There are some hotel restaurants that you go to even if you live in the city they’re located in, and you couldn’t afford to actually stay there. They usually have a fancy location, a galaxy of Michelin stars and lunch will cost you a month’s rent. Most of the rest you eat in because you are staying there and it’s raining outside. Even in the evening, they carry the vague sadness of the breakfast buffet. A hotel restaurant which locals and non-residents want to go without bankrupting themselves is a rare thing indeed, but the recently revamped Cardinal Bar & Kitchen might well have pulled it off.
For starters, while its location isn’t necessarily fancy it is somewhere you might find yourself. Aldgate was once a curious corner of the Square Mile, where the City bled into the East End, once upon a time more literally than now. It has undergone something of a transformation in recent years as landmark buildings have gone up along Fenchurch and Leadenhall Streets and the seventies-era offices on Leman Street have given way to residential blocks. Now firmly part of the City and with Spitalfields market and Shoreditch a short walk up Commercial Street it’s an area now likely to be as busy on a weekend afternoon as it is during the working week.
The Hotel Saint nestles between Aldgate tube station and the elegance of St Botolph. Situated on the ground floor of the hotel, the Cardinal Bar & Kitchen divides into a bar at one end and a restaurant at the other, with an outside terrace. Overall it’s quite a large space but artfully designed to avoid the airport departure lounge feel that can blight many hotel restaurants. Exposed ducting gives a muted industrial feel without being too austere and planters break up the space to stop it feeling stark and create a bit more intimacy. There’s music but it’s not too loud. On a relatively quiet Wednesday night it all feels buzzy enough to make you feel you were on a night out but not so much that your solo hotel guest can’t sit quietly and read their book over dinner.
There is a lengthy cocktail menu, some sporting locally inspired names. To start proceedings, we enjoyed a sweet and sharp Aldgate Royal given extra punch with a healthy slug of Belvedere vodka, while the Walbrook Fizz was a refreshing blend of gin and Cornish Patis with strong cucumber and elderberry flavours.
The food menu is slightly shorter, and all the better for it. Too often these days you encounter a menu that suggests the restaurant wants to be an Italian, a Chinese, a curry house and a burger joint all at the same time, while managing only to be a sub-standard version of all of them. This keeps it simple. There are some staples for those seeking comfort food – soup and salads to start, fish and chips, burger and steak frites for mains. There are then some more foody dishes, for example the braised lamb shanks in a Moroccan spiced sauce and the mezze to share. There is something to meet all tastes and appetites without an overwhelming variety of foods. It’s also worth noting the prices. All but three of the main courses are £20 or less (sides are extra).
We started with Bao buns, delightfully moreish with a cut-through of pepper and chilli. We followed this with a clean and fresh tuna tartare, lightened with avocado and a quite superb beef ravioli, a delicate fresh pasta in a delicious bordelaise sauce.
For the main course, the pork chop was a beautifully juicy piece of meat accompanied by a creamy mash and a caramelised apple. The roast chicken was cooked sous vide, giving it a succulence made more opulent by the truffle dashi sauce. Among the sides, the french onion soup-style fries are a perfectly designed guilty pleasure. It’s basically fries mixed with the cheese and onions of the eponymous soup, and so wrong it’s right.
The wine list is similar to the menu, in that it’s not too long and a considerable amount of it is priced south of £50 a bottle. We enjoyed a 2021 Saurus Select Malbec from Familia Schroder in Patagonia. Full-bodied and as full of dark fruit flavours as you’d expect but with less of the aggressive punch Argentinian Malbec can administer which meant it sat perfectly alongside the chicken and pork.
Dessert followed the theme – short and sharp and most under £10. The sticky toffee pudding with Armagnac was as rich and sweet as you would want while the Earl Grey-infused Basque cheesecake was a creamy slab of citrussy goodness.
There is an awful lot to like here. From the ambience to the scope of the menu, the quality of the food to the pricing, the attentive but friendly and relaxed service, you get the sense of lots of seemingly basic things being done absolutely right. This adds up to a place you can imagine going back to often, maybe for a quick burger one night, a blowout meal another, perhaps just a cocktail. It certainly wouldn’t require me to book a room to go back.
The Cardinal Bar & Grill, Hotel Saint, 9 Aldgate High St, London EC3N 1AH, 020 3805 1000 www.hotelsaint.com. Open 7am-midnight, starters £8-15, mains £16-27
