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Farringdon’s Quality Chop House Is Expanding With a New Café Next Door

The restaurant’s retail space is being extended; a café will move into the room currently occupied by Noble Fine Liquor

Mince on toast at the Quality Chop House, one of London’s foremost exponents of “modern British”
Quality Chop House is known for its mince on dripping toast, among other British specialities
Ola Smit/Eater London

Farringdon restaurant The Quality Chop House will extend its next-door retail space and include a new café when it opens in a fortnight’s time. The café will replace the wine shop currently operated by Noble Fine Liquor (the parent company of Clapton wine shop, bar and restaurant P. Franco.)

Since the end of last year, the retail space has been managed by Ballymaloe alumnus Joanna Hughes and chef Rich Bowman. The owners said that the extension of the retail arm is “really a case of not having enough space for what we currently sell or for the multitude of things that we are all excited about doing in the future.”

Will Lander, co-owner of Quality Chop House said:

“We’re very excited to say that our shop is expanding — both in space and product range — to include wine, cookbooks and a small cafe.

“Next door to our food shop, led by Joanna and her wonderful team you [will] find a small QCH cafe serving all our QCH shop products to sit down and enjoy. There’s papers and a selection of second hand food books to read while you make your way through your lunch and we’ll be serving Allpress coffee throughout the day too.”

Although the builders are currently working on readying the space, Lander said that the shop will sell “their favourite” food and wine books to take home. They will be “chosen by [co-owner] Daniel [Morgenthau], who can usually be found with his head in a cookbook when he’s not running our three restaurants [Portland and Clipstone are the other two in the group], it’s a very personal selection of things we love from our favourite writers.”

And despite the departure of Noble Fine Liquor, there will be wine, too. The selection will be curated by Erwan Gouiffes, head of wine at the restaurant, who used to run a wine shop in the Loire Valley. The promised list will be “a broad church, starting at £8.50 and going up to some very special stuff from Gouiffe’s spiritual home of Burgundy. He’s even discovered they make good wine outside France and there’s some of that too!” Lander said.

On Thursday and Friday mornings the shop is known best for its hot bacon sandwiches on fat-enriched rolls, while at weekday lunchtimes soups, salads, sausage rolls, and hot roast meat sandwiches are served, to take away. A range of cakes, tarts, brownies, biscuits and chocolates are also freshly baked each day.

As well as daily provisions and elite groceries, such as home-baked bread, cheese, milk, eggs, and seasonal fruit and vegetables and chocolates, the Quality Chop shop has an in-house butcher’s shop, selling rare breed meat, poultry and game. It also offers a selection of the dishes which are served in the restaurant to take away — including pies, terrines, mince on dripping toast, confit potatoes, whipped cod’s roe and chicken liver parfait.

It is widely considered to be one of the capital’s best food shops.

Quality Chop House

94 Farringdon Rd, London, Greater London EC1R 3EA +44 20 3490 6228 Visit Website

Portland

113 Great Portland Street, , England W1W 6QQ 020 7436 3261 Visit Website

Spring

Lancaster Place, , England WC2R 1LA 020 3011 0115 Visit Website

Milk

18-20 Bedford Hill, , England SW12 9RG 020 8772 9085 Visit Website

P Franco

107 Lower Clapton Road, , England E5 0NP Visit Website

Chop Shop

66-68 Haymarket, London, Greater London SW1Y 4RF +44 20 7842 8501 Visit Website

The Quality Chop House

88-94 Farringdon Road, , England EC1R 3EA 020 7278 1452 Visit Website

Clipstone

5 Clipstone Street, , England W1W 6BB 020 7637 0871 Visit Website