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In the febrile conditions of the London restaurant scene, we are told that independent restaurants are “finding new ways to operate”. So I guess, as a customer, I need to be thinking about new ways to eat. Sometimes, I don’t want a “selection of small plates for sharing”. I almost never want a tasting menu. Often, I want a meal to last a long evening, not to feel like I’m on greased rails, to be ejected into the night, precisely one hour and 45 minutes after I sit down. And y’know what? Sometimes, I don’t even want three courses. I just want to start with a fantastic martini and then see where the evening takes me. Those are the times, I now realise, when I just want Baudry Greene.

It’s the latest in the little empire overseen by Will Palmer and Ian Campbell, on a junction of Endell Street in Covent Garden. It’s next door to their much-loved wine bar, 10 Cases, and opposite their excellent fish restaurant Parsons. OK, as empires go, it’s not exactly the full Austro-Hungarian, although, come to think of it, it might be heading that way. Baudry Greene is a bar that’s sort of a cocktail joint, sort of mittel-European café, and I find myself quietly, deeply in love with it.

I went in around 5.30pm one darkling evening, with half an hour to kill, in search of a couple of Gildas and a decent martini. It’s a nearly square room, on a corner, so glazed on two sides in the way I always associate with Edward Hopper and that somehow gravitationally pulls me to a barstool and conversation. The bar, backed by high glass shelves promiscuously laden with tinctures, looks like it was trucked over from a bankrupt brothel in Trieste. At least a couple of tonnes of brown marble, mottled like a diseased liver and bound with brass straps. Beneath the substantial performance space of its top is a layer like a glass tank stocked with pastries and nibbles in a sepulchral glow.

“Jesus. Where did they find this leviathan?” I asked the woman behind the bar.

“We had it custom-built.”

The martini was spectacularly on-target. Pre-mixed and held in the freezer, as they damn well should be. No flash, curated gin or artisanal vermouth. The kind of thing writers used to use to clear their heads back in the days when we earned the title. It came with popcorn, which is a nice touch as long as they keep a selection of interdental brushes in the bathroom, but I thought I’d do the smart thing and essay a Queen’s Gambit with some parmesan and gruyère bites. It was one of my better decisions. A neat bowl of malformed mini-gougères, freshly made, though rapidly cooling. I moved in swiftly.

I suppose gougères are always intended as a gateway drug. Whenever they come out, you pretty much have to accept you’re in it for the duration, so I called for the menu, and I saw that it was good. You read the words “Brie and black truffle toastie”, then “Trout roe blinis and crème fraîche” and “A truffled egg” and you think, “I might like it here”, and that’s not even the stuff you’re planning to order.

I went for a warm pretzel and taramasalata, partly because of its endearingly insouciant multiculturalism. I’ve no idea where Greek and Austrian cultural traditions met and blended and, frankly, my store of tosses to give about such matters is fully depleted. I cared only that my next martini wouldn’t feel lonely or remain unabsorbed. The second I bit into the boiled bread, I knew there was some kind of witchcraft going on in the kitchen and the weird miscegenation gained its own instant logic.

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This meant that I had to try the focaccia. I mean, if they can do that with something as fundamentally unappealing as a pretzel, what on earth will they do with Italy’s loveliest bread? Possibly serve it with Thai green curry and some kind of Japanese seaweed jam? Fortunately not. There was mortadella. In the kind of great waves that make me wish I could surf. Or had hair. And this stuff was stunning. There’s some Very Bad Mortadella in London. All manner of greasy luncheon meats shot with pistachios and truffled Spam logs. But this was the real deal. Smoothly emulsified, douce, chilled and subtle as hell. There was also beer. Again, nothing too arch, not a pedigree craft ale with enough hops to shrivel your tongue to a black stump. Just crisp, light, general purpose lager beer. Cleansing. Fresh and of modest size.

’Nduja sausage roll and Epping Forest honey? D’you know, I think I shall. And it came. The pastry is straight from the oven, more layers than a phonebook and smelling of hot butter, wrapped around a fiery farce with hot honey for dipping.

Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed!

There was, of course, dessert. A perfectly cast Gateau Opera from the glass tank below and a baked Alaska, shot up from the kitchen in the dumb waiter, its crust still smoking from the blowtorch.

I think this is how I want to eat now. It’s a funny little place, but it genuinely feels like it ought to have a Grand Hotel attached to it. You know, like an accessory. If I walked out of the back door of Baudry Greene and found myself in the lobby of the Cipriani or the Sacher, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised.

Instead, I went out the front door. I pulled up the collar of my coat against the cold, lit a cigarette that briefly illuminated my enigmatic smile and disappeared into the sewer network as if I’d never existed.

Follow Tim @timhayward and email him at [email protected]

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