108 Brasserie has turned its Marylebone Lane terrace into La Terrasse on the Lane for the summer, a Provence-inspired collaboration with biodynamic wine estate Château La Coste, and the seafood platter alone is worth planning a lazy lunch around.
108 Brasserie sits at the base of The Marylebone hotel, right on the cobbled stretch of Marylebone Lane that already does most of the work of feeling like a European side street. For summer, that terrace has been given over to La Terrasse on the Lane, a collaboration with Château La Coste, the art-led, biodynamic wine estate outside Aix-en-Provence. The terrace is dressed with a floral installation of wildflowers, olive and cypress planting inspired by the estate’s own landscape, magnums of Château La Coste rosé are poured tableside, and there’s a dedicated list of the estate’s cuvées alongside rosé spritz cocktails (£16.50). It runs from mid-May through to the end of September, so there’s still time to catch it.
The seafood platter is the one to get
We started with the beef tartare and the ceviche, both good, precise versions of dishes that are easy to get wrong, alongside a glass of sparkling English rosé from the list.
But it was the 108 seafood platter, shared between two, that made the meal. Seafood platters aren’t unusual, but ones of this calibre certainly are: the hot smoked mackerel had a depth of flavour that genuinely took us by surprise, the prawns came dressed in a marie rose that was fresh and zingy, the perfect foil for how indulgent the sauce could otherwise be, and the salmon rillettes were the definition of moreish. The fresh king prawns arrived undressed, which made sense once we tasted them – when the seafood is that fresh, you want to show it off rather than cover it up.
If you’re not going in for the platter, the rest of the terrace menu is built around the same Provençal, sharing-led register: brioche lobster sub rolls with lemon, smoked paprika, chives and spring onion (£24.50), a Caesar salad for two with white anchovies and golden frites (£30), and a cherry clafoutis with olive oil ice cream made from Château La Coste’s own organic extra virgin oil to finish (£12).
Service that doesn’t feel like a hotel restaurant
We tend to avoid hotel restaurants, more often than not they feel like an afterthought to the rooms upstairs, but every so often one comes along that proves that instinct wrong, and 108 Brasserie is one of them. Service was friendly rather than stuffy, which hotel dining rooms can too easily default to, but still personable and genuinely knowledgeable about the menu and the Château La Coste wines on it. It moved at a good pace without ever feeling rushed or overbearing, which matters more than it sounds for a long, lingering lunch like this one is designed for.
The verdict: La Terrasse on the Lane does exactly what it sets out to do – make a cobbled corner of Marylebone feel, for the length of a long lunch, like the south of France. The seafood platter is worth the visit on its own, the Château La Coste collaboration gives it a genuine point of difference over a standard summer terrace menu, and the service is a proper cut above what you’d expect from a hotel dining room.
Rating: 4/5
Need to know
- Address: 108 Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2QE
- Nearest station: Bond Street (5-minute walk)
- Opening hours: Mon–Sat 12pm–12am (last food order 9.45pm), Sun 12pm–9.30pm (last food order 8.30pm)
- Price: £££ (seafood platter £85 for two; terrace dishes roughly £12–£30)
- Booking: 108brasserie.com/reserve
“A hotel restaurant that proves the exception — the seafood platter and the Château La Coste rosé collaboration are worth the visit alone.”
