Dizzyingly impressive: this new venture delivers studious, high-level technique without any of the attendant faff
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)“A wine bar???” This was a mate’s WhatsApped response — trailed a moment later by a GIF of Del Boy and Trigger cradling their red wine spritzers in that deathless Only Fools and Horses scene — to the pre-visit details I shared about this week’s restaurant. And, well, putting the cheek (and dwindling gratitude at a free meal) among my friends to one side for a moment, it was a reminder of the problems some people still have with that phrase. Wine bar. Even now, for some the sound of it carries the Brut aftershave-splashed scent of a very specific sort of provincial, Eighties naffness.
But of course, if you know your restaurants, then you will have noticed that, especially in recent years, the wine bar has been revolutionised and rehabilitated. Up in De Beauvoir, Hector’s is winning fans with its artful spreads of tinned seafood, serrano ham-piled crisps and frosted bottles of grower champagne. In Soho, Bar Crispin adds oysters and fried chicken to the mix. And now, pivotally I feel, here is Fitzrovia’s Carousel Wine Bar: a first permanent operation for the team behind the acclaimed, revolving-door restaurant that brings neighbourhood warmth, stealthy ambition and a certain youthful swagger to a part of town not readily associated with those things.
