I’ve been failing massively at the whole “give peeps a chance to settle in” thing, of late, with very early visits to TriBeCa, Seb and Mili, and the Whistle Stop Barber Shop, which apart for the first one have proved pretty successful. By mistake, I continued this run with a visit to Copper Blossom, the latest offering from the Speratus Group, and took it to a new level by visiting even before its official launch.

Located directly beneath the ESPC, it’s the space’s first use as a bar/eatery of any kind. With the blank slate this presented, they’ve been able to indulge in completely fresh thinking. What they’ve come up with is a great confection of a place, replete with comfy chairs, floral carpeting, high marble-topped tables, and wire-work light-fittings. It really is very impressive.

In the basement, they have the motherload of cocktail toys with a veritable chemistry lab of whatnots all aimed at delivering innovative and stylish drinks. The drinks list looked very strong, indeed.

I was joined this evening by members of my regularly meeting book group, Claire, Julie, Robyn and Scott. This meant that we were able to give both the food and drinks menus and good going over.

On the drinks, they have a very decent beer selection. We gave the Long White Cloud and a beer from Stewart’s a go and both were to a pleasing standard.

The cocktails were a notch above that. Robyn and Claire declared their blossom martinis to be one of the best cocktails they had been served in the city. My mint julep, complete with a spray-over scent of white southern racist (or was it leathery tobacco gentleman’s club?) was full of charm. So, a big tick in the box for the drinks.

The food didn’t work quite so well with some problems with most of the dishes. They offer dishes across a breakfast, lunch, a la carte and “pick me ups” selections, with the breakfast looking particularly good, so I’ll need to pop back to give that a try.

I opted for three dishes from the pick me ups, with a black pudding scotch egg, some cheesy Reblochon bites, and some sausage stuffed ravioli. The scotch egg was the clear winner with bags of flavour and a good runny yolk making for highly enjoyable eating. The cheese was fine if a trifle unremarkable. The ravioli was crisply deep fried, but the sausage stuffing was rather leaden, so the filling needs a rethink. Both the cheese and ravioli were served with a tomato sauce that could use some improvement, too.

Robyn’s Caesar salad got a thumbs up, and the duck that Claire and Scott both had looked very bonnie. The massive chips served with Julie’s fish n chips were a bit of a head-scratcher, though.

Scott had a smart looking sticky toffee pudding to finish while the others had another round of drinks to round out what had been a highly enjoyable evening.

So overall, while the food needs a bit of work Copper Blossom is hugely impressive in most other aspects. People are going to love this place, so I suspect it will be rammed full of a diverse and appreciative crowd from now on. It’s somewhere that’s very worthy of your attention.

Scores
Blythe scores Copper Blossom
3/5 for food
4/5 for presentation
4.5/5 for setting
4/5 for service
giving an overall 15.5/20

Today’s questers were: Claire, Julie, Robyn, Scott, Blythe

We ate: scotch egg, ravioli, duck breast (2), fish n chips, Caesar salad with chicken, Reblochon bites, calamari, sticky toffee pudding

We drank: blossom martinis, mint julep, Long White Clouds, Stewart’s ale, “new fashioned”

We wore: official book club blazers and epaulets

Total bill: £154.95