Noble Rot Soho
The Gay Hussar fed the Labour left at 2 Greek Street from 1953 to 2018, and the kitchen that took the room on kept the goulash (National Restaurant Awards, The Infatuation).
Why go
Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew opened this in September 2020 as their second room, eleven months into a pandemic (Noble Rot). They brought in Alex Jackson from Sardine so that it would carry its own identity rather than repeat Lamb's Conduit, with Stephen Harris of The Sportsman still involved in the menu (National Restaurant Awards).
Jackson cooks to the building. Eggs casino and goulash sit on the same menu as rabbit cooked in rose with cucumber, tomato and saffron, and girolles with courgette, ricotta, rosemary and farinata. The award body's own profile notes that the room fills with people who work in restaurants and wine.
The list won the National Restaurant Awards Wine List of the Year in 2021 and again in 2022, and the markups at the top end run low, which is the practical reason to order up rather than sideways (National Restaurant Awards).
Order this / avoid
- Order: the roast chicken with morels, vin jaune and rice pilaf, which Jake Missing calls "without doubt the essential order"3. The choux bun with duck liver parfait and Tokaji jelly to start, with champagne. Goulash, for the room it is standing in. Smoked eel with horseradish and pickled rhubarb on the soda bread.
- Avoid: arriving expecting to drop in at a bar. This site traded the wine bar for a private dining room, so walk-in drinking is the Bloomsbury habit. Wide tables, because the downstairs is a grand hallway with very little breathing space.
What locals & experts say
- Jake Missing, The Infatuation, March 2022, scoring it 8.6, on what Jackson did with the inheritance: "There's also some honouring of the Gay Hussar's Hungarian heritage going on. A goulash or a lovely little choux bun filled with duck liver paté, plus a new classic via the Jura: roast chicken with morels and vin jaune. Without doubt the essential order."3
- The same critic on the room, and on what it gave up:
Unlike Lamb's Conduit Street, there's very little breathing space here. And that suits Soho. Elbows will bump just as often as glasses will clink.
He also concedes the difficulty of raving about a second site,despite swapping a bar area for a private dining room and moving to an even more trodden part of London.
The 8.6 sits below the 8.9 the same outlet gave the original.3 - The National Restaurant Awards, on the list:
all killer, no filler offering wines with unusually low mark ups (especially at the high end)
, withknowledgeable but never snotty staff
. Wine List of the Year, 2021 and 2022.2 - No chef has picked this room. Two Noble Rot picks sit in the industry-vote file and both name a different branch: Jack Lawrence of Joyau names Lamb's Conduit Street, Ben Marks of Morchella names Mayfair. Neither is borrowed here.
Good to know
- Where: 2 Greek Street W1D 4NB, at the Soho Square end.
- Timing: lunch and dinner, closed Sundays.
- Booking: book. There is no walk-in wine bar at this site.
- The room: tight downstairs, two large banquettes upstairs for a long lunch, and a private dining room.
- Sites: three. This one, September 2020. The original at 51 Lamb's Conduit Street WC1N 3NB, 2015, with its own page here. Mayfair at 5 Trebeck Street W1J 7LT, 2023, already curated.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 4, inspected 29 April 2024, Westminster. Reading the three components rather than the headline: confidence in management scored 0, the clean end of that scale, food hygiene practice scored 5, and the mark was pulled down by structure at 10, which is the building. This is the lowest rating of the three Noble Rot sites and it belongs to this address alone. FHRSID 413776.4
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Saved with no note; the note on my list belongs to the Mayfair room.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour, and worth going in knowing which Noble Rot this is. The Gay Hussar stood at 2 Greek Street from 1953 until 2018, serving Hungarian food to the Labour left, and Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew took the site over in September 2020 for their second room. They brought in Alex Jackson from Sardine to make sure it was not a copy of the original, with Stephen Harris of The Sportsman still involved in the menu, and Jackson answers the building directly: goulash and eggs casino sit next to rabbit cooked in rose and girolles with farinata. The plate to order is the roast chicken with morels, vin jaune and rice pilaf, which Jake Missing called the essential order when he scored it 8.6 for The Infatuation. The wine list won the National Restaurant Awards Wine List of the Year in 2021 and again in 2022, and the markups at the expensive end are low enough that an ambitious bottle is a real option. Two things count against it. This room swapped the front wine bar for a private dining room, so the drop-in habit belongs to Lamb's Conduit, and the downstairs is tight enough that elbows meet. The Infatuation also gave the original an 8.9, three tenths above this room, which is the honest benchmark.