About La Grande Marque
Two prime ministers in 1 week! On Monday 4 December 2006, one of our directors entertained over lunch at LGM Middle Temple Lane an old friend who just happens to be a former Prime Minister of Russia. His guest was very complimentary about our premises and service, and especially about the food: he remarked to our chef that it was of the very best he had tasted!
On Friday evening, 8 December 2006, an unannounced guest arrived to join a party of barristers who were gathered at La Grande Marque, Middle Temple Lane. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, joined friends and former colleagues in our Lounge Bar for champagne and canapes to celebrate 25 years' service of his former senior clerk. Mr Blair practised as a barrister before entering the political fray and referred nostalgically in his speech to his visits in years past to our premises which in those days were the common room of the Middle Temple.
8 December 2006
La Grande Marque is a City bar with a difference: it's set in the ground floor of the Library Building of the venerable Middle Temple. Gorgeous on the inside, it also opens onto the exquisite Middle Temple garden, so on sunny days you can head out and relax on the terrace or create a picnic hamper from the bar menu and take it onto the lawns (they'll even give you a picnic rug!) If you're not into the great outdoors, you'll be just as happy in the simple wine bar, the smart lounge or the small but elegant dining area. Admire the 18th century artwork as you tuck into the modern brasserie menu, featuring simple but perfectly executed dishes from tapas and classic sandwiches to cheese and pate boards with crusty French bread and daily specials like Cumberland sausage and mash, roast pepper and feta tart or aromatic duck salad. Pudding might be honey and saffrom creme brulee or fruits of the forest crumble. A cross between a trip back in time and trip to a country house, La Grande Marque ia a real haven in the heart of the city.
Larger groups info
Impress your friends with a party in the historic surroundings of La Grande Marque in the Middle Temple. There are three areas for private hire, holding from 15 seated and 30 standing to 60 seated and 120 standing. Or make the most of the fantastic gardens with a party outside: La Grande Marque can seat 30 here or will organise a marquee to hold up to 500 on those fabulous lawns. You'll never believe you're in the heart of the City.
- Top Table 2006
The leisurely & alcoholic business lunch has never fallen out of fashion at the original wine bar in Ludgate Hill. Now, La Grande Marque have opened a second branch on the ground floor of the Temple Library, where the sharp wine list will no doubt keep the bar buzzing long past the strict interpretation of the lunch hour. Food is more a focus here, offering a good choice of modern brasserie dishes in a modish setting. Tapas platters, cold meat or cheese boards, generous sandwiches made with good bread, hot dishes such as our tasty duck confit with Asian stir-fried vegetables & soya broth are served in the simple, pillared wine bar or the smart, comfy lounge, while a tiny, formal dining area offers a short choice set at £19.50 for two/£25 for three courses. If the weather's hot, grab a parasoled table in the Temple garden, or have the kitchen make up a picnic hamper to take where you will within the Inns of Court.
- Square Meal 2006
For the benefit of our many overseas readers may I first explain the location? Middle Temple is one of the Inns of Court, where barristers and judges have their chambers. The Inns are arranged much like an Oxbridge college - you enter Middle Temple from the hurly-burly of Fleet Street, past a porter's lodge into a calm enclave. La Grand Marque occupies a former library building and it is comfortably furnished - the bar with armchairs and sofas and the dining room is hung with antique paintings of historic legal personages.
There's a fine breakfast menu and in the bar there are all day snacks as well as more substantial dishes ranging from tapas plates to Boeuf Bourguignon and British favourites like bangers and mash. But it was the restaurant menu that we were interested in. Chef Del Barrett's table d'hote menu is normally priced at £19.50 for two courses or £25.00 for three, although at present there's a special Christmas menu at £32.50.
The wild mushroom soup brought back recent memories of a late autumn where fungal trophies were in abundance - this soup exuded a delightfully earthy, forest aroma. A carpaccio of smoked halibut was generous and fresh flavoured. I then tucked into a tender roast partridge which came with all the trimmings, especially appreciated were the pears cooked down in red wine. A tranch of salmon was rescued from the ordinary by a piquant coating of chilli crumb crust and some nicely presented garnishes of spinach and mash with a lively sauce flavoured with fennel and saffron.
My guest was American and had never yet experienced a full blown English Christmas Pudding which she really seemed to like. My chocolate tart had a very good rich filling.
There's a good wine list with some twenty wines priced under twenty pounds as well as some superstars such as a 1998 Aloxe Corton for £45.00! Service was exemplary by Polish waiting staff - where would we be without them?
At the moment the building is swathed in scaffolding, but when this is removed in the New Year, La Grande Marque could be all set to become a charming little destination.
- Dineonline December 2006
The Inns of Court are one of the unsung parts of London. The mysterious little doorways that lead into them from the street are easily passed without being spotted. Inside it’s a charmed world of cobbled courtyards and hand-lettered signs. La Grande Marque is itself hidden inside the old Library down Middle Temple Lane. With little or no signage, it’s not easy to find, but it’s worth it.
Go up the anonymous steps and you enter a sunlit room whose ancient sash windows look out onto a green garden with tables in the summer; to your left is the bar/brasserie to the right the main restaurant room. It’s a peaceful spot a million miles from Covent Garden and its rip off restaurants, yet only ten minutes’ walk. Lunch is fixed, £19 for two courses, £25 for three at this time and you can’t say fairer than that.
Chef Del Barrat has put together a nicely compact lunch menu of seven starters, seven mains and draws influence from all over. A ‘rustic’ game terrine with brioche came with quince jelly, normally seen with Spanish cheese as dessert. A properly chunky terrine, classically wrapped in streaky bacon, it had robust flavours and a mix of textures and was clearly made with some skill in house. It was also elegantly plated. Spinach gnocchi, fried off and served with broad beans, rocket and pecorino cheese and topped with a gazpacho dressing was a tad heavy – gnocchi often are - and needed a bit more of a taste lift, the cheese not being quite tangy enough to do it on its own, but made a pleasant appetite-settling starter
Eastern style Hock of Ham was dauntingly large on the plate but didn’t faze the eater who liked it very much and happily picked it down to the bone. The Eastern bit wasn’t exactly obvious, but whatever it was it made a very nice dish. The vegetables were slightly tired looking though. My confit of duck was neatly chopped in half, which made for better presentation and easier eating, and had good crispy skin and dark flavoursome meat well set off by the teriyaki sauce that topped the ‘spaghetti’ vegetables. A good dish, well put together. Not to be ignored either was the rather excellent Rioja, from a well priced list, that went down with it.
Death by Chocolate was 99.9% cocoa solid and none the worse for it, managing to be rich without making the eater want to lie down immediately after. Cappuccino crème brûlée served in a cup was a refreshingly different take on a classic, and passed the more-ish test, as the cup was scraped clean.
Overall very good value for the food and definitely different in location, La Grand Marque is somewhere to rely on for a quick meal, a bar snack or a good dinner any time you want somewhere discreet yet stylish.
- london-eating.co.uk - February 2007
The atmospheric surroundings of Middle Temples Library Building, in Middle Temple Lane have been turned into the La Grande Marque wine bar and restaurant. The establishment aims to serve brasserie-style food featuring light dishes such as sandwiches and salads as well as more substantial items like grilled lamb and mint sausages and mash and beef bourguignon. Breakfast is available too and some decent wines to boot.
- restaurantguides.co.uk - 2007
With summer increasingly upon us, fancy a trip to the country for lunch? No time? How about a trip to the Middle Temple Garden then?
If it weren't - and this is where reality intrudes - for the traffic noise from the Embankment, you could almost be in an English country garden (or at least in an Oxbridge college).
Access to the garden (and tables within it) is but one attraction of this recently opened restaurant, bizarrely located in the heart of the ancient Inns of Court.
A spin-off from the upmarket Ludgate Hill wine bar of the same name, another draw is the selection of champagnes: some three dozen, all reasonably priced.
There's also a similar number again of both red and white wine.
Inside - what with the portraits of legal worthies and the volumes of law reports on the shelves - the feeling is more of a combination room than a restaurant, and the atmosphere is airy, calm and relaxed.
The musak, however, was intrusive on our visit, though in keeping with the setting as it was of the Hallelujah Chorus variety.
The food is substantial and tasty.
Two people could happily lunch here for £70 and - if you had something you wanted to discuss over a nice glass or two, business or personal, in a slightly away-from-it-all setting - a visit here might well be a pretty reasonable investment.
City A.M. - June 2007
Right on the marque! We at In Britain love to give our readers the inside track on hidden gems: the new Grande Marque restaurant and wine bar certainly is one of those.
Just down the road from London's theatreland, walk along the Strand past The Old Bailey law courts. Watch out for a wooden gateway with a sign to Middle Temple Lane. You might think you are going into someone's private yard but it's the north entry to this cobbled street of solicitors' offices in London's "legal village". The restaurant is in Middle Temple Library Building.
It's a flexible space for a drink, a quick snack or a more formal three-course meal. You can eat brasserie-style meals in the wine bar, and, for the restaurant, chef Del Barrett has created a menu of good solid cooking: seared scallops with puy lentils and Arnagnac sauce and the hock of ham with seasonal veg and mustard sauce were delicious.
Grande Marque has also a sought-after al fresco location: you can eat in the Middle Temple Garden in summer months
In Britain - June/July 2007
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