I’ve been trying to get a reservation for myself and my dear friend Caroline at Core by Claire Smith for ages unsuccessfully and with the move to Glasgow imminent, we needed a back up. Enter Cora Pearl. Smack bang in the heart of Covent Garden is the tiny velvet clad restaurant. It’s the kind of place I imagine the Bloomsbury set would have really dug.

This is not a baby/toddler/child friendly option. This is a place to take your best gal pal and drink a lot of wine and eat all their starters as a meal. I’m sure their mains are lovely also but we needed to eat everything from the starter menu and then there was no room left. Except of course for dessert. Cora Pearl do up market comfort food which is basically my favourite kind of food. They have devilled eggs on the menu. Devilled is the best possibly way to have eggs, obviously.

If you do have a small person and are insistent on bringing them it would be ideal if they were really quite small, in a sling and asleep. There’s no room for buggies unless you’ve got a flash one that you can fold and put in an overhead locker on a plane but I cannot imagine anyone over the age of three turning their nose up at one of Cora Pearls ham and cheese toasties.

What’s good? EVERYTHING. No really. We didn’t try any mains. We just ordered every starter, we ordered the brown shrimp ranhofer twice it was that magnificent.

Kid friendly? Not at all.

✗baby change facilities

✗highchairs available

✓cool with breastfeeding

✗loads of other parents

✗space for buggies

✓children’s menu

✗toys/play area

Rating ??