Le Café Du Jardin & the Opera Quarter

Who needs the excuse of a show to go to Covent Garden? Personally, there is nothing I like better than doing a Henry Higgins and trotting down there with my phonemic chart to lurk behind a suitable Palladian colonnade in the hope of finding an itinerant flower girl to give elocution lessons to. Each to his own. But if you are so conventional as to go there on the premise of going to the theatre or opera, then I suppose you are entitled to want somewhere nice to have dinner, after all that trouble.

You might like Le Café du Jardin. Pre or post-entertainment meals are often tricky: the traditional big players around the old market, namely the execrable Joe Allen (they can keep their mystery burger) and the somewhat fatigued Bertorelli’s, are rightly going to have to buck their ideas up. Eating at the Opera House itself, although glamorous, requires some foresight to avoid an unseemly scrum for a lazy plate of lunch-box sandwiches and a miserly half pint of shamelessly concentrated orange juice, payment for which is taken as an equal measure of blood, extracted via a drip while you wait, and wait, and wait.

The Opera Quarter, an umbrella for diverse premises offering everything from real ale to candy canes (albeit not under the same roof) hopes to change that with restaurants such as Le Café Du Jardin, an intimate and comfortable spot on Wellington Street. Don’t be fooled by the French name, I’m not sure what to call the cuisine – ‘fusion’ doesn’t quite settle frogs legs, ostrich, tempura, wasabi, gnocchi, Thai curry and Bubble and Squeak on one menu, but since when was choice a bad thing?

Although there were only two vegetarian mains the cooking was solid, the ingredients fresh, and there were well-priced two and three course set menus. You paid a bit more than at the ubiquitous chains I won’t bother to name, but the standard was higher and you got some welcome individuality, plus the food didn’t come out of a microwave.

We settled for some well-cooked scallops and sea bass, set off with interesting red pepper and hazelnut salsa and caramelised fennel respectively, washed away with the crisp memories of mineral brightness in a lovely Chablis. I am told the ostrich was good, too. The presentation, like the restaurant, was smart but not fussy and although I found the desserts, sticky toffee and white chocolate torte, a little dispirited, the overall experience was satisfying, the staff quietly friendly, just right.

At the end of the evening the time came to shoo the floozy back to hawking her blooms, squawking uncommonly, and I took a pleasant stroll back to Charing Cross where the piped opera music lent an incongruous air refinement to some rather intent crack-smokers gathered there, and I paused to reflect how much I like visiting this part of London, excuse or no excuse.

Le Café Du Jardin
28 Wellington Street
Covent Garden
WC2E 7BD

Tel: 020 7836 8769