Restaurant review: Grapeshots, Artillery Passage, London

My work Christmas meal for the past two years has been a curry so this year I lobbied hard for a proper Christmas dinner- and luckily enough of my colleagues agreed. We'd left it relatively last minute to book - at least, we were booking several weeks in advance, for a weekday in mid-December, but places still get booked up really fast!

Not that Grapeshots wasn't my first choice, but.... well, it wasn't my first choice. I wasn't actually familiar with the pub even though it is only a few minutes from my office. But after I rung around a couple of other places I had in mind and found they were fully booked, a colleague suggested Grapeshots, and as they had a festive menu and enough space, that was good enough!

The Christmas menu offered two courses for £24.95 or three for £29.95 and we pre-ordered at the pub's request; I had  a nice starter of crayfish, prawn and smoked salmon cocktail, which was served on a plate with a thick slice of tomato as its base.

 

The main course had a generous portion of meat, a lot of gravy, but only a couple of small-ish roast potatoes, and we were brought two small dishes of vegetables to share between 7. There was barely enough for everyone and one of my colleagues asked if there was more coming, only to be told no.

 

 

My dessert of sticky toffee Christmas pudding was nice - the Christmas pudding was a stronger flavour than the toffee in the cake, but the toffee sauce tipped the balance deliciously the other way.

The pub seemed nice - the ladies is tiny with barely enough room to get through the door - and the food was pretty good, if a little expensive.