Work in progress: Chet’s at Rondo La Cave
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Nothing shifts London’s restaurant priorities like a sustained period of warm weather. The sun beats down, artfully framed shots of Calippos flood Instagram and, all at once, demand for perfectly appealing dining rooms is supplanted by a mad scramble for slivers of an exhaust-choked terrace, faintly verminous beer gardens and oversubscribed rooftops. It is a heatwave behaviour you can set your watch by.
And so, early last week — as the temperature nudged 25 degrees and the entire city seemed to be one inebriated, half-naked mass, spilling happily onto every patch of available pub pavement — I cannot say that I felt especially thrilled to be descending to Chet’s: a kitchen residency in the dark, windowless confines of Rondo La Cave wine bar in Holborn.
