Lord's

Cozy British food in Greenwich Village used to be hard to find, but now there’s Lord’s. This modern British pub by the folks from Dame, they’ve managed to pull off an Anglophile’s fantasy restaurant that serves some of our favorite meat pies and scotch eggs this side of the Atlantic. It’s a great restaurant for a casual date, catch-up with friends, or a solo comfort meal at the bar.  

Lord’s is dark, crowded, and a little chaotic. The space feels like a cross between a Hogwarts professor’s office and a trendy bar, making it the perfect choice for cold-weather date nights. Everything here is for sharing, and the food is served on mismatched china that looks like it came straight out of Dolores Umbridge’s breakfront. Start with small snacks like welsh rarebit and oysters kilpatrick, then move on to meat pies and “proper English chips.” If you feel like you need a vegetable, go for the bitter leaf salad.

Most of the menu is meat-forward, laced with rich brown gravies and the occasional deep fried moment. A scotch egg made with curried lamb and a golden, gooey yolk in the middle is one of the best things on the menu. If you see something with “pig’s head” in the description, get that, along with whatever meat pie is on rotation and an order of chips. This is why you’ll want that salad. 

All of Lord’s dishes tend to strike a single, though satisfying, note. Their take on steak frites and the duck-stuffed cabbage taste extremely similar, even though they contain almost none of the same ingredients. The cabbage gets a hit of much-needed acid from a brandied prune reduction. We wish they did this more often. Anything that highlights a vegetable other than bitter leaves arrives with a sort of pallor, like an Englishman separated too long from the sea. 

Drinks and desserts,though, are great.  Almost all of the cocktails make use of the kind of fruits you’d expect to see in an oil painting (damson negronis, a bartlett pear manhattan), and the expansive spirits menu includes no less than 20 amaros and an entire section devoted to non-alcoholic aperitifs. End your meal with an ultra-creamy vanilla ice cream studded with crumbly bits of brown bread and topped with a dab of orange marmalade. It sounds weird, but it works. 

Food Rundown

Scotch Egg

A jammy egg wrapped in curried lamb and deep-fried, served on a pillow of tangy yogurt. This is one of our favorite things to eat here.

Oysters Kilpatrick

These oysters come perched atop a plate of rocks, evoking a beach in England, the kind that’s for angsty wandering rather than sunbathing. These are broiled and dressed with bacon, Worcestershire, and butter. It’s probably the richest oyster preparation in town.

Welsh Rarebit

British food loves Worcestershire, and that’s the main flavor you’ll pick up in the Welsh Rarebit at Lord’s, which is done with sharp cheddar cheese on brown bread. It’s good, simple drinking food.

Cured Trout

One of the lighter, more delicate options on the menu, this is a good choice if you need a break from salt and fat.

Green Salad

Whatever else you order, get a green salad, too. The tarragon dressing is tangy and herbaceous, and it offsets the heavier food that will likely make up the rest of your meal.

Smoked Eel Omelet

This is a case of “it tastes like what it says it is,” and that’s not a bad thing. The omelet is expertly prepared, and will be gone before you realize it.

Meat Pie

This is the reason to come to Lord’s. The filling rotates, but trust that whatever is inside the flaky, golden shell of this meat pie is something you want to eat. It’s appropriately portioned for two.

Duck Stuffed Cabbage

Our other favorite main dish, the brandied prune reduction adds dimension to what could otherwise just be another good meat dish wrapped in a cabbage leaf.

Proper Chips

You’d be remiss to leave without getting chips at Lord’s. They are, in fact, proper. They’re served with the sirloin steak main, which is solid but unremarkable, so we prefer to get them as a side.

Queen of Puddings

A warm, gooey mess of berry, meringue, and crumbly pastry. Paul Hollywood would give this pudding a handshake.

Brown Bread Ice Cream

One of the stranger, more exciting desserts we’ve had in recent memory. There are actual bits of brown bread churned through the vanilla ice cream, and it gets topped with a dollop of orange marmalade. It tastes very old-school British and very modern at the same time.