Weekly Review: Quality Wines

Great wine and top-flight food in a comfortable no sneering zone.

Quick hit: Ever-changing seasonal selections and outstanding wine list geared for any taste.

Details: Booking essential. Farringdon. £££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram.
Find it on Google Maps. 88 Farringdon Rd, EC1R 3EA.

It seems that quality wine bars have arrived all over London. The good ones feature interesting and outstanding wine choices by the glass and the bottle plus a selection of delicious food.

It’s hard to say for sure whether Quality Wines was the key driving force in this trend, but certainly it has played an outsized role.

And without question, it is the holotype — the definitive specimen — of the species.

Quality Wines sits on a busy corner in Farringdon, behind Exmouth Market.

It’s next door to its slightly older brother, Quality Chop House, which features dark wood, old fashioned booth seating, and gigantic slabs of delicious steak and chops.

Quality Wines is another thing altogether. Brighter. More casual and inviting with seating on stools at high tables.

The wine list is fantastic and ever changing. On a visit in December, they had a superb, but very hard to find in the UK, bottle of Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast in California. On my most recent visit, they were offering a 20 year old Roussanne from the Rhone Valley by the glass. It was absolutely epic. And only topped by a 25 year old Claire Valley Riesling that we had later.

Who needs nasty natural wines when there are aged beauties like this?

If the wine is superb, the wine service is even better. The team at Quality Wines know their stuff. And they are genuinely nice. You don’t have to be a wine snob to land on a successful choice. The team will happily help, and they will make the conversation pleasant, interesting, non-threatening and low-stress. Think of it as a safe space to explore all of your wine questions with no judgement. This is truly a no sneering zone.

Then there’s the food. The menu changes every week. Ingredients are fresh. Dishes are seasonally geared. But there is real cleverness in the cooking.

Let’s start at the beginning, with Gilda. Not a person. A snack. It’s made from a big olive, wrapped in an anchovy, stuffed with rich cheese, and skewered with a slice of semi-spicy pepper. The flavour exploded when I took a bite, and I needed a moment to compose myself.

Then came a round of starters, including a plate of black figs with stracciatella cheese. The figs were so fresh and ripe that I expected to see a tree leaning through the window into the kitchen, but then I remembered that we were in London and must have come from somewhere sunnier.

Next was tagliatelle with porcini and aged parmesan. I wish my photo came anywhere close to the flavour of the pasta which was powerful with umami from the mushrooms, saltiness from the cheese, and richness from a dash of cream and the homemade pasta itself.

Tagliatelle with porcini. Gracious.

Then came a portion of cod and a whole partridge. The bird was wrapped in bacon, cooked to perfection, and served moist. Any poacher would have been happy.

Not in a pear tree, but partridge was delicious. Photo by James Whatley.

Dessert was a triumvirate of cannoli, friend is pork fat, and filled with three flavours of creamy magic. My favourite was the pistachio. All served with that perfect, aged Australian Riesling. Wow.

Trio of cannoli. Photo by James Whatley.

Quality Wines is so good, and so much fun, that it will leave you feeling as good as we did by the conclusion of our lunch.

Your correspondent together with faithful lunch companions James Whatley and Mat Morrison at the conclusion of our Quality Wines lunch.

It earns my most fulsome endorsement as a spot for a Professional Lunch. Delicious, accessible, easy, comfortable for all. It’s even convenient from just about anywhere.

So, if Quality Wines helped define London’s wine bar trend, others are continuing to push it forward. Next week, I visit a brand new spot near Waterloo that takes the concept even further.

See you next week for that. For now, I’m going to lunch.

Thanks for reading Professional Lunch. I hope you enjoy my brief foray into wine bars. Please share with friends, colleagues, and fellow wine lovers. And I hope you’ll subscribe if you haven’t already. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on your favourite wine bars in the comments.