Quality Wines, EC1

The finest wines available to humanity

Is there a more ‘London’ restaurant than Quality Wines?

Think about it: small plates for sharing, a nonspecifically Mediterranean menu (written on a blackboard, of course), natural wine by the glass, focaccia and olives to start, and always at least one dish on the menu that comes with aioli.

I mean none of this as criticism, to be clear. Nick Bramham and his team might not be doing anything terribly original, but if you can’t do it first then do it best — and Bramham’s made a decent stab at doing just that.

Quality Wines started life as an offshoot of the none-more-British Quality Chop House next door, and was first and foremost a bottle shop, bolstered by a solid offering of kitchen provisions and bougie ingredients. When Bramham moved in and started cooking from a compact stove in the corner, the offering was initially limited, as were the seats. These days Quality Wines has a better rep than its sibling next door (no mean feat, since the Chop House is an institution for good reason), and is certainly more buzzy, which is partly why they eventually gave up on the shop conceit and expanded to a bigger kitchen and a lot more tables.

Bramham’s food is Mediterranean, but like Morchella down the road that’s interpreted broadly. For the most part, expect a menu that veers somewhere between Spanish, Italian and Greek. Gildas are a given to start, plump olives speared with a curl of anchovy and a fierce hit of pickled chilli. Pig fat cannoli are a fixture at the other end of the menu, crisp and flaky and heaving with ricotta, usually on offer in a few flavours each night. I’m not sure any single Greek dish has earned such an immovable spot on the menu, but you shouldn’t be surprised to see something or other bedecked by feta.

Many of the best things you eat at Quality Wines will also be the simplest. Small bowls of vibrant green Italian olives or crisp Marcona almonds; fresh mozzarella sliced into wedges and drizzled with pungent olive oil; a full plate of delicately layered salame or coppa, thinly sliced to order. The kitchen’s intervention is minimal — perhaps in part thanks to that Mediterranean ethos, in part a hangover from the days of a double stove in the corner — but the ingredients are excellently sourced and need no fussing.

You could be happy enough picking at these bits, along with thick-cut, oil-drenched slices of the homemade focaccia, while you work through the impressive wine list. Expect lots of natural options — though plenty that aren’t, in case that offends — and prices that extend from £35 at the low end all the way up to the dizzying heights of £450. If you want to have much of a choice you should expect to pay north of £50 for a bottle, but there are good options below that line — on my last visit we had a great, fruity riesling for £46, and glasses of the house wine are only £8. Still, this is an upmarket spot with a focus on wine, so you should make your peace with the fact that you might have to pay up for the good stuff.

That is, in fairness, my biggest problem with Quality Wines overall: it’s an excellent kitchen rightly deserving of the praise it gets, but I’m not sure you could ever accuse it of being great value. A salad of chickpeas, salt cod, and half (!) a boiled egg sets us back £14. Pappardelle with stracotto — essentially a slow-cooked beef ragu — is served in a small plates portion for £22. A hake fillet with potatoes, fennel, and olives (not to mention the obligatory aioli) costs £32, and if you ate it as a main you’d probably still be hungry. I’ve eaten at Quality Wines four times, and every time departed with half a grumble on my lips about the bill.

It will help if you go in knowing where you stand: if you want to do three courses, eat freely, and drink with just a little abandon, you should expect the bill to edge towards £100 per head, and you might still have a little appetite left when you head for the door. That’s still a far cry from fine dining territory, but it’s a lot to pay for anywhere that soundtracks dinner with a playlist of noughties bangers.

Quality Wines does at least do its best to earn your money. Anywhere else it might rankle to pay £12 for a small serving of greens and mozzarella, but here the agretti — a slightly bitter Italian leaf I’d not encountered before — might be the best thing we eat all night. Braised pork belly melts into the lentils it’s served on, a fish soup is rich and intensely savoury, a substantial scallop arrives immersed in a pool of butter as deep as the sea it was scooped out of. None of these dishes are complicated, or even surprising, but each is prepared phenomenally. There’s no risk of I-could-have-made-that-at-home-itis, simply because I know for a fact that you could lock me in a room for a week with the same ingredients as Bramham and I’d fail to turn out anything half so good. The produce is excellent, but the kitchen isn’t messing about either.

The fact remains: Quality Wines’ pricing leaves it just over the cusp of diminishing returns. You could spend half this and leave nearly as happy — put up three-quarters and you’ll really struggle to pull things apart. But there’s a space for the splurge, for the restaurant that costs just a little more than it probably should. That’s what birthdays are for, or anniversaries, or dinners when the parents are visiting and you think they might just offer to foot the bill. London may have no shortage of other pan-Mediterranean small plates natural wine bars where you could eat this well and still save a little for cab fare, but every now and then it’s worth spending a little more to remember what everyone else is aiming for.