Grace and Flavour: The 10 Cases

Covent Garden these days is no place for actual London folk. Now, Soho I’m still very much in love with. You could dump my ashes at the corner of Greek Street and Old Compton Street. It would make as perfect sense as anywhere. Yet the second I hit Seven Dials, the magic dies. It’s all charmless flagship stores, the bumptious brrring of the rickshaw, vast parties of sullen Belgian schoolkids and tourists wombling about looking forlornly for that authentic London experience that’s actually happening eight miles away.

I arrived at The 10 Cases starving, rain-battered and hoping for a little salvation. The concept here, which I wholly support, is simplicity. There’s a teeny-weeny French-ish menu: three starters, three mains, a couple of puddings, ten cases of red wine and ten cases of white wine. C’est tout. The menu that day had black seabream, lemon sole, duck confit and other variations containing foie gras and pig’s cheek. Vegetarians can naff off.

The bistro seems proud of its no-fuss, no-frills, just good food and wine ethos, but it shouldn’t be as the food isn’t at all good. My starter of crayfish salad was a ton of iceberg lettuce and cucumber, served with the exact flavour of dressing I’d expect in an Asda pre-packed lunch box. Perfectly OK, just not prepared with any love or zing. My grilled lamb arrived: a plate filled to both sides with a tough, unseasoned lamb steak, more lettuce and two small new potatoes.

‘It is what it is,’ I’d taken to mumbling. I’d started out with ‘It’s cheap and cheerful’, but ditched that mantra because The 10 Cases isn’t remotely cheap: £15-£20 for a main. Puddings are around £5, but the taste-less, plain, completely beige 2cm-deep cheesecake with no berries, juice, compote, cream – jack all – was so bizarre, I would simply not bother.

Basically, The 10 Cases is a souped-up version of The Stockpot with fine-dining prices. It’s upside is that it’s central, serves 20 types of very good wine by the glass or carafe and has a relaxed attitude to booking the downstairs private dining room, if you have 20 boozy friends best kept in a cellar, who don’t care about eating. I had a Lion Bar on the way home and it was bloody delicious.

THE 10 CASES

16 Endell Street, WC2 (020 7836 6801; the10cases.co.uk)