterrupted by stressful toe-tapping intervals between courses. For £10, you get a single daily changing dish of Jacob Kenedy’s flawless food: say spaghetti with confit tuna or tropea onions and datterini tomatoes, say. You have a glass of wine. And within 30 minutes, you leave, about as happy as can be. (boccadilupo.com)
Frenchie
Frenchie is not where you bring your granny en route to Les Mis. Frenchie serves smoked sea bream tartare with chive sabayon, kohlrabi and horseradish — and that’s just on the pre-theatre menu. It is fancy, with fancy prices to match (two courses for £29, three for £32). But it’s also really good modern French food, and if you’ve splashed out on tickets to Dear Evan Hansen, a little Welsh venison leg with quince and trompettes would hardly go amiss. (frenchiecoventgarden.com)
Hawksmoor Seven Dials
There are lots of places in Covent Garden where you can eat bad steak. Steer clear and go here instead. But, erm, not if you want to stay awake throughout the performance. The pre-theatre set menu is £25 for two courses, £28 for three, which means you’ll be having the potted beef and bacon with Yorkies, the 35-day aged rump and triple cooked chips and the peanut butter shortbread, followed by a little nap in your seat during the slow bits. (thehawksmoor.com)
J Sheekey
J Sheekey is The Mousetrap of theatre dining. It’s been here for more than 100 years, all cosy and red and clubby and ooh, is that Gandalf? And the food is good! What could be nicer than tumbling out of three hours of unexpectedly gritty Northern drama and piling straight into a Sheekey booth? The menu has things on it like herb roasted sea bass and heritage beetroot, but is really solely about the Sheekey’s Fish Pie (£18.50), as golden as a chorus girl’s fake tan and as feel-good as The Lion King. (j-sheekey.co.uk)
Cora Pearl
Cora Pearl feels rather like a West End theatre itself — many packed seats all close together, well worn by the many cultured backsides that have graced them. The food is modern British fare at its most brilliantly simple — devilled eggs, bubble and squeak risotto — the Waiting for Godot of pre-theatre meals. And also pretty good value, at two courses for £20 or three for £25, although I’m afraid you will have to order extra chips, as they are possibly the best in London. (corapearl.co.uk)
Bentley’s
Hidden down Swallow Street off Piccadilly, Richard Corrigan’s seafood restaurant simply offers you food you want to eat. Listen to these words: burrata, smoked aubergine, romesco. Butter poached smoked haddock, caramelised leek, bacon and cheddar croquettes. All these things are on the theatre menu (two courses for £23.50, three for £28.50), although naturally it would be foolish not to kick off with half a dozen of the 1,000 oysters shucked daily. (bentleys.org)
XU
Bao’s grown-up sibling on Rupert Street quietly serves some superlative Taiwanese food, including, rather randomly, a pre-theatre menu called The Importance of Shou Pa Chicken (ah, I… see what you did there?). Anyway, lost in translation theatre puns aside, this is an extremely good (and good value) alternative meal: brilliant snacks of cuttlefish toast and xian bing dumplings followed by the eponymous chicken and lardo rice, all for £19.50. (xulondon.com)
Terroirs
Okay, there’s no theatre menu at Terroirs. But that’s because you’re not really here to eat. What you really want at 6pm is wine, and maybe a thin sliver or two of delightful ham. Thus, Terroirs, the wonderful natural wine bar hidden around the back of that dodgy extra entrance to Charing Cross Underground. Here you sit at the bar, asking ignorant questions about Sicilian biodynamic orange, inaccurately thinking you have time for one more glass, and then getting the giggles at a really, just terribly inappropriate moment of high tragedy. (terroirswinebar.com)
