Once there was a spartan little eating house, designed to service the hard-working inhabitants of some of England's first social housing. Its narrow oak tables and even narrower, bottom-numbing benches ensured that the "respectably employed working men" at whom it was aimed scarfed down their lunches and got straight back to work. More than 140 years later, the Quality Chop House is back. The narrow, high-ceilinged rooms have had a couple of latter-day incarnations before this one – most recently a meatball joint since bathetically decamped to megamall Westfield – but I reckon original architect Rowland Plumbe would approve of the latest owners, even if today's workers are more likely to be barristers and graphic designers than clerks and hod carriers.
Apart from anything else, they have a pedigree as luminous as their premises: Will Lander is the son of wine maven Jancis Robinson and food writer Nicholas Lander; business partner Josie Stead, a total charm-pot, is ex-Heston's Dinner. It would be hard for chaps with this kind of lineage to come up with a minger, and they haven't. This, with its newly padded benches, is a place of stout, lugubrious beauty.
As is the food. Unfancy, ungarnished, school of St John bruisers arranged on vintage, mismatched crockery, it's a mix of smaller plates (served in the wine-bar section, though available in the boothed dining room, too) and set meals in the evening, delivered family-style – if your family is the kind who might employ retainers. I could go into food-porny recollections of what we eat on repeat visits, or I could just type some recent menu items while drooling over my keyboard. Hell, I'll do both.
How about these babies? Jellied ray with gem lettuce and pigskin; longhorn beef faggot with beer onions; rabbit loin with pearl barley and wild garlic. There are plates of Basque charcuterie, and lardo strips, linen-white in their porky purity, that melt on to toast like a memory. Blackface haggis scotch eggs. Moan-inducing Seville orange pudding, robust and squidgy with suet, served with thick, Ivy House cream. You might find intriguing curios such as hop-infused custard or bone marrow fritters.
One visit coincides with game season, and the simple genius of plonking a sensibly hung grey-legged partridge on top of St John sourdough toast so the gamey juices soak into the bread. Or, even more brazen, longhorn mince on dripping toast, so outlandishly rich and savoury that we wonder if there's anchovy in there, or maybe mushroom ketchup. Nope, it's just the long-cooked meat.
The menu changes three times a day. Imagine. Inevitably, sometimes you'll hit a day of joy – Cornish fish in tempura-light batter with aïoli made with smoked garlic; razor clams with a rubble of migas-like breadcrumbs spiked with morcilla – and sometimes it's more po-faced: cold, tough blackface lamb with a weaselly green sauce; smoked mackerel served jarringly hot, its cucumber salad devoid of the promised horseradish.
But the wine always delivers. Unsurprisingly, given the background, there's access to some pretty recherché collections here: the novella-sized, "broad-church" wine list can alter on almost a daily basis, depending on the riches they unearth. They have an off-licence, so if you fall in love with your house red bergerac or rare item from the "collectors' list", you can take a bottle home. Over dessert (hot chocolate and salt caramel pudding, oh my), we're told there's a 50-year-old Banyuls by the glass. Who can afford that? Smiling, Josie brings us out a glug of this liquid heaven to sample. It's that kind of place.
We don't love our historic restaurants and cafes enough: I still weep at the gap where Soho's New Piccadilly used to be, while the RIP stamp on beautiful, melancholy website classiccafes.co.uk has a similar effect. The new custodians of the Chop House are gleefully aware of the treasure on their hands. It gladdens the heart.
• Quality Chop House, 92-94 Farringdon Road, London EC1, 020-7278 1452. Dining room open Mon-Sat, noon-3pm, 6pm-10.30pm; wine bar and shop Mon-Sat, 11am-midnight. About £50 a head with drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Value for money 8/10
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