Chez Bruce

I have written previously about Chez Bruce and its head chef Matt Christmas, as well as about its wine list. The menu here is a la carte and is £98.50 for the food plus 12.5% service. 

At this latest meal there were some enjoyable Parmesan shortbreads as nibbles, and I started with an old classic dish here: seafood ravioli. This was very good, with a generous filling of seafood, pasta with very good texture and a rich bisque sauce, brown shrimps, and finely chopped chives adding some colour (15/20). On the side, both focaccia and sourdough were very good. 

A special of the day was pigeon Wellington, and I was glad that I chose it. The pastry was excellent, and inside was carefully cooked pigeon, duxelle of mushrooms involving morels as well as foie gras. There was a bed of spinach, celeriac puree and a red wine jus. This dish was a triumph, with the pigeon excellent, the morels really adding something to the dish, the sauce good, the celeriac bringing its earthy flavour to the dish (17/20). 

Dessert was rum baba, and this was rather less successful. It may seem odd to say that it had too much rum, but nonetheless this rather overloaded the dish. The bread base of the baba itself had good texture, but the crème Chantilly was rather dominated by the rum (13/20).  Coffee here has changed supplier since my last visit, and was a major step up in the form of Volcano coffee. This was a big improvement over the coffee that they used to serve here.

Service was excellent, and the bill for four people came to £133 per person. Chez Bruce provides a very enjoyable restaurant experience. The menu is appealing, the service is friendly and the food can be very good indeed. No wonder that it was packed, as usual.

Further reviews: 03rd Feb 2026 | 27th Jul 2025 | 10th Nov 2017 | 23rd Apr 2011 | 03rd Jan 2008 | 02nd Apr 2007