The Traditional English Restaurants of London

The Frontline Club was founded in 2003 to provide a base in London for frontline journalists, diplomatic service, aid agencies and those who otherwise tend to meet each other in the hotspots of our modern world. Some of the great names in the business have been, or more sombrely were formerly, members of the Club, which runs an excellent restaurant in Norfolk Place, only 5 minutes from Paddington Station.

Given that Paddington is not widely associated with notable cuisine, the arrival of Frontline is a big step forward, and the even better news is that you don’t have to be a member of the club to use the restaurant, which offers a menu that is both thoughtful and tantalising. Amongst the starters expect to find kedgeree with smoked eel, roasted root vegetable salad with mustard dressing, or Dorset mussels with mustard and chives.

Frontline Classics introduce fish pie, Cumberland sausages with mash and onion gravy or wild mushroom pie, all the sort of things I should think you tend to dream about when shot and shell are flying and you have your head well down. The full-blown main courses are pretty classical too, with whole lemon sole with lemon and parsley butter, roast saddle of Lake District lamb with a mint crust or a char-grilled Aberdeenshire rib-eye steak with spinach, new potatoes, and horseradish cream well to the fore. Bubble and squeak or rice with spicy lentils are always available on the side.

To satisfy the likely expectations in wine of people so widely travelled in every sense, is no mean feat but Bernd Conrad and his team seem to have triumphed in this vital field. The List is clearly not only compiled by somebody with clear views – it is too decisive to have been done by a committee – but is also relatively easy on the pocket.

So quite apart from being comfortably dined amidst surroundings that would do credit to a regimental mess, you also have the opportunity to meet some pretty interesting people as well. In 2005 Frontline won a prestigious Remy Award in Harden’s Guide to London Restaurants

Fay Maschler, writing in The Evening Standard, said, “There is an agreeable, unpretentious, laid-back atmosphere at Frontline. The set-price deals are a definite service to the neighbourhood and Fernando Peire is just the sort of chap I would want to run my war”.