Review: The Garden Cafe, Waterloo

When it opened a few years back, the Garden Museum Cafe was voted “Best museum restaurant in the world” – a high accolade. Of course, in part that’s because museums haven’t often been known for their food offerings. The theory certainly always seemed to be: if you’ve got a captive audience, why not milk them with poor food at inflated prices? It feels like one of the minor joys of the last decade-or-so that this has been changing in so many places. Mind you, there’s always more to do: I’ve still never had good food at a zoo!

The Garden Museum Cafe is an airy room with views onto the courtyard garden, a clean and bright “modern canteen” vibe in a pleasing way. It’s all small plates, good for sharing, and the service was friendly and attentive. We started off with a bit of sourdough foccacia, a lovely chewy and springy specimen with a good bit of salt and oil, very moreish. Then ordered just three small plates to be sure of room for dessert!

Our first plate was chicken livers and chanterelles on toast, just as earthy and iron-y and richly flavoured as you’d expect, the juices all soaked into the crunchy bit of toast. Next up was a salad of celeriac, raddichio, hazelnuts and pecorino. It was actually billed as a mushroom salad, but the finely sliced raw button mushrooms were a small quantity lost in the more powerful flavours. Still a good salad, plenty of crunch and a muddle of salt-sweet-bitter-nutty flavours. Third dish was Morteau sausage with potato salad. One of those deceptively simple combinations that are a dream to eat; beautifully slices of garlicky and chunky sausage with sturdy potato pieces, all dressed in a light herby shallot dressing, some crisp leaf on top.

Pudding was well worth leaving room for. Some silken rice pudding laced with really earthy-smoky blackberry jam and nut-brown almond flakes. And a treacle tart with a splendidly rich treacle flavour but scarcely any sweetness, paired with a dollop of thick clotted cream almost the size of the tart.

Our dinner was about £28 each before drinks, but bear in mind we didn’t have any main courses, only three small plates and pudding. So a light supper, really. It’s still decent value for the quality of the food and the cooking, a genuinely lovely place to know about in this odd spot south of the river. Fifteen minutes walk to the Old Vic, for example.