Brasserie Toulouse-Lautrec

Perfect! No other words for this gem just 2 minutes outside Elephant & Castle. Myself and my fiancee arrived a little bit earlier than our booking time at the restaurant and the very kind manager welcomed us upstairs in the bar area where we had a lovely glass of wine listening to a jazz duet. In the restaurant we had a great food experience for an incredible reasonable price. The food was well presented and taste absolutely delicious and we felt very looked after from the staff without feeling oppressed. We ended the night upstairs enjoying more of the jazz gig and soaking the very warm atmosphere. Absolutely recommended!

A rare and fabulous gem in Kennington. Step off Kennington Road and step straight into the best of France. The food was sublime to say the least, the wine complimented the meal perfectly and the ambience could not have been better. It's casually French without overdoing it, comfortably cool with a really mellow but professional attitude to service. Staff were attentive without being overbearing, menu is simple but stupendous.

We chose this as a venue for a romantic birthday dinner and it could not have been better, laid back jazz in the upstairs bar area really added to the whole feel of the place. We'll be making this a regular from now on!

What a lovely discovery ! A very good brasserie, the food was not exceptional, but very good indeed. The prices were fair, and the fantastic live music upstairs help us to decide to stay...and have more wine.
We stay there from 8pm to midnight without seeing the clock...
A wonderful experience ! We'll be back again and again.
We now, check their website to know what they up to for music and food and plan our week according to this....and it is just 10 minutes to walk home.

for more details and pictures please refer to
http://hungryinlondon.com/2010/12/toulouse-lautrec-kennin...

Who would have thought that there is a lovely French restaurant combined Jazz bar at the border of Elephant &Castle and Kennington? Even though I live rather close, I tend to ignore this area and if it wouldn’t be for the White Bear Theatre (a very decent pub theatre on Kennington Park Road) I would still be in ignorance about the fact that you can actually have a swell night out in Kennington.

Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec brings a little bit of French charm and ambiance to Elephant & Castle (where it is urgently needed). Designed in the rustic style of a French bistro there were only two problems with this otherwise comfy and relaxed place: it was far too cold and the open kitchen made my clothes smell awful. But the very friendly waiter sat me next to the heater and they have cute little paint brushes on their menu so I shall forgive them.

The set menu of 2 courses costs £20 and for 3 courses you pay £25. Having said that, you can save some money in case you have a Taste London card (50% off during the week). The menu reads well without any major surprises and without the pretense you often find in French restaurants in London. This also applies to the food which is simple and pleasant without any major highlights or disappointments.

The Gratinated Goats Cheese and Baby Mixed Leaf Salad With Artichokes and Red Peppers was well – a very good salad with goat’s cheese, nothing more and nothing less.

Jay Rayner, who we were told by the excited waiter had just dined there a couple of days before us, also had the Roasted Field Mushrooms and Bacon served on a Toasted Muffin with a Fried Duck Egg (he has written here about it comparing it to breakfast). This is a very valid association to make and for me it would have worked better with a poached egg as the fried egg dominated and the subtle flavours of the mushrooms got completely lost.

The Shank of Welsh lamb, Slow-Cooked for 24 Hours, Sauté Vegetables & a Creamy Mint sauce. The meat was lovely and tender and as good as it can get. However, I struggled a bit with the sauce – it solidified on the plate (I think a sign of too much starch thickener? ) and I didn’t like it at all. A shame, otherwise a lovely dish.

Then the Scallops on Bacon. I can’t remember anything about this dish, meaning that it can’t have impressed me much but it probably was not bad either.

So, you see I was not blown away by the food but I found it absolutely decent and enjoyable. And the evening was far from being over! After the dinner we went to the jazz bar on the first floor which was unexpectedly nice. Most of the tables were filled, the atmosphere was great and we had some more glasses red wine. While listening to the jazz band covering old classics we shared a plate of very decent French Cheeses of the Day.

There is jazz on every day and even without food it’s well worth a visit (here the programme). Don’t forget a warm jumper though, it is even colder in the jazz bar than in the actual restaurant.

The food's quality did not match with the price, expensive for what you get. Tried it few times now and after this latest experience we won't be going again. Owner seems to have some sort of split personality as he flits between being falsely nice and being erratically arrogant and rude. His inexperience shows and unfortunately has more of an inflated ego rather than any sort of due care and attention to his restaurant. Gordon Ramsay would have a field day evaluating this place ... it's a wanna-be posh nosh, food is mediocre at best but the sub standards on everything else means over all experience it not even worth one star!

Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec is probably one of the best restaurants to go to. This is my thrid visit at the brasserie. We were always welcomed with open arms. I am new to the area and proud that I made the right move. The brasserie holds this unique french charm, maybe its the food, the service, the live music or the french speaking waitresses. Whatever it is the combination of all these made the experience warm unlike many contemporary restaurant where you feel unwelcomed.

I had tried a few dishes already so far the cote de boeuf for 2 was wonderfully cooked to perfection. The lamb was my partners favourite dish as it was cooked for 24 hours. I sometimes wonder how it becomes so tender. I have to admit although all of the dishes I tried looked and tasted delicious, I find the menu somewhat limited in fish options. As for dessert the choc fondant is to die for with white chocolate ice cream.

Every evening there is live jazz music in the wine bar on the 1st floor, this is great for me and my wife to enjoy a night out with a hearty meal after a hard days work. The smoking terrace is another bonus as well are the victorian style toilets. Our next visit might be in the private dining room where there is no hire fee apparently.

Wow – what an incredible surprise! Just down the Kennington Road, between estates and the south circular, is this fabulous little French bistro and jazz club, Toulouse Lautrec. Run by Nolan and Florent, the sons of the owners of the next-door Lobster Pot, it has an upstairs wine bar and jazz club with regular live music events, a downstairs French brasserie, and a basement “cave” that you can hire out for private dinners.

I couldn’t believe it when we stepped off the street and into this rustic, cosy bistro. We started upstairs in the wine/jazz bar listening to The Jazz in Paris Project which took me back to a smokey Parisian jazz club – with classics like My Funny Valentine, Sweet Dreams and French cafe songs (excited to see they do my favourite Edith Piaf song La Vie En Rose), as well as some jazzed-up Christmas songs.

Being a French place, they have a fantastic wine list with a glass of house champagne at £8.50; some delicious, great value wines like the Malbec we ordered at £19.50; and and uber posh wines “For the Wealthy Punters” . We ordered food upstairs – the menu was typically French – rich and tasty. We had snails from Burgundy in garlic butter to start – they were juicy, succulent and salty. I had a tasty goats cheese and mixed leaf salad. For mains, I had the confit duck with flageolots beans and red wine sauce which was rich and tasty, my only criticism being the skin could have been a tiny bit crispier – I’ve had it in France where underneath the blackened crispy skin the duck falls off the bone and melts in your mouth.

The food seemed typical of Southern French cooking – I’ve had similar on holiday in the Dordogne – rich, tasty, and quite heavy – with the food and red wine I couldn’t manage anything more which was a shame as I was dying to try the cheese. We ended up back upstairs listening again to The Jazz in Paris Project for some digestifs and also checked out the outside smoking terrace – for research purposes, obv.

The waiting staff, manager and bar staff were all lovely and friendly – happy for us to go upstairs when we wanted, moving tables so we could see the music, and all seemed to enjoy being there. I would love to go back with friends and make a full night of it.

Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec delivered a wonderful evening. The menu offers a wide choice of dishes and is good value at £22 for three courses. My shoulder of slow cooked lamb was rather fatty but there was definitely enough of it, to nearly keep me from having dessert, which would've been a complete sin seeing as they had chocolate fondant with white chocolate ice cream on the menu!

The only gripe I have was that our waiter dropped a wine glass on the floor next to our table, and this wasn't cleared up straight away, possibly because the area we were sitting in wasn't too accessible to someone clearing up bits of broken glass, but slightly embarrasing when the waitress came over later on to take our dessert order and started crunching on the glass.

The upstairs bar is lovely. There was an incredibly talented singer that sang 'La vie en Rose', which really could've melted even the frostiest of hearts...and allow you to forgive the wrongly taken drinks order.

This was an unexpected gem of a find ... great menu (I had the slow cooked shoulder of pork, and it was superb); very nice wine, and decent enough service. The inside of the restaurant is very French in atmosphere - not in a cheesy way, but with lots of French style carved wooden furniture, and upstairs they have live music (see their website for details), which is great and definitely adds to the atmosphere. If you want to dine quietly, you can stay downstairs.