Weekly Review: Lower Wine Bar
Brilliant, must-try new wine-focused spot brings desperately needed excellence and fun a stones throw from Waterloo
Quick hit: Excellent on every detail from its brilliant wine selection to perfect charcuterie and homemade delicacies.
Details: Walk-in. Waterloo. ££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram.
Find it on Google Maps. 19 Lower Marsh, SE1 7RJ.
It would be inaccurate to describe the area around Waterloo station as a food desert. You can certainly eat. Indeed, you have your choice of national chain pseudo Mexican, national chain burger joint, global chain burger joint, mediocre Cuban, or Pizza Pilgrims. Down on the Cut, there’s a decent curry place and the Anchor & Hope, but good luck getting a booking. Then there’s Passyunk Avenue, with top-notch cheese steaks and hoagies, but that’s not quite right for every occasion.
Thankfully, there’s something new. Something better. Something top quality and truly pleasant.
Lower Wine Bar has arrived.
It’s a first-rate wine shop with a great by-the-glass list and a constantly-changing chalkboard menu full of delicious nibbles.
LWB is the perfect stop before an evening at the Old Vic, for a chat with friends, or for a quick glass of something before grabbing the train home.
The LWB team have managed to strike the perfect balance between buzzy and comfortable. Even at its busiest, you can still have a quiet conversation. And you could easily dig in for a whole evening and work through a bottle or three.
LWB is a project of Blaise Coley, Skye Alejandro and Alex Pitt, and they have some seriously impressive experience. Blaise was the GM at Brat. Alex is a top sommelier, according to Harpers Wine, and Skye has done stints with Clove Club and Kiln.
That experience pays off in the wine and in the food.
On the wine front, the team has managed to secure a fairly amazing assortment that includes some truly well-aged, premium stuff. On one visit, I had the pleasure of polishing off their last bottle of 2004 Kumeu River Sauvignon Blanc. An epic wine from one of my favourite producers, it had aged so well that it was almost impossible to believe.
There is also an intriguing selection of natural wines and pet nat for those who want to drink such things, but I suppose the offering is necessary to keep LWB cool and trendy, which it definitely is.
Alex knows his German and Alsatian wines really well, too, so there’s an admirably long list of Riesling and similar that any real wine lover would adore.
As for food, on a recent visit, I dug into a homemade Spanish tortilla about 4 inches thick that was at the top of its genre. Skye likes his anchovies and has an admirable selection nearly as broad as the wine list. Burata with roasted squash and treviso was also fantastic, as were a plate a green beans.
But let’s spare a moment for the charcuterie board. LWB has taken the time and trouble to source some of the finest cuts that I’ve had anywhere. Seriously.
And if they take that much time and trouble to get the charcuterie just right, imagine they lengths they have travelled with everything else.
If Quality Wines helped define the species of the perfect London wine spot, then Lower Wine Bar is pushing its evolution proudly and boldly forward.
Lower Wine Bar would be brilliant in any part of London. But sitting a stone’s throw from Waterloo, it merits our full attention.
I really can’t recommend it strongly enough.
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