Flesh & Buns Covent Garden
Fillings come off a robata grill and out of a smoker, the buns are steamed in house, and you put them together yourself at the table (venue, Hot Dinners).
Why go
Ross Shonhan and Demetri Tomazos opened Bone Daddies in 2012 and this basement in 2013, and the idea was simple enough to travel: slow-roasted lamb shoulder with Korean seasoning, robata-grilled seabass with coriander miso, and a stack of hirata buns to put them in. Shonhan left the business in March 2020 and Tomazos runs it. The concept has held its ground long enough that Harden's surveyors noted their opinion of it improved after the group cut back to two sites, having briefly opened a Kensington branch in 2022 that became a Bone Daddies within months (Harden's).
What you get for that is a dark room under Seven Dials that works for a table of eight, a grill doing most of the cooking, and food you assemble with your hands. What you do not get is a kitchen anyone currently claims is pushing at anything. The survey's own phrase for the range is "the stickier and more crowd-pleasing end of Japanese cuisine", and that is a fair description rather than a complaint.
Order this / avoid
- Order: buns, filled with the slow-roasted lamb shoulder. Yakitori off the robata and the beef-fat chips beside them, which is what Harden's surveyors single out. The miso-grilled aubergine holds a bun on its own. Finish with the kiniko doughnuts, crisp outside, black sugar custard inside. On a weekday, the GBP 25 set lunch runs from noon to five.
- Avoid: the sirloin, which Time Out found split between "beautifully smokey and grilled to perfection" and "a tad fatty". Its other advice still holds: "It's worth filling up on buns so you don't go overboard with the smaller, pricier raw fish dishes." Skip the s'mores unless you want the tabletop campfire more than the dessert.
What locals & experts say
- Kelly Pigram, Time Out, 16 August 2018, four out of five: the kiniko doughnuts
were an absolute showstopper. They were filled with a strangely nutty black sugar custard, brushed lightly with sugar; crispy on the outside, soft and bready on the inside.
She rated the miso-grilled auberginea brilliant vegetarian option; sweet, sticky and perfectly packed into a bun,
and was blunt about the beef and the s'mores.2 - Harden's survey, describing the Covent Garden and Fitzrovia rooms together:
Noisy izakayas in Fitzrovia and Covent Garden from the Bone Daddies group, serving a good range from the stickier and more crowd-pleasing end of Japanese cuisine, along with tasty pan-Asian small plates including their signature bao buns.
Its Top Menu Tips aregreat yakitori, lovely beef-fat chips
.3 - The same survey on the group's trajectory:
If anything, their star has risen since they cut back to just two branches in Fitzrovia and Covent Garden.
3 - Nobody in the registry has recommended it. No chef pick, no critic on our roster, nothing in the London chef votes. The last scored review anyone published was in 2018, before the founder left the group.
Good to know
- Where: 41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials WC2H 9LX, downstairs. Covent Garden, Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square tubes are all close, and it is inside the theatre district.
- Timing: noon to 10pm Monday and Tuesday, noon to 11pm Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 9pm Sunday. The set lunch runs noon to five on weekdays.
- Booking: recommended, and tables are deliberately held back. The venue's own line: "we always keep some tables unbooked to accommodate walk-ins. There may be a wait, but we'll always try to get you seated."
- Groups: booths take six to eight, and three elevated sharing tables take bigger parties. Call ahead for either.
- Access: no step-free route. The venue states it plainly: the dining room is a basement reached only by a staircase.
- Halal: the venue says its chicken is halal when it is not deep-fried, and that halal meat and dishes such as the sashimi set are available. That is a halal offer inside a kitchen that is not entirely halal, so ask at the table if it matters.
- Money: around GBP 120 for two at dinner with drinks, service at 12.5 percent, wine from about GBP 19 a bottle.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Camden, inspected 13 November 2024, FHRSID 624317, with points lost only on structure and management confidence.5
- Sites: two Flesh & Buns trade in London, this one and Fitzrovia at 32 Berners Street. They hold separate hygiene records. Most of the survey praise above describes the pair rather than this address.
- Dogs: welcome.
Verdict
could-visit — Go if you are in Seven Dials with a group and want to eat with your hands. The format does the work here: robata-grilled and home-smoked fillings arrive with steamed hirata buns and you build them at the table, which turns dinner into something people do together rather than watch. Harden's surveyors name the two things worth ordering outside the buns, 'great yakitori, lovely beef-fat chips', and describe the kitchen in their own words as 'the stickier and more crowd-pleasing end of Japanese cuisine'. That phrase is the ceiling as much as the compliment. Time Out gave it four stars in 2018 and the doughnuts, kiniko and filled with black sugar custard, were what it said were worth the trip; the same review found half a sirloin fatty. The Bone Daddies group runs it, the room is thirteen years old, and its founder left the business in 2020, so the burden of proof a group carries on culinary edge is only partly met here. Three raised sharing tables, booths for six to eight and tables held back for walk-ins make it genuinely good for a night out before a show. Nobody should cross London for it, and nobody should feel short-changed either.