Reviews The Quality Chop House

Fantastic place , beautiful interior and delicious food . Service is also impeccable , highly recommend it !
Whether for a Sunday roast or a special weekday dinner

I always did find myself regarding with particular suspicion objects that described themselves as gold, platinum or the latest marketing gimmick, diamond quality.  In the race to reach for ever more precious metals, I do wonder what they will go for next.  Maybe it will be rhodium.  That’s rarer, expensive and more shiny.  Yet the original genesis of this marketing ploy seemed to be adding the word quality to everything.  Although I did wonder how you could regard particular foodstuffs as quality.  It did make me suspicious as the corollary of the word quality meant that there would be careful checking and discarding of materials that did not make the grade.  So where did all the rejects end up?  Did it mean that elsewhere in the shop they would be stocking rotting produce?

Recently I went to dine at the Grade-II listed dining room of The Quality Chop house in Clerkenwell. I am a huge fan of their shop next door which sells top quality food, especially the meat. I never had the chance to go for dinner at The Quality Chop House before as it was always packed every time I walked past.

To not miss the chance this time I decided to book a table, as we were 5 people we got one of the booth tables. I really liked the decoration of the whole room with black and white tiles on the floor, wood furniture, old long narrow tables and bench which makes the atmosphere quite cosy. They also had some small and discreet details of decoration such as mirrors & flowers. 

While I decided to kick off this dinner with a fresh Scottish langoustine, two of my friends had some pork & pistachio terrine served with some Pommery mustard and two lucky people managed to get the two last plates available of morcilla. 
All starters were great. I liked the freshness of the langoustines and the mayonnaise was perfect. The terrine tasted light and the mustard gave a kick of heat. The morcilla was tasty and earthy and went very well with the duck egg.

For mains, two of us had their traditional Galloway mince, the dish was rich and very juicy. The mince came with some bread and watercress and was delicious as it sopped-up all the great flavour from the dish.
The rest of us ordered the duck dish. It was the best piece of duck breast I ever had in terms of quality, cooking and taste.This breast was ridiculously perfectly cooked: pink and juicy. It was served with salsify, morels and Madeira.

To compliment our mains we had some confit potatoes as I heard so much about it that I demanded that my friends order it. It was for sure the second highlight of my meal just after the duck. Their confit potatoes are one of their signature dishes and if you try them you will surely know why it's a 'must try' dish.
The wine list at The Quality Chop House added an extra level to our meal thanks to the great selection they have. 

Overall, my friends and I had a great evening at The Quality Chop House. This restaurant is my idea of the ideal place to spend an evening with friends (or maybe a romantic dinner on a different occasion). I loved the fact there is nothing extravagant in this place, the decoration is old and traditional, the service was faultless and our waitress was very friendly and not intrusive.  
I will definitely come back to The Quality Chop House, I hope they will have some of this delicious duck again next time.

A chop house is a British traditional dating back over a century. They were places for people (men) to talk business over traditional hearty food washed down with fine wine and beer. The Quality Chop House dates back to 1869 and still lives up to original roots but the food has been elevated a bit. For example you can still get mince on toast, but you can also get truffle risotto. It's charming, the service is efficient, friendly and its almost, just almost, an upmarket hipster version of a chop house restaurant, one that's over 140 years old. It's great for a dinner out to experience British history with a hint of a modern twist.

When you’re packed on a rush hour London tube, your nose guzzled into a armpit, how often is it the armpit of a Londoner? Or even a Brit? It’s the same when you’re walking down any London high-street- you pass Mexican, Spanish, Afghan restaurants and even cross-bred mongrels like Korean-Mexican and Brazilian sushi. But if it’s just some classic British scran you’re after, you’ll struggle to find anywhere other than your local dingy boozer with it’s beige pie and chips and beige sausage and mash. True British classics. The same old flavourless crap that tastes just as dull in any pub in any part of the country. That’s unless you go to one of those artisan gastro-bollocks pubs. But don’t get me started on them.

Simply brilliant. Service, decor and the food all brilliant. Very generous portions at a reasonable price. Sweetbread with chicken liver pâté should have won dish of the year!

A huge platter of silverside and smoked brisket, celeriac purée and golden beetroot, breaded bone marrow and roasted carrots flounced its way onto our table, all showy and attention seeking, with a great sense of celebration and sharing that family Sunday lunches do so well (even though it was Wednesday). The meat was either pink or flakey, both desirable adjectives for beef. The side of kale was vibrant and well seasoned. And the plates were cleared in their entirety.

The new incarnation is a quiet triumph and a place I want to tell people about. (Hence the blog post.) And The Quality Chop House is definitely the kind of restaurant you go back to. The kind of restaurant that it’s nice to know is there, doing its thing, ready for your next visit.

Farringdon certainly isn’t the most glamorous of London roads, tending to be more of a dual carriageway than a dining location. It’s here that the Quality Chop House has taken-up residency in an historic working man’s restaurant. Though it manages to fit in well with the neighbours around the corner at Exmouth Market. No longer is this listed Victorian dinner a stop for hungry labourers, but rather a trendy, sympathetically refurbished space, with a dining room filled with upright booths. Although the tables are laid for six, four is most probably a more comfortable setting, given the snug fit. Front of house management comes from Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner, though it’s not a surprise given the elegance and smoothness. The plates? A very nice surprise too, which give a very good impression. This is what we like to call “Michtronomie” – traditional ideas turned-on their head’s with creative technique. The unique menus change daily, so check the website before turning-up. The Quality Cho

The Quality Chop House is yet another great lunch restaurant around the Exmouth market in Farringdon. Set in an area already blessed with some great restaurants (think Morito and Moro) the Quality Chop House offers some fresh Modern British dishes and a great atmosphere. Perfect for a weekend lunch.   When we visited the Quality Chop House we tried the following dishes: Lardo (8/10) Lamb ribs (10/10) Heritage tomatoes and goat’s cheese (8/10) Monkfish liver (8/10) Red mullet (8.5/10) Fried fish (8/10) Veal (8.5/10) Chocolate ice cream (8/10) Figs, raspberries and cream (8.5/10)   The total bill at the Quality Chop House came to £140 (including service charge and 3 glasses of wine).   The food rating for the Quality Chop House: 8.5/10 The service rating for the Quality Chop House: 8.5/10 The overall rating for the Quality Chop House: 8.5/10 (The overall rating is based on personal taste, opinion of the ambiance and price)

The pork was skilfully roasted and left quite an impression of flavour; the crackling satisfactorily crackled; the apple sauce had good acidity and freshness that made me salivate for more.

I was chatting with a British colleague the other day when I asked for recommendation for any restaurant that serves good British food . Let me provide some context to this conversation. London, which is very much like Singapore in this aspect, is literal

The Quality Chop House on Farringdon Road is not, technically, new. There has been a restaurant in that same building with the same name for the majority of time since 1869, serving - as the moniker suggests - no-nonsense grilled meats and the like. There was, in the more recent past, an attempt to sell self-consciously trendy meatball sliders (God help us) which fortunately quickly moved to Westfield where it belonged, but the current owners have restored sanity as well as the attractive interior, and written a menu that harks back to its roots. Like any such restaurant in London in 2013, though, what constitutes "British" food is up for somewhat liberal interpretation. The menu has plenty of St John-alike buzzwords like Middlewhite pork and the Longhorn beef that Hawksmoor and the Ginger Pig have made famous, but also sells fancy foreign snacks like charcuterie and lardo, and the Denham lamb comes with "confit shallots". Well la-di-da. It's all good though. Pig scratchings would have

I had heard a lot of things about this place. It's owned by Jancis Robinson, famous wine critic, son. The building itself is an old workers cafe that has been converted into a restaurant. The restaurant consisted of a single room which gave it an ambient and intimate atmosphere. Our waiter was really charming and kept checking that everything was fine with our meal. We shared a starter of pastrami and pickles which were both home made and very tasty. We also had mains of Barnsley Pork chops, which were tender and succulent, and the steak onglet, which was perfectly cooked. For desert we ordered a scoop of lemon sorbet but decided we'd made the wrong decision so the waiter brought us a scoop of blackberry ice cream for free. Overall a great experience.

Life is full of decisions we would rather not make. Do the dishes or eat off paper plates indefinitely? Devise a long term career plan or just make it into work each morning and hope for the best? Accept my mother’s friend invite on Facebook or actively avoid the issue?

None more so than the daily dilemma of what to eat that evening. Whether at home and faced with the meagre offerings from the tail end of the week’s shop, or in a restaurant toying between the duck or pork whilst tagging the tweet about your plight with #firstworldproblems (please don’t), deciding what to eat can be a challenge.

Take this fickle element out of the equation and I am thrown back to the simpler days of my childhood; ‘you will eat what I give you and you will finish it’. Thankfully, my parent’s cooking was and still is great, so I always did. When a restaurant plays mum for the evening (albeit one that lets me drink a lot more wine), I am both grateful and drawn to it. ‘Finish it!’, you say? ‘Enjoy it!’, you demand? Well, MAYBE I WILL.

Both of which happened at The Quality Chop House on Farringdon Road, where the chefs write three menus each day based on the produce delivered that morning. In the evening you’ll find a set menu in the Dining Room for £35 with four starters, a main and a dessert, all for the table to share. There is no picking, no choosing - you receive it all and you ultimately enjoy it all.

It’s full of old-world charm and that type of shabby chic floral bijoux crockery that in the hands of the wrong host and along with a room full of kitsch chintz can be utterly nauseating. But against the stalwart-Grandad masculinity of dark wood panelling, a handsome check floor and the creaking booths of a Grade-II listed establishment in its 145th year (opened in 1869), it is thoroughly charming.

Great textures were found in the smooth, delicate mounds of goat curd on bitter chicory, topped with toasted hazelnuts and a drizzle of fruity oil. Smoked salmon, horseradish crème fraîche and dense rye linked pinkies and promised to be best friends forever. Soft and gamey slow-cooked partridge leg meat was re-shaped and breaded around the bone into pleasing spheres.

A bed of salty smoked cod’s roe expertly seasoned the purple sprouting broccoli, still with good resistance between the teeth. And the plate of earthy wild mushrooms with an effortlessly glossy chicken liver parfait had a few sails of crisp chicken skin at the centre and tasted even better than that reads.

A huge platter of silverside and smoked brisket, celeriac purée and golden beetroot, breaded bone marrow and roasted carrots flounced its way onto our table, all showy and attention seeking, with a great sense of celebration and sharing that family Sunday lunches do so well (even though it was Wednesday). The meat was either pink or flakey, both desirable adjectives for beef. The side of kale was vibrant and well seasoned. And the plates were cleared in their entirety.

Tart rhubarb with meringue, flaked almonds and ice cream was the sort of dessert you could have three of. The cheeses were bold and British, seducing with their first whiff and crumbly oatcake comrades; that day Tunworth, Montgomery, Colston, Innes Brick. Petit fours were dark chocolate covered honeycomb bites, essentially high-end Crunchie and what the hell is not to love about that.

For those who prefer to exercise their freedom of choice, the Wine Bar (the room next door) has a daily-changing a la carte of which I hear very good things. Next door to that is their Food Shop and Butchers selling all manner of stock from British cheeses and charcuterie to their own produce; think conserves, preserves, smoked fish, terrines, parfait, pies, sweet treats, a daily roast meat sandwich or hot sausage roll, and more.

The Quality Chop House is a rare breed: self-assured and unfussed cooking without pretence, showcasing quality ingredients and with good wine. It’s the sort of reliable, honest food you can imagine eating every day, if you had a larger bank balance and higher metabolism. It's just as well I don’t live any closer.

Liked lots: interiors, wholesome hearty food, wonderful warm welcome, relaxed atmosphere, the illusion I could quite easily eat this stuff every day; value for money, kindly substituting two portions of rhubarb for cheese and including it as part of the menu, the wine
Liked less: the kale was a little too seasoned but who the hell cares, we finished it
Good for: everyday eating, unfussy great food, buying produce

My rating: 4/5

Went in for the lunch special, which is £29 for a set menu. The menu came with a starter, a main and dessert. However you have to pay for the sides apart (which they insist you should get so we got potatoes and salad). My food was great, however we did have a problem with my friends food, where the fish tasted like amonia, we told the staff and they were very helpful. They told us they had removed the batch from the kitchen, gave us a refund on that plate and offered an alternative dish.

Quality Chop House offers a decent dining experience. While most of the starters and desserts didn't captivate my attention enough to order them, I must commend the Corquette snack for its delightful flavors. The Turbot and pork loin chop were the highlights of the meal, cooked to perfection with impeccable timing. The Confit potatoes were a must-try, although they tend to become slightly greasy if not consumed promptly. They pair excellently with mustard, creating a delectable combination. The wine list boasts a satisfying variety of choices. However, the restaurant environment falls short, with cramped tables and uncomfortable seating arrangements. Despite this, Quality Chop House provides good value for money and comes recommended for its standout dishes.

Delicious set lunch menu of a cold leek and potato soup to start, and was lucky enough to get the mince on toast which was the perfect level of richness.. I have no words for the bread its served on 😍. Then a lovely creamy custard slice for desert.

So very good. An exceptionally good place, great value. Michelin-standard food, really clever combinations of taste and texture so you'll even trust them to try the olive oil ice-cream for dessert (it was amazing). The waiter was clearly interested in doing his job well. The dining room was charming. We will definitely go back.

Amazing experience at Quality Chop House. Very fresh and quality food. Great service. Ashley did everything that we would feel special! Our waiter Kyria (if not mistaken) was very friendly and attentive. Amazing food and wine experience. Waldorf Tartlets to start is something that anyone would enjoy, including vegetarians. Very delicious. All meals was something to remember and matching with right wines from a very interesting wine list will be your winner. Kitchen does magic. Definitely recommend! We will be back. Thanks to whole team for such a wonderful job.