Jugged Hare — Restaurant in London

Returning to the Jugged Hare for the first time in about a decade it is still as amazing as I remember it being when I was younger. The general ambience of the restaraunt is one of a warm and welcoming environment and this is also reflected in the attitude of the staff.

The staff here are incredibly helpful and very welcoming. In paticular our waitress Lauren who was very friendly and made the entire meal an all round cheerfull experience. She also was very attentive, always there right when we were about to ask for a refill of chablis or for some more sparkling water, she even managed to tempt us into having some amazing deserts.

Food and drink wise everything was amazing. The selection of meats on the charcuterie board is complement eachother nicely with my favorite being the goat Nduja.

For the mains the burger is amazing. The well balanced mixture of pork, beef and goat creates a rich medly of flavours that are enhanced by the sauce. The burger is perfectly filling though a tad heavy.

The mackeral and crab was described by my grandfather as an excellent dish and he noted that though it might not look like a large portion the rich crab meat goes perfectly and it is in fact very filling. He also mentioned that it was perfectly complemented by the Chablis.

My father, often a man of few words, had only one thing to say about the Vegetarian stew dish and that was "sublime".

For desert I enjoyed a truly amazing sticky toffee pudding with a warm butterscoth sauce and a very smooth salted caramel ice cream. (Photo attached) This dish was the perfect way to round off an already amazing meal.

My sister had a gooseberry and mint pie with vanilla ice cream and described the gooseberries as being "pops of flavor" of which the tartness mixed well with the ice cream.

My grandfather who had the Chocolate and Bailey's Semifreddo describe it as "rich with an intense flavour" and seemed to thouroughly enjoy it.

Finally the cheeseboard which my father and mother had was described as full of flavour and they made sure to mention that it was nicely complemented by the sweet notes of the port.

Overall, dinner at the Jugged Hare was a delightful experience made all the more so by the amazing staff like Lauren and I look forward to returning when I am...

An impromptu trip to Barbican that ended up here for dinner and did not disappoint.

Beautiful little old pub covered in taxidermy, friendly staff. Good spirits selection, looked the kinda place to have a great wine list though I didn't check. A little lacking of beer choices unfortunately but I'm guessing their tied and do the best they can under the circumstances.

We only really went for a drink to wait out rush hour but after seeing venison tartare and snails on the bar menu, followed by brain on the full menu, we were sold to stay for dinner.

Unfortunately they were out of the brain dish so we shared the sea snails, then the tartare before burgers (but failed on the photo front for the burgers).

All of it was incredible, arrived quickly and was well portioned. The tartare even being served in a bone which was a very memorable theatrical touch to the dish.

My only criticism was the tartare had too much mustard on it, for my taste the mustard could quite happily be served on the side and the bigger issue, they refused to cook the burger any less than well done. Ideally I'll take burgers on the still mooing side of rare, of I trust the kitchen, but they said no. Which there are laws regarding on mince meat, except if you have any form or tartare on the menu, presumably you know what your doing, right? Why can one set of mince come out raw and the other must be cooked? Can only assume from prebatching the patties but when paying £20 a burger somewhere with a clear bent for meat lovers, I'd like to think I can have my burger cooked to my satisfaction.

Anyway, 5* nonetheless, I'd go 4.5 if I could but all my issues were pretty specific to my personal taste rather than issue issues, so I'll round up. Will...

I was keen to try the jugged hare, which was on the sample menu online, highlighted in its own special textbox with bold font declaring it “our signature dish”.

Unfortunately, the “signature dish” was missing from the real-life menu - I guess June is out of season for hare.

No bother. I respect seasonality, even when the place is named after a particular dish (though you’d be a bit confused if you went to Duck & Waffle only to find that they were not serving either duck or waffle).

I ordered the rabbit pie. The waitress came back and said that they only had one left. We were a group of six and four of us had ordered it.

Three of us decided to have the goat belly instead. But there were only two of those left.

Right…Fine. There weren’t that many other options for gamey mains so I took one for the team and went for the halibut. Fortunately, this was available. And it was delicious.

But some of us were already sharing a bottle of full-bodied pinot noir to go with the rich pies we thought we were going to have. Not a great pairing for a mild fish like halibut.

(Incidentally this was our second-choice wine as our first pick was, naturally, not available).

The waitress was very apologetic about the whole thing and brought us some free (and very tasty) peach liqueur to apologise.

But it’s not often you have to get down to your third-choice menu option - fourth if you count the absent jugged hare. Especially in a restaurant at this price point.

I found it odd that some of the key menu items had sold out by 8pm on what didn’t seem to be a particularly busy Wednesday evening. It’d be more understandable if we were walk-ins, but we’d booked ahead.

I was left pondering that age-old question - who ate...