Buvette brings its New York French café to Neal's Yard
The West Village favourite is back in London, with a 25-dish card, a £23 set lunch and a lot of empty marble-topped tables.
Buvette, the cult New York brasserie, has opened in Neal's Yard, Covent Garden. According to Grace Dent's review in the Guardian, it sits among holistic therapy rooms, Neal's Yard Remedies and the 26 Grains café, in a part of town where the footfall is yoga pant-clad and hungry for hummus.
It is the London arm of Jody Williams' West Village gastrothèque, and it is not the first attempt. The Guardian notes that an earlier Notting Hill branch opened in 2020 and was gone within four years.
The room and the menu
The frontage is red and cute. Inside, Dent describes marble-topped tables, bentwood chairs, a zinc bar and chipper staff, in an 80-cover space. On her midweek lunchtime visit, almost every seat was empty.
The menu is a card of 25 dishes, none above £18. Expect croque monsieur with roast mushrooms and gruyère, rillettes de saumon, and salade niçoise with haricots verts and a mollet egg. To drink there is a Macvin champagne and muscadet spritz and pastis on the rocks. There are also warm scones with jam and almond croissants.
What the Guardian made of it
Dent's verdict is warm but not starry. She compares the look to Café Rouge: recognisably French, in a way that won't scare the horses. Her theory is that Buvette is too coy and cool for casual diners, and not cool enough for those who would rather be at Fergus Henderson's wine bar across the way.
Even so, she calls it "actually rather lovely". The food, in her account, is carefully done:
- The croque madame is a classic build of thick toasted white bread, melted cheese, thin ham, more grated cheese and a vivid egg yolk, with tiny crunchy cornichons.
- Grilled salmon comes with sauce ravigote, green beans and a petite salade verte. The skin is crisp and the fish moist.
- Roast beetroot with horseradish crème fraîche is the kind of side she says you no longer get.
- There is also a copper pan of pommes frites and a meaty, sharply dressed salade de poulet.
The set lunch is the draw. At £23 it offers salmon with green beans and green salad, or a burger with fries and salad, or a croque with two salads, each with a coffee. Dent calls it ridiculous value for Covent Garden.
Her suggestion is that Buvette might do better as a pit stop than an Instagram backdrop: somewhere to pop in for lunch and end up lingering over mint tea, scones or a hot almond croissant.
Know before you go
- Address: Buvette, 2 Neal's Yard, London WC2
- Phone: 020 3540 4989
- Open: all week, lunch 11.30am to 4pm, dinner 4pm to 9pm (10pm Thursday to Saturday)
- Prices: from about £40 a head à la carte; formule set lunch (main, two sides and coffee) £23, all plus drinks and service
Sources: The Guardian
