Carnivores Unite at Vivat Baccus!

CARNIVORES assemble!

In a world where it has become virtually criminal to even to chop the tops off carrots for fear of making them look less authentic – and where someone somewhere is making cheese out of cashew nuts – Vivat Bacchus is going against the green grain.

Here they unashamedly celebrate rich red slabs of marbled meat, hearty magnums of wine and great hunks of cheese so ripe it almost gets up and walks out.

Meat Free Monday? Ha! These guys have a card on the table seductively luring you to the charms of Carnivore Club.

Clearly you won’t find plant based anything on this menu, nor biodynamic wine and certainly no fat free vegannaise.

So, if you are one of the millions who watched the Netflix documentary Cowspiracy a few years back, promptly threw all traces of ham out of your fridge with a slam and vowed to never touch another plate of bangers and mash, this is not the place for you.

In fact, you might as well stop reading now.

Right, now they’ve gone to do something unspeakable to a jackfruit, let me tell you about Vivat Bacchus, the South African restaurant making itself boldly known among the full-blooded, sabre-toothed meat eaters of London Bridge and Farringdon.

I admit I was expecting it to be rammed with City types honking on about their bonuses, ties tucked into their striped shirts as they salivate over a bacon buttie the way the rest of us* might over Jamie Dornan unzipping his flies.

My fears increased as I checked out the meaty menu – clearly for the manliest of men who would not look out of place tearing a turkey leg off a groaning Elizabethan buffet and giving Henry VIII a run for his money in the gluttony stakes.

And yet I was delighted to find myself enjoying the gentle buzz of like-minded ladies, and I don’t just mean the sort of women* who throw Frazzles in the face of anyone so much as contemplating Veganuary.

Seared to perfection and love-matched with Merlot

We kicked off with smoked wagyu beef carpaccio – delicately sliced in a distinctively unmacho way and drizzled daintily with a frankly excellent truffle sauce. I would go so far as to say the scallops with pancetta and pine nuts were quite ladylike too.

We shared monkfish medallions (medallions! They’re manly!) in a Sicilian sauce with honey roasted beetroot and feta. Yum.

And then came the star of the show. A sirloin steak with, wait for it, monkey gland sauce and the biggest chips I have ever seen. Each one was essentially half a potato. The steak was seared to perfection and was an instant love match with the Merlot recommended by our gorgeously helpful waiter. A half-starved trucker would have struggle to finish it.

In short, I loved it.

And then, of course there is the cheese – the main reason I could never be vegetarian. Don’t start, I’ve tried the substitutes.

Anyway, Vivat Bacchus has an entire room dedicated to the stuff, an enormous glass case where you can pick your favourites but do it quickly before the heady aroma knocks you off your feet.

We went for the set cheese board which groaned with generous slabs of oozy taleggio, tangy Lancashire bomb, nutty Comte and a pool of heavenly Gorgonzola picante I could have happily drowned in.

And then, of course, there is the décor of this glorious temple to good things. Warm and inviting, the stencilled wood panelling was reminiscent of the wine cellars of South Africa’s Stellenbosch vineyards.

So if you can’t make it that far, Vivat Bacchus is a more than worthy consolation prize.

*Erm yes, I do mean me.