St Clements Café and Bar

Stunning café and bar in the Inner Temple. Rent a rug and grab a bottle of prosecco to drink on the crocket lawn. There is a menu available and although I didn’t try any of the food which looked light and share-​y, there were some lovely smells wafting over the perfect lawn.
Refined wonderfulness hidden in the heart of London. Wow people that you know about this gem.
Bliss.

Oi, St Clements… give me back my Mum. She must be back there cooking up these treats you serve up and I haven’t seen here in a few days. Well actually my mum isn’t here. And how do I know that? Their chocolate brownie sucked and there is no way my Mum would let me waste that amount of calories on less than perfect cake like treats.
Everything here is wonderful, well apart from the price: salad, quiche and a drink cost me £12.90. It was wonderful but a train ticket home would have been cheaper. So why am I continuously comparing this to my mother? She’s a fabulous cook, the best I have ever tasted, no not restaurant style cooking, proper family grub made from scratch with love and care and full of flavour! This is what you’ll find here. Rustic food and decór hidden in the depths of Temple.
It’s totally worth it for romantic evening drinks, or event a treat a lunchtime. Just don’t have the brownie.
They serve Monmouth coffee, Neal’s Yard Dairy cheese and various other local treats. Mmmm, I will be back but maybe in the evening.

Here’s the thing: this place is so packed full of ups and downs that a solid three-​star mark both epitomises the experience completely and yet is so off-​the-​mark that it’s not funny.
It is at one and the same time two things that are mutually exclusive.
Don’t follow me?
Let me put it this way:
This place puts every hackneyed ‘hidden gem’ on Unilocal to shame. It is what ‘hidden gem’ was coined after. Nestled on the outskirts of Middle Temple, St Clements Café and Bar is only accessible by foot, through the southwest gate on the Embankment. However, if this gate is closed, you’ll have to traverse the labyrinthine Inner and Middle Temples by one of the other entrances to get to it. This fact simply adds to its charm.
A lot of people have never even been inside the Inns of Court (specifically the Middle and Inner Temples), thinking that they’re not accessible to the public. But they are. Sure, you’ll see signs that say ‘No public right of way’. But this just means that the public doesn’t have a RIGHT to be there. This doesn’t mean that the public isn’t allowed there. So, once you get over that, head on over to the two Temples.
So once you make it to there, you’ll then be shocked and amazed at the completely open space that is St Clements Café and Bar. The place is huge. Old wooden floors, large windows and only a small collection of tables grace its spacious rooms. Simply put, it’s a fantastic space, and they haven’t packed it out with tables, which lends this place a feeling of exclusivity.
And then there’s the food. The menu changes, and the goat’s cheese, walnut, date, carrot and spinach salad I got was spot on. Delicious. The potato and leek soup I got was good, but nothing special. The dark-​chocolate brownie with roasted pecans I got wasn’t fully cooked and therefore made me feel a bit ill. The americano (Monmouth beans) wasn’t well pulled and therefore bitter. Everything was served on mismatched vintage plates and silverware (this is where I swoon over kitchsy cuteness). But the £11 price tag for all this was a little too dear.
Yet, this is the sort of place to where I would bring people. Visitors. Perhaps friends whom I want to impress with my secret-​London knowledge.
And if I went and just got that salad again, nothing else, this’d probably rate as a 5-​star experience.