The Travel Critic

There’s nothing quite like an impromptu business lunch to lift the spirits and recalibrate your day. One minute you’re weighing up whether to endure another Super Green Falafel from Pret or gamble on that egg mayo baguette that’s been sweating quietly in the chiller since 8 a.m., and the next—you’re in a real restaurant. With wine. And cutlery made of actual metal.

It’s the gastronomic equivalent of turning up at Heathrow and being told you’ve been bumped up to business class. “Window or aisle, sir?” “Neither, actually—I’ll have the sirloin with peppercorn sauce.”

So there we were, a rag-tag assembly of office types who’d miraculously aligned calendars and decided that a working lunch meant we should actually work, albeit in the background while eating red meat and pretending our phones were on silent.

Vivat Bacchus, Farringdon, is the kind of place that gets this dance. You walk in and there’s buzz—proper buzz. Not the empty cacophony of a chain brasserie pumping out Phil Collins to two lost tourists, but actual, human voices. Laughter. Cutlery on plates. Wine being poured like someone’s going to Brexit again. Every table full, every face either deep in animated conversation or deep in an 11oz rib-eye. It’s South African-tinged, this place, and they cook your meat over a proper braai, which is not just BBQ with an accent but a whole different level of flamey meat theatre.

Service? Spot on. Slick, not smarmy. Efficient but not breathless. They knew—they knew—we all had a Teams call in 53 minutes that we couldn’t, despite our best intentions, wiggle out of. So they played it like a Formula One pit stop. Orders taken promptly, wine poured with a nod that said “You’ve earned this, champ”, and food landed just as I was mid-eye roll about someone’s CRM integration plan.

And let’s talk about the food. I went classic: sirloin with peppercorn sauce. Because sometimes you don’t want to be challenged by lunch. You want to be reassured. And this was comforting and confident: charred outside, pink within, a hunk of meat that said “I’m better than Pret” in every juicy mouthful. Fries crisp and hot, the sauce proper and punchy—no weak creamy nonsense here. This was peppercorn sauce with a point to prove.

The wine? Red. South African. Didn’t ask more questions, didn’t need to. It did its job like a good lunch guest: bold, generous, and never tried to talk over anyone. Rounded off with a solid coffee that didn’t taste like hot compost, and we were done in 55 minutes, refreshed, fed, and ready to pretend we hadn’t just had the best part of our day before 2pm.

Vivat Bacchus is the sort of place that reminds you lunch doesn’t have to be an act of desperation. It can be an occasion. Even on a Tuesday. Even in Farringdon. Especially when the alternative is a soggy wrap and a seat next to your own ennui on a bench outside Boots.

Highly recommend.