Brasserie Angelica

Brasserie Angelica occupies the corner of Newman and Eastcastle Streets behind a cream awning and a band of black-and-white glazed brick, the ground floor of The Newman. Inside it reads as a proper brasserie rather than a hotel dining room: pale oak joinery, a run of high stools along the counter, marble-topped tables and a tiered plaster ceiling light that fans out over the room like an inverted staircase. Over a hundred covers across the dining room and bar, open from seven in the morning until ten at night, every day.

The kitchen is led by executive chef Christian Turner, who cooks over live fire with a Northern European accent, and Eder Neto looks after food and drink. Lunch has its own piece of theatre in the sandwich trolley, a marble-decked cart wheeled between the tables. At weekends a DJ plays through brunch service, from half past twelve until half past four on Saturday and Sunday, which is a useful thing to know about a room that could easily have settled for background piano.

Two private dining rooms sit off the restaurant, Talland and Little Talland, panelled in dark oak beneath fringed chain chandeliers. They take twenty-eight and twelve seated respectively, can be reserved singly or thrown together, and the menus are the brasserie's own. Angelica's Bar and Terrace runs alongside for spritzes and outdoor tables, and Gambit Bar is a floor below.