I’ve always had a soft spot for a bit of architectural salvage, so when I pass a LASSCO showroom, I tend come over all faint at the knees. Not that I ever buy anything there (you need to be a zillionaire before you could even consider splurging on their divine reconditioned radiators, shiny parquet floors or Belle Epoque mirrors). So when my good mate Jen invited me to meet her for a drink at Brunswick House last year, I was on my way before she’d had a chance to hang up the phone.

 

You see, Brunswick House isn’t just a bar – or a restaurant, for that matter – it happens to be a bar/restaurant housed inside LASSCO’s Vauxhall-based treasure trove. I was – obviously – impressed by the decor: the place is strewn with reclaimed chandeliers, mirrors that are fogged with age and statues that could easily grace the gardens of a stately home (and probably did at some point in the past). Then I clocked the wine list, and the excitement levels carried on climbing. The by-the-glass offerings included sauvignon blanc from Guy Allion, Champagne from Delamotte (if you’re going to offer a house Champagne, this easily outclasses the standard big-name fare on most lists) and a rather elegant example of California’s new-wave Cabernets from Viano.

 

The other thing – or rather person – that impressed me about Brunswick House was its talented owner, Jackson Boxer. Boxer, who looks like he’s all of 22 (Is it just me, or are all restaurateurs getting younger these days? I know that Prime Ministers certainly are), is a scion of what might reasonably be described as one of the UK’s foremost gastronomic families. His grandmother, Arabella Boxer, is an eminence grise of the cookbook world, while his father, Charlie, owns a celebrated deli that caters to the elite of Bloomsbury. Brother Frank is best-known for a pop-up bar located on a Peckham car park rooftop that has become an annual fixture in the social calendar of London’s young and trendy set. Boxer, meanwhile, is content with running a café that morphed into a bar and restaurant – oh, and he’s just signed up to write a column for the Guardian (it must be in the blood).

 

Not long after, I was back at Brunswick House, to celebrate Jen’s graduation as a Master of Wine (two other new graduates were there too, Vicki Stephens-Clarkson and Michelle Cherutti-Kowal). This time, we pushed the boat out (hey, if you’re not going to float away on a stream of fine wine when you’re surrounded by recent MW grads, when are you ever?) Between about ten of us, we enjoyed bottles of Champagne from Jacquesson and Pierre Peters, as well as table wines from one of South Africa’s finest winemakers, Eben Sadie, a Priorat from Alvaro Palacios… OK, enough bragging, you get the picture. Naturally, we had to order a few snacks to soak up some of the alcohol, and I was pretty impressed by the quality of the nibbles that hit the table (although I have to admit that the details of that night got a little hazy, so I can’t remember exactly what we had).

 

I wanted more. The perfect opportunity to indulge myself offered itself last weekend, with the arrival in town of one of my Aussie friends, Helena. Helena’s based in Sydney, a city with a very dynamic food culture all of its own, so I wanted to take her somewhere with a pronounced British accent. Having had a humungously disappointing (and very expensive) meal at St John recently, my thoughts turned to Brunswick House, whose menu is not altogether dissimilar in style.

 

My first surprise was how quiet the place was on a Saturday night (on the two occasions I’d visited before, both weeknights, the place was rammed). But maybe its location, in the middle of the Vauxhall giratory system, is only a draw during the working week. Pre-dinner nibbles were swiftly forthcoming as we took our table, and much as I loved the Oggleshield churros, I have to admit that they couldn’t quite live up to the quality of the crisp, wafer-thin shards of pork crackling, served with a spicy apple sauce.

 

I lost the competition for best order when it came to starters. There was nothing wrong with my intensely herbal bowl of nettle soup, but it couldn’t compete with the subtle freshness of the diced gravadlax served with sourdough crumbs and a pungent smear of horseradish, or the punchy flavours of a chargrilled cuttlefish and its bright splash of smoky red pepper sauce. I did win the main course round, though – or at least I thought I did, but Mark and Helena, who’d both ordered the wild trout with mild spring garlic and sea purslane, disagreed. My dish of quail, served with a crunchy deep-fried onion bhaji affair and griddled baby gem lettuce, paired the gently gamey flavours of the bird with the bitterness of the greens and the sweetness of the onion to great effect. (I’d show you pictures, but unfortunately my phone camera wasn’t up to the job of taking decent pictures in the muted light – how can you have so many chandeliers in one room and so little light?)

 

We washed it all down with a delicious bottle of Gerard Gauby’s Le Soula Blanc 2009, an exotic blend of sauvignon blanc, macabeu, grenache blanc, chardonnay and malvasia that was just beginning to develop secondary notes of rich, smoky honey in addition to its rich primary stone fruit and herbs. (I love this wine – so much so that I occasionally spring for a six-bottle case of it when the Wine Society offer it en primeur.)

 

So now I’ve got three good reasons to go to Brunswick House: damn good food, a fab wine list and an opportunity to daydream about how I’m going to furnish my stately home once I buy it.

 

Brunswick House, 30 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LG.