The Pre-Theatre Compromise That Isn't One
The room is tight, the sole is right, and the timing is the whole game.
The plates come back mostly empty at J Sheekey. Not the theatrical kind of empty — the quiet kind, where the Dover sole has been eased off the bone with the correct patience, the oyster shells sit tipped on ice, and the fish pie ramekin has been scraped in a way that would embarrass a diner anywhere with worse lighting. The ruby-red facade on St Martin's Court hasn't moved in over a hundred years. The dining rooms behind it are compartmentalised, wood-panelled, hung with black-and-white photos of people who used to be famous and a few who still are.
This is a fish restaurant that decided a long time ago what it was going to be and has resisted every temptation to become something else. The Theatreland location gives it a specific job — feed people before the 7:30 curtain, feed them again after — and the kitchen does that job with an almost bureaucratic reliability.
A century-old West End seafood room where the Dover sole is exactly right and the reservation window is the actual sport.
Editorial Deep
What went back to the pass with nothing on it: the Dover sole, filleted at the table with the confidence of someone who has done it several thousand times; the fish pie, a Sheekey signature that arrives brown-topped and holds its shape until the second spoon; a dozen oysters with the shells tipped the correct way on the ice. What stayed on the table longer than it should have was a pause between the starter and the main — not a failure of the food, but a signal about the room's pace, which is not fast.
Put a hand on the wood panelling by the banquette and it feels like wood panelling that has been touched by a lot of hands. The framed photographs on the walls are the real decoration — silver-print portraits of actors and writers, some of them dead a long time, hung close together the way a serious collector hangs them rather than the way a designer would. Light is low and yellow. The ceilings are low too, and the layout breaks the restaurant into a series of small rooms rather than one big one, which is why the place feels intimate on a full night rather than loud.
Book through OpenTable or call the restaurant directly on +44 (0)20 7240 2565 — that is the whole system, and it works. You do not need a theatre ticket. You do not need to arrive by a certain hour. A Tuesday lunch on the set menu is the same food in the same room for a fraction of the à la carte damage.
On the à la carte, the sole is the line item that stretches the bill — market-priced whole fish always is — and it is also the reason to be there. The oysters and the fish pie carry the mid-order without inflating it.
Bring the parent visiting from out of town who wants a Proper London Dinner before a show. Bring the friend who has seen enough small-plates rooms for one year and would like a starched napkin and a whole fish. Do not bring the group of six who want to talk over each other for three hours — the room is too tight, the acoustics too close, and the neighbouring table will hear everything.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Dover sole; Sheekey's fish pie; blood orange and passion fruit sorbet
“A hundred years in, the West End seafood room still holds up. The set menu does the heavy lifting.”
On the à la carte, Scott's and Wiltons play the same tune more expensively, and Sweetings does the walk-in lunch version if you can be there before 3pm.
The Verdict
