The Knife Tries Galvin Bistrot & Bar's Taste of Summer
- James Massoud
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
There aren't many places in the City of London where £29 buys you much of a dinner anymore. At Galvin Bistrot & Bar in Spitalfields, however, it currently buys oysters, burrata, homemade focaccia, grilled prawns, and more – all served as a generous Mediterranean feast designed for sharing.
Part of Galvin Restaurants' new 'Taste of Summer' menus, available until 15th September, it's the latest example of brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin attempting to make seriously good restaurant cooking feel accessible. The Knife recently headed to Spital Square to discover whether one of London's more intriguing summer dining deals is as good as it sounds.
Next Door
There's an interesting contrast between the two Galvin restaurants sitting side-by-side in Spitalfields.
Next door, Michelin starred Galvin La Chapelle occupies the magnificent former Victorian school that has become one of London's most recognisable dining rooms. Galvin Bistrot & Bar feels deliberately different.
Smaller, warmer and more informal, it has the easy-going character of the sort of neighbourhood restaurant you'd happily wander into without an occasion to justify it. That's important because, although the Galvin name carries more than two decades of fine-dining pedigree, the Bistrot isn't trying to recreate La Chapelle without the white tablecloths.
Instead, the cooking under Chef Director Arturo Granato leans towards the Mediterranean, allowing good ingredients and uncomplicated combinations to do most of the talking. And the Taste of Summer menu suits the room (or the al fresco terrace) particularly well.
Start Sharing
Rather than the conventional starter-main-dessert procession, the £29 menu arrives more like a Mediterranean table gradually filling with food.
Jersey oysters make a suitably refreshing opening, before British burrata arrives with Heritage tomatoes and pickled shallots. The latter is exactly the kind of dish summer dining calls for: creamy, fresh and uncomplicated, with the sweetness and intensity of the tomato cutting through the richness of the cheese.
Then comes one of the simplest pleasures of the meal: Bayonne ham with homemade focaccia. There is nowhere to hide with a plate like this. Excellent cured meat, warm bread and very little interference are all that's required. It's also indicative of the wider approach at the Bistrot. There are flashes of finesse, certainly, but rarely at the expense of generosity. This is food designed to encourage reaching across the table.
Bigger Plates
The larger dishes continue in much the same spirit. Grilled Argentinian prawns with citrus butter arrive as the sort of gloriously messy centrepiece that immediately makes dinner more fun. Sweet, smoky shellfish and citrus-spiked butter is hardly a combination that needs reinventing, and thankfully nobody here tries.
Alongside them, Gragnano Paccheri with a trio of D.O.P tomato provides something altogether more comforting. It's rich, yielding and deeply savoury – the kind of dish capable of reminding you that some of the Mediterranean's best food comes not from complexity but from a handful of ingredients complimenting one another perfectly.
The star of the show, however, is the Slow Cooked Dingley Bell Pork Belly. It's cooked to total perfection, balancing the crispiness of the skin with the jelly-like consistency of the fat, all of which lands wonderfully with a mouthful of pleasing flavour.
Together, the dishes give the meal a pleasing rhythm. Cold and fresh becomes hot and indulgent; seafood sits alongside vegetables and cured meat; smaller plates gradually make way for something more substantial. For £29, it also feels remarkably generous.
Sweet Spot
Dessert keeps things classic. There's house tiramisu, which feels entirely appropriate after what has come before, and British strawberries with crème Chantilly for something lighter and more overtly seasonal.
The temptation with a promotional summer menu can be to make the price the story and the food the justification. Here, the opposite feels true. The value is impressive precisely because the experience doesn't particularly feel like a value menu.
At a time when London restaurants are navigating rising costs while diners are becoming understandably more selective about where they spend their money, that distinction matters. Nobody wants to feel as though they're eating the cheaper version of a restaurant's food.
And at Galvin Bistrot & Bar, you don't.
Summer Across Galvin
The same philosophy is being extended across the wider Galvin portfolio this summer. At Galvin La Chapelle, the 'Taste of Summer' becomes a five-course experience priced at £49 per person, including a glass of 2025 'Symphonie' Rosé from Château Sainte Marguerite, Côtes de Provence on arrival.
The menu moves into more refined territory with duck liver parfait, Moroccan spices and fermented peach; roasted yellow pepper escabeche with tonnato and stracciatella; Dingley Dell pork belly with miso aubergine; and Amalfi lemon tart with burnt soft meringue. Considering La Chapelle has held its Michelin star since 2011, £49 makes it one of the more approachable ways of experiencing Michelin-starred dining in London.
Head out of the capital and the proposition becomes cheaper still. At Galvin Green Man near Chelmsford, the group's Bib Gourmand-awarded country pub is offering two courses for £19.50 or three for £23.50. Its menu travels through red pepper and tomato gazpacho with basil and fresh almonds, Dingley Dell pork shoulder croquette with roast apricot and lavender honey salad, and Tiptree strawberry Eton mess.
Different restaurants, different levels of formality, but the message connecting them is refreshingly simple: summer dining doesn't necessarily need an intimidating bill attached.
East Meets Med
There is another reason to keep Galvin Bistrot & Bar on the radar beyond summer. On Tuesday 29th September, Granato will hand over part of his kitchen for a one-night-only collaboration with internationally acclaimed Korean-American chef, restaurateur and television personality Judy Joo.
It's a pairing that sounds unusual enough to be genuinely interesting. Joo's cooking brings the punchy, fermented, deeply savoury flavours of contemporary Korean cuisine, while Granato's background spans some of Europe's leading Michelin starred kitchens and a cooking style grounded in elegant Mediterranean flavours.
Rather than forcing the two into individual fusion dishes, the £75 dinner will see them alternate across the menu. Joo will open with a wild mushroom, soy and truffle dumpling, alongside Granato's Dorset crab tartelette with brown crab aioli and smoked trout roe. Korean steak tartare with lotus root crisps follows from Joo before Granato serves cacio & pepe tortelli with Sicilian prawn crudo and Amalfi lemon.
Then comes perhaps the dish to look forward to most: Joo's kalbi short ribs with ssamjang, kimchi and steamed short-grain rice, before Granato closes proceedings with a Delica pumpkin and clementine tart with caramelised white chocolate gelato.
A glass of NV Château Moncontour Vouvray Brut is included on arrival, with an optional £45 wine pairing available. It's an intriguing collision of culinary identities, and another indication of the role the Bistrot is carving out within the wider Galvin family.
The £29 Question
Twenty years into the Galvin story, it would be easy for the group's Michelin star and reputation to become its defining characteristics.
Galvin Bistrot & Bar suggests something more interesting. The restaurant works because it doesn't feel like the junior sibling next door to La Chapelle. It has its own identity: informal, Mediterranean, generous and built around the increasingly appealing idea that eating well doesn't always have to constitute a special occasion.
The 'Taste of Summer' menu amplifies that. For £29 per person, you're not simply getting three discounted courses squeezed into a set-menu format. You're getting a table filled with oysters, burrata, Bayonne ham, homemade focaccia, grilled prawns, delicious pasta and pork belly, as well as something sweet to finish.
In London in 2026, that feels less like a summer promotion and more like something of a small miracle.
