It's not often you find yourself sharing elbow space at a buffet bar with Michel Roux Jnr, but that's the happy position Hot Dinners found ourselves in last night at the opening bash for Bistro du Vin in Clerkenwell. Roux was there to offer support to his protegee Danielle Meenagh, winner of the sommelier scholarship from his TV show Michel Roux's Service and now Assistant Sommelier at the Bistro. 'I'm over the moon and absolutely thrilled,' Roux told Hot Dinners. 'That's why I'm here, to show my faith in her.'
As for Danielle, 'I'm a bit nervous,' she admitted, 'but so excited to be down here in London.' So is this a permanent position for her? 'I hope I'm going to be here for a long time,' she said.
And what a party it was last night! Platters groaned under the weight of T-bone steaks while everywhere you turned there was charcuterie being sliced, cheese platters proffered and oysters being shucked.
The Bistro's neighbour, Bruno Loubet from the Zetter Hotel just down the road, popped in to welcome his new neighbour. 'It's only polite to come in and say hello and have a look,' he told us. 'Clerkenwell's become a destination area - I don't see [Bistro du Vin] as competition, they're making the whole area better.' Also in attendance was cricketer-turned winemaker Ian Botham.
Looking particularly happy with himself was Master Sommelier Ronan Sayburn who became Hotel du Vin's director of wine and spirits last year. So how would he sell the Bistro du Vin to Londoners, we asked? 'Well what we have here is simple bistro food that's in tune with what's trendy in Clerkenwell. We've got really good steaks - nothing too complicated, just really good ingredients.'
The Clerkenwell Bisto du Vin is only the first of many in London. Hot Dinners hears the company has already found its second London site, opposite Dean Street Townhouse in Soho.
Bistro du Vin is now open at 38-42 St John Street, London EC1.
