Jamie Oliver Catherine St

Covent Garden's Casual-Dining Register, Revisited

Theatreland's dining bracket has always operated on a particular logic: get people fed well, at a fair price, with enough time to make curtain. The neighbourhood around the Strand and Catherine Street runs a wide spectrum, from canteen-style pre-theatre deals to the kind of tasting-menu rooms that require a separate occasion altogether. Jamie Oliver's return to Covent Garden in autumn 2023 — at 6 Catherine St, immediately adjacent to the Theatre Royal — plants itself deliberately in the middle of that range, targeting the segment where affordability and atmosphere matter as much as the food itself.

The room signals its intentions quickly. Wood floors, burgundy leather banquettes, striped chairs, linen lampshades, and Art Deco pendant lights compose a setting that reads as warm rather than formal, lively rather than hushed. Tall potted plants break up the sightlines without making the space feel crowded. This is a dining room designed for conversation and a bottle of wine, not for contemplation over an amuse-bouche. In a city where the upper bracket of modern British cooking is occupied by rooms like CORE by Clare Smyth or The Ledbury, and where more experimental kitchens such as Ikoyi and The Clove Club occupy their own creative niche, Catherine St is positioned several tiers lower in price and ambition, and that is precisely the point.

How the Menu Is Structured, and What That Tells You

The menu at Catherine St is less a statement of culinary direction than an edited anthology. Oliver's Anglo-Mediterranean back catalogue, accumulated across television series, cookbooks, and earlier restaurant ventures, provides the source material. Dishes like a Fifteen salad with burrata and spaghetti with tiger prawns, white crab, clams, and mussels in a tomato bisque are drawn from that archive and placed alongside more classically British items: dry-aged steaks, chops, pies, and a lobster thermidor served with Koffmann fries.

Structural logic here is deliberate. Rather than a single tightly focused menu, the kitchen offers breadth across price points and moods, so a group of four with different appetites, one wanting pasta, one wanting steak, one wanting something lighter, can all land at something appropriate. It is a format common in neighbourhood bistros and mid-market brasseries across London, but less often deployed with this much care for recognisable dish names. The inclusion of 'Trevor's chicken,' a dish named after Oliver's father, adds a personal register without the menu becoming a biography.

At the lighter end, the set menu is the practical workhorse of the operation. Designed for lunch and pre-theatre, it leads with carpaccio of beef or smoked mackerel pâté on sourdough toast, then moves to chicken Caesar salad or crisp-skinned sea bream with seasonal greens. The value proposition here is clear. Covent Garden pre-theatre dining at this price point tends toward the formulaic, and a set menu built around quality sourcing rather than covers-per-hour compression is a different approach. The execution has its gaps, a pasta dish with mushroom duxelles and British pecorino has been noted as underwhelming, but the direction is consistent: seasonal produce, recognisable formats, accessible pricing.

For those who want to eat more expansively, the lobster thermidor with Koffmann fries to share references a French brasserie classic (Pierre Koffmann's name attached to chips remains a signal of a certain kind of serious-but-fun cooking in London), while the dry-aged steaks and chops position the menu within the broader British grill tradition. None of this is the radical repositioning of a chef's identity, but it was never meant to be. Celebrity-chef restaurants in major cities have a complicated track record globally: compare the focused ambition of Le Bernardin in New York City or the neighbourhood institution model of Emeril's in New Orleans with the more variable outcomes of branded rollouts. Catherine St reads as an attempt at something more grounded: a likeably affordable room with a menu that does not overclaim.

Drinks, Service, and the Practical Shape of a Visit

The drinks list keeps pace with the menu's register. Cocktails are available, and the wine list is short but international, with bottles opening from £35. That entry price is at the lower end for central London, where the first rung of serious wine lists at rooms like Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester begins significantly higher. For a group sharing a bottle over pasta and steak before a show, a £35 to £50 bottle is the working range, and the list appears calibrated for exactly that.

Service has drawn mixed assessments since opening. The warmth of a Bakewell tart with crème fraîche arriving at the right moment can paper over gaps elsewhere, but inconsistency in front-of-house is a known friction point for high-footfall theatreland rooms, where table turns and time pressure create operational strain. It is worth factoring this into expectations rather than being surprised by it.

Catherine St is at 6 Catherine Street WC2B 5JY, directly next to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. For those using it as a pre-theatre option, the proximity removes the usual Covent Garden anxiety about timing. Booking ahead is advisable given the location's footfall, particularly for weekend evenings and matinee days. The set menu format is the most efficient path through the meal when curtain time is fixed.

For those building a broader London trip around serious dining, the rest of the EP Club network covers the full range: our full London restaurants guide maps the city's dining from neighbourhood bistros to multi-course tasting rooms, while our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, and our full London experiences guide cover the surrounding context. Beyond the capital, the EP Club also covers destination dining across Britain, from Waterside Inn in Bray and Hand and Flowers in Marlow to L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, and hide and fox in Saltwood. Wine coverage is in our full London wineries guide.