It’s been a few months since I’ve eaten at the Lido Cafe, and we forgetfully arrive just too late (at around 12.33pm) for the poolside restaurant’s legendary brunches, which we’d been fantasising about. The lunch menu kicks in at half past midday. “There’ll be a wait of about 20 minutes while the kitchen prepares for lunch,” warns our friendly waiter. We hesitate: we’re starving after a long dog-walk around the park outside – a hearty distance as Brockwell is no little green space – but then I catch sight of the cocktail menu.
Post-midday? Pre-lunch? Not too early at all for a sharp, ice-cold Negroni, surely? So by way of brunch consolation, and to take my mind off my rumbling stomach, I order one (£7). Disappointingly it arrives without a slice of fragrant, scorched orange, but is otherwise a good solid Negroni. In the 40 minutes we sit waiting for the lunch menu, I could easily have had another, or got sozzled on one of the other seasonal drinks on offer – an Elderflower Sherbert made with Sipsmith Gin, perhaps, a Pimm’s-based Rangoon or an Aperol Spritz, another fashionable classic. At least there’s the gloriously distracting view to enjoy.
Finally, our waiter appears brandishing menus. He is one of a good number of staff on this shift – the frustrating days of great-food-slow-service at the Lido seem to be a thing of the past. Our wait this time is understandable, though we wish we’d been given a realistic rather than optimistic estimate.
It’s salad weather and I choose the refreshing-sounding fennel, radish, celeriac, dill and pomegranate seed as a main (£6.75). And some chips to balance things out. My lunch partner vacillates: he’s tempted by the pulled pork bun with slaw and home-made pickles but makes a last-minute swerve for the char-grilled free range chicken, which comes with a choice or mix of the day’s salads (there are three – he has them all).
For a vegetarian, that’s me, the choices feel deflatingly limited, they are: halloumi burger or asparagus, pea, lemon and creme fraiche tart, but then the menu is confidently short for all – and seasonal (it was a few weeks ago that we were here) so it’s nothing personal. And the salad, though not the most beautiful thing to look at, is deliciously crunchy with the sharp pomegranate spike cutting through the earthy, almost coconutty celeriac slivers. It was good, though not amazing. My fellow luncher feels similarly about his chicken: “Deliciously herby, but a little bit dry,” he says. The crisp, skins-on chips were delicious, however, and dessert? A triumph.
The cakes of the day are tempting but the cardomom and pistachio tart with orange sorbet is too hard to resist. We share. (Must be the heat.) The tart is sticky without being sickly, with a pleasingly prominent flowery note from the spice. The candied orange slivers are a nice touch (if only they’d chucked a couple in my drink) and the sugary citrus burst in the sorbet joins the dots, though – for me, at least – could have been a touch less sweet. The bitter dregs of my Negroni prove a better foil.
Finally, coffee. And if that was all you came to the Lido Cafe for you’d be winning. It is consistently smooth, creamy and “even better than the stuff from that place in the market”, my Australian-dwelling, caffiene snob brother declared when I brought him here (I’d taken him to Federation to prove that London catch match Sydney in its coffee excellence).
A pleasant lunch, all in all, and in a beautiful setting. But we do wish we’d come in less salad-y moods – or just got up a bit earlier to be tempted by breakfast instead.
Words & pictures: Kate Burt
