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Neo Bistro - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens
As the name hints, it’s inspired by the modern bistros of Paris, offering a short à la carte plus, in the evening, a 6-course tasting menu.
Early press reports on its creative modern European dishes wax lyrical.
Restaurant Review: Neo Bistro
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Alexander Larman tucks into modern British fare at Neo Bistro – Mayfair’s pleasingly laid-back new dining spot… Traditional British restaurants always sound like Simpsons-in-the-Strand and Rules, trailing great strings of puddings and pies and whatnot.
However, over the past few years, there has been a welcome reinvention of what ‘traditional British’ actually means, and now, in the form of Mark Jarvis and Alex Harper’s Neo Bistro, we have something in Mayfair – not, traditionally, an inexpensive part of town – which combines the most delectable food with service and a setting that makes any visitor feel that they are welcome to be there.
What goes on here is the very best of modern British cuisine, in informal surroundings (the pub sign of a former incarnation is still hanging outside, no doubt to the bemusement of a certain sort of clientele) and with a wine list that would put any Michelin-starred establishment to shame.
If you try the shellfish agnolotti, matched with a glass of Georgian Pheasant’s Tears white wine, you’re unlikely to try much more straightforwardly delicious in a restaurant this year.
Cost… Dinner for two around £100 Good for… Sampling what a London clientele wants to try these days What to eat… The lamb and smoked eel – on the tasting menu, but available on request on the a la carte – is going to be a famous signature dish soon What to know… The staff are some of the friendliest, and most knowledgeable, in town, so do ask them about the menu and wine list
Marina O'Loughlin Finds Deceptive Simplicity at Neo Bistro - Eater ...
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, in particular Hayler’s claim that “It is nice to see a restaurant aiming high on culinary ambition, at a time when so many London openings are burger joints or hipster places trying to impress diners with how cool they are rather than the quality of their cooking.”
Is London not so hot right now precisely because there are so many different and exciting talents at work, all trying new things and (mostly) seeing them succeed, from the bottom to the middle and the middle to the top?
More that its particular range of ambition encompasses a “reasonably priced,” “Brexit-boshing,” “glorious European, Middle Eastern mishmash of small plates” — all, crucially, “with an extra oomph” that serves to elevate them from the mundane Morito clones clogging certain parts of town (cough.
In a digression that could be addressed directly to the city, Dent explains that she chose to review Tuyo in the first place “because London is full of chefs who cook with no heart, making an opera of their meagre talents.”
Picture Take Jay Rayner’s random-ass experience at Picture — a four year-old restaurant in Fitzrovia that proves that it’s not just the new places that are doing things worth our attention.
Neo Bistro, Soho: restaurant review | Foodism
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Finding a good, reasonably priced restaurant in the vicinity of Oxford Street is like hunting for a mythical being – you're sure it must exist somewhere, but you never seem to find it.
Enter new arrival Neo Bistro, a sleek, Parisian-style, er, bistro from Alex Harper and Mark Jarvis just over the road from Debenhams that knocks it out of the park when it comes to both taste and value.
But you'd expect no less given their credentials – Jarvis heads up the affordable and excellent Anglo, and Harper is the former head chef of The Harwood Arms, London's only Michelin-starred pub.
There's a standard à la carte with three courses and three choices, but we went straight for the six-course tasting menu, kicking things off with bread, freshly churned butter and tiny morsels of housemade charcuterie.
Six-course tasting menu from £42; wines from £4.50 by the glass.
Neo Bistro: A new wave West End smash hit | London Evening ...
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Alex Harper, former head chef of Fulham’s Harwood Arms — currently the only London gastropub with a Michelin star, it is always obligatory to say — and Mark Jarvis, chef/patron of Anglo, set between Hatton Garden and Leather Lane, have got together to present their interpretation of bistronomy whereby classically trained chefs do their thing but drop the folderol of fine dining.
The one main course blackboard special, true to its nature, changes but the brief à la carte — three choices in each course plus two sides — remains identical but for a change of species in the fish dish.
Fluttering pink silk hankies peel off cured Tamworth pork and pile up to fulfil a drink-accompanying role at the start when put together with Kamut (trademark for a species of ancient wheat) sourdough bread and soft lollopy freshly churned butter.
The choice of drinks and wines — low intervention, naturellement — tick more enlightened boxes and Joe is delighted by his glass of Isastegi sidra (cider) from the Spanish Basque country at £4.50.
Isle of Wight tomatoes with dashi and shiso are foregone in favour of hay-baked skin-on new potatoes (Irish Joe’s insistence) but we reckon the accompanying mushroom butter also has a Japanese quality in the use of nameko, the species that add their nutty flavour to miso soup.
Neo Bistro, London W1: 'This is uncharted territory for the branché ...
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Neo Bistro (the name references bistronomy 2.0, a bit more complex, often a lot more expensive) is also technically in Mayfair, not the rarefied environs of Mount Street, but gum-spitting distance from phone shops, sandwiched between a Spaghetti House and a branch of the bafflingly still extant Angus Steakhouse.
Neo Bistro is the baby of two pedigreed chefs, Mark Jarvis of Anglo in Farringdon and Alex Harper, ex of Fulham’s Harwood Arms; both did time in the starrier, stuffier Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Texture.
There’s a veil of savoury dashi jelly draped over heritage tomatoes; almost-burnt turnip with the pigeon; tendrils of black truffle scattered here and there.
Yes, I get they’re doing bistronomy, I get that they’ve loosened the fine dining corsets and are bravely venturing outside a London postcode starting with E.
• Neo Bistro 11 Woodstock Street, London W1, 020-7499 9427.