My friend Sharon came up with another great suggestion of a place for us to meet last night: Claro, in Waterloo Place in St James’s in Central London, which runs from Pall Mall up to Piccadilly Circus. Claro serves Mediterranean food with Middle East influences and is housed in an attractive historic listed building with high ceilings and lots of bright space. As Sharon and I guessed, the building is a former bank and it provides a sophisticated backdrop to some excellent food.

As one might expect in a location like this, Claro is quite expensive but they offer a set menu from 5.00-6.30pm. We decided to book for that and as a 6.15 time wasn’t an option, I booked a table for 6pm. I’m never sure about chancing my luck booking for the exact time an offer finishes! The set menu offers 2 courses for £38 and 3 courses for £46.

Sharon had arrived first and already had a glass of wine when I sat down. We looked at the menu and a waiter came but we weren’t quite ready to order. As we didn’t necessarily want three courses, Sharon suggested we order one starter to share, have a main each, and then share a dessert. This worked out very well as both the starter and dessert were very large and neither of us felt we could have eaten them all on our own.

I ordered a glass of wine as we ordered our food. Their house white (a Rioja) wasn’t available so I chose a Soave Classico (£14 for a 175ml glass). It then took a long time for that to come. This unfortunately was a theme throughout – great food but very slow service.

We chose Claro market salad, Greek feta cheese, za’atar spices as our starter. This was everything you’d expect of a ‘market salad’ with a generous helping of a great selection of fresh vegetables: both red and green tomatoes; slivers of raw beetroot; cucumber, peppers, radish, pea pods and carrots. On top sat a slice of feta with a delicious dressing. It was really good and we didn’t actually manage to finish it but asked for it to be left at the side when our mains came.

For my main I chose Grilled butterflied sea bass with charred tomato salsa, vegetable skewer. Sea bass is one of my favourite fishes and this was delicious with a very tasty salsa on top. I joked to Sharon that with the vegetable skewer and our salad starter, I’d definitely had my quota of veg for the day. 

Sharon had English mushrooms, freekeh gnocchi alla romana, sour cream, macadamia. She immediately said it was delicious and kindly offered me a taste.

There was a choice of two desserts and we both wanted Dark chocolate mousse, tahini crumble, crème Anglaise, sesame tuille. This was served with a nice touch of theatre, a trolley coming with each item separate in large bowls. Then the waiter put our portion together. It was a very generous portion.

The chocolate mousse was wonderful: very thick, creamy and richly chocolatey. We each thought there was no way we could have eaten a whole portion on our own but we very much enjoyed sharing it – and there was none left at the end.

We didn’t want a drink at the end so just asked for the bill, which came to £118.56 including the wine and a 14% service charge.

Overall it had been a lovely meal. It’s always great to spend time with my friend; the food was excellent and the portions generous. So often with a pre-theatre meal the portions can be a bit mean, but these were full-size portions. The setting was attractive and the tables nicely spaced out, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the service, though friendly enough, was slow and it was difficult to catch the attention of staff when you wanted something. I’d go back for the food though – especially that dessert!