Food reviews

Villandry

Above: Villandry

Great Portland Street’s Villandry shop and restaurant has a very good reputation for delicious, well-chosen fare, and now it has devised a special family-friendly menu too. It’s a big, airy space that comprises bakery, deli, café, bar and restaurant, a very high class foodie outfit that’s successfully designed to make you want to stay and eat if you’re shopping and linger to shop if you’re eating.

The restaurant is spacious and pristine, big enough for the presence of lots of high chairs and serious buggy traffic on our Saturday afternoon visit not to be too overwhelming. Lunch with a one year-old in a family-friendly place can all too easily be horrendously unrelaxing, but here somehow the space and the staff make it work. Which isn’t to say it’s a ‘family restaurant’ in the usual vein: the French brasserie menu is, in fact, pretty grown up, offering such delicacies as steak tartar, cassoulet and various simple seafood options. We started with a flawless foie gras terrine – pure buttery liver – and a lovely whole artichoke with hazelnut vinaigrette, and continued with moules marinière and wonderfully crusty baguette and seared scallops with leeks and bacon. Our daughter, meanwhile, was fully occupied eating peas: the ‘tiny’ people’s menu, devised by kiddie food guru Annabel Karmel, offers healthy fare in varying stages of purée and mash, depending on age, while the ‘small’ people’s menu includes irresistibly cute miniature burgers and little chips. Children can take part in cookie-making classes while adults have pudding (we loved the honeycomb ice cream) which proves Villandry’s clever management of the family mealtime: the kids are involved but don’t dominate, so the balance of power is just right. Pendle Harte

Place: Villandry, 170 Great Portland Street W1 (020 7631 3131)

Feels like: Spacious shop/restaurant/foodie destination

Tastes like: Classic French brasserie style

Costs: Starters £4.50-12.50; mains £11.50-21.50