You have to hand it to Tel Conran; the man gives good bar. His latest is part of a restaurant/ private club/ conference complex that, conceived in the boom years, looked positively brave when it launched late in 2009. Set in the former home of Reuters, its name references the building’s architect Sir Edward Landseer Lutyens whose other grand piles include the Viceroy’s palace in New Delhi. The interior’s aesthetic - a simpatico Modernist / Deco symphony in greige - perpetuates the brand’s tradition for understated style. As with most Conran joints it all feels a bit Anna Wintour – voguish and fearsomely chic but not necessarily one to cuddle up to. To drink, swig Pol Roger Réserve at £12.75 a pop like it’s 2006 or trade down to any of fifteen wines by the glass or half litre ‘pot’ from £4; at £5.50, we rate an Argentine Malbec from the Chakana Estate a good autumn drinker. Lutyens house martini heads the cocktails and there’s a range of charcuterie, fruits de mer and cheese boards to share. What you will no longer share, sadly, is hot gossip with hard-drinking hacks - members of the press long since evicted from Fleet Street. Shame that..Anne Robinson would have loved it back in the day before she gave her liver a rest.
85 Fleet Street EC4 7583 8385
