met up with my lovely wife in town last week and as we were around Charing Cross we decided to give Terroirs a go. We usually go to "Gordons" when we are around there but that is more of drinking dive and probably not the most comfortable for a heavily pregnant lady. We walked and were greeted and initially shown to a rustic rickety table upstairs, the waitress then saw my wife would need more room and we were shown to a much more comfortable booth table. The room itself is quite small with tables clustered around the open kitchen/bar and an upstairs mezzanine dining area. There are lots of nice old french posters around the walls which inject a bit of much needed charm into a fairly sterile basement. They have a more formal dining room downstairs but as it was lunchtime a quick casual lunch was the order of the day.
The food menu is quite limited as the emphasis is on small light dishes to accompagny your wine. Having said that they looked interesting and the fact you can see them being cooked adds to the charm. I would describe it as french tapas. They had a huge wine menu which would have been a lot of fun to go through but instead I opted for a solitary glass of red that came with day's special of a chickpea and chorizo stew. It looked small but delivered big on flavour and was very substancial. The waitress had recommended we order some bread which was handy for soaking up the lovely juices. Very tasty indeed. My wife was a little stuck with the menu as a lot of the pates and cheese she couldn't indulge in. She settled on the tartiflette which is a wonderful concotion of cheese and potatoes served in a earthenware dish. Really tasty and very filling.
We decided to give the desserts a miss though they did look very nice. All in all a very good meal and certainly interesting enough to get me to visit again particularly to try the wine. It's not the greatest restaurant space in London but when it fills up and the food and drink are flowing it has a very nice buzz. The service was friendly if a little slow. I felt the staff were a little casual at times, it took ages to pay which is always a minor annoyance. The bill was very reasonable for the standard of food we had had. It was certainly better value than some of the tapas bars in the area. Well worth a detour to try.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Overall rating 
Food 8 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 8