Wallace @ The Wallace Collection

After reading the London Eaters blog of the Wallace restaurant, and hearing from so many friends that the museum itself is well worth a visit.
The museum is set within the old London town house of the Wallace family. A super über cool family, who knew their art, and had the money to purchase it as well.
The house alone is an amazing spectacle. Then you have the paintings, to which some date back to the 15th Century. The self-portrait by Rembrandt is definitely a highlight of the collection for me.
There is a spectacular range of beautiful weapons at the rear of the house. Who ever said war couldn’t be art as well. Sun Tzu did anyhows.
Oliver Peyton owns the restaurant. Yes, the annoying guy on the British menu show. It has a magnificent high glass ceiling, which on a sunny day gives you a wondrous feeling to dine beneath it. Although on the café side, the sun disappears mid afternoon.
We were not in the mood for a full on meal, but fancied something light and easy. So we opted for the café side of the restaurant.
The menu is pretty basic, lots of terrines, rillettes, quiches etc. I choose a game pate, and Lina had a goats cheese quiche.
To get the full effect of the sunshine we opted for the far side, mainly because where they wanted to seat us was too close to a group of seemingly geriatric pensioners. God I hope I do not end up like that.
Where we ended up we were between a group of ladies lunching, who had a tad too much perfume on for anyone’s good, and a group of Essex women on a trip to the city. Why is that horrid accent so ear piercing? Have I been bad in a former life?

The food arrived, hurrah. The presentation was very summery and fitted the sun-drenched room. It’s a shame, as what was building up to a delicious lunch, kinda came crashing down.
For starters the red endive leaves had no seasoning at all. The dressing was squirted on and formed puddles on the leaves.
My pate, had all the creaminess of a pate, but lacked any real flavour. It really did not taste of game at all. Maybe the chef was going for a subtle flavour. Well it was so subtle it got lost in the kitchen.
The goat cheese quiche did have subtle undertones of cheesiness, but not a lot else. The pastry was a little over done, but it was still quite nice, albeit weak.

But it was nice to sit there in the glorious sunshine, even with some shrieking Essex women deafening me to my right, talking about their new en-suite bathrooms.

I don’t think I would go back and eat in the restaurant, even with the promise of a 50% reduction off the first bottle of wine with my lunch receipt. I can however imagine the room to look amazing lit by candlelight.
Until I hear them regularly using a little white substance called salt I shall not return.