28-50 Marylebone

A very nice restaurant, and very friendly staff.

we enjoyed our lunch and enjoyed the relaxing ambience of the place.

very nice! 

Ok food but small portions and very expensive for what is a bar with tables. Service hit and miss.

Every time I visit 28º-50º I enjoy myself. Apart from their excellent selection of both traditional and unusual wines by glass, carafe and bottle, their exceptional food, never fails to deliver. My guest ordered the the scallops and the hake - both were cooked to perfection. I ordered the chicken liver parfait which was perfectly paired with an apricot and ginger chutney and the suckling pork belly which included salsify (a favourite of mine, commonly used in France though rarely seen on English menus.) Whether you after a quick drink of exceptional wine, or dinner 28º-50º is definitely worth a visit.

28-50 is as much as sister to Texture as Kate and Wills' firstborn is cousin to Blue Ivy (23rd cousin twice removed according to the Daily Mail, bastion of all things royal). OK they are aiming at totally different markets but to get the elephant in the room out of the way upfront: the evening here cost a third of our meal at Texture and was 3x better value. I'd recently found Texture a bit forgettable and hadn't been blown away by the 28-50 at Fetter Lane last year but whilst the two 28-50s are twins, with a shared fondness for wooden wine boxes stacked sky high, they are definitely non-identical ones. For a start, the 2 floor-to-ceiling windowed walls of the triangular bar at Marylebone Lane make it light and bright, waving goodbye to sinful-drinking-should-be-done-in-the-dark dim basements. For seconds, the service is charming: the maitre d' helps me up on to the bar stool and tucks me in like a solicitous, but ludicrously good-looking, uncle. Food is straight-forward but delicious (and unlike Texture, fat is allowed). We shared a few small plate starters including the most amazing cubes of intensely piggyish pork belly with really crispy skin and a sticky honey/soy sauce. My spatchcock chicken wasn't the most exciting but was perfectly, simply cooked, with lovely fresh greens and, aaah, triple-cooked chips which may well have seen 3 cooking stages. I finished off with a crispy topped creme brulee, yum. Then there's the wine, which was an education. We ordered a carafe which seemed tiny on arrival (and is actually 250ml which passes now as a “normal” size glass in many places) but, like Mary Poppins's carpet bag, dished out an astonishing 3 glasses of wine. We started with a Portuguese one and then without guilt tried the Rose and then a recommended Viognier. Overall, £50 of money well spent. Of all the family, this is definitely the fair-haired boy for me.

This is my second time here and, likely, not the last. The restaurant is uniformly pleasant, professional and well-run. Food is tasty and well-cooked (menu is brief, but not challenging), service is friendly and prompt and and prices user-friendly. It is the wine list, however, that takes it to the next level: one would not expect to find a bottle of Mastroberardino Taurasi Radici 1997 on the menu at all, let alone of around 60 pounds! Brilliant!

We visited for the first time this past Saturday night. Ate lunch at the Fetter Lane restaurant a while back and found it very good, very business-y. This one (at night, at least) has a much more sophisticated atmosphere, warm and welcoming and nicely energized. Our server commented that things were quiet, which leads us to think it can be pretty boisterous during the week when the after-work crowd is in force. That struck us as one of the nice things about the place, reflecting the sensitivity and taste with which it's been put together — equally good for groups or couples (both were in evidence on Saturday). She and I are reasonably educated and fairly demanding when it comes to wine, though hardly expert. We know enough to distinguish different grapes and regions so as to be able to guess at what we're likely to enjoy and describe our preferences to someone who is truly knowledgeable — but we're mostly clueless when it comes to vintages and producers. And my taste in wine is very different from Hers. So we ordered by the glass and sampled half a dozen different wines on the recommendation of our server — all were excellent. We also had a glass of the house champagne — too dry for Her, but I found it delicious. The sweet wine paired on the menu with our dessert was very good. The food is really not meant to be the star of the show here, so can't be given very highest marks (if it's inventive cuisine you want, go to Texture). But the menu is thoughtful and varied, and everything we ate was well-executed and delicious and nicely presented. Oysters were excellent, as were our starters (beetroot salad with horseradish yogurt, aubergine and peppers with goats curd, and salmon confit with marinated vegetables). For mains we shared the spatchcock chicken, utterly simple but practically perfect, crisp and moist and properly seasoned, with a tasty Bernaise alongside. Accompanied by a well dressed green salad — what more could you ask? We had a cinnamon creme brulee for dessert, which was very satisfying, at the firm and creamy end of the brulee texture spectrum. Coffee was also good. The service was very good, in a manner appropriate to the type of restaurant this is, both professional and warm — the staff was clearly working hard to please. Our primary server was friendly and attentive and knowledgeable about the wine list — as noted above, her wine recommendations were spot on in response to our requests. Two other staff members appeared to be keeping tabs on us as well: someone appeared from behind the bar almost instantly when our wine glasses ran empty; someone else whisked away our plates before we had time to wish they would, then immediately brought us dessert menus. The meal was well paced and we were given the bill and permitted to pay promptly after we asked. All in all a lovely evening — we will certainly return.