Bottle + Rye

The anchovy toast gets a honey wash, then an industrial amount of butter, then a hard grill, and only then the Cantabrian anchovies.

Why go

Robin and Sarah Gill live in Brixton and in July 2022 they knocked two shops together on the corner where Coldharbour Lane meets the entrance to Brixton Market, put in a tall room with a dark oak bar and a kitchen the size of a cupboard, and pointed the whole thing at the Parisian bar scene (Hot Dinners). The menu exists only on a blackboard, which matters twice: it means the food moves, and it means you cannot read it from the tables outside. Heidi Lauth Beasley scored it 8.1 and the anchovy toast went into The Infatuation's Best New Dishes of 2022 (The Infatuation).

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Cantabrian anchovy toast on Fen Farm butter. Whatever the brandade is that week, with the pink fir crisps. The flat iron steak with frites and peppercorn sauce. The pig's head brawn terrine.
• Avoid: taking an outside table before someone has gone in to read the board. Ordering the steak to share, since one reviewer said you will not want to.

What locals & experts say

• Heidi Lauth Beasley for The Infatuation, scoring 8.1, on the dish: "The oh-so soft, white bread soldiers get a honey wash, then a delightfully industrial quantity of butter is added, before it's grilled over a high heat, and the perfect dose of salty anchovies are added." Her reservation, on the charred pumpkin: "the pumpkin was a little too tough." ref
• Gavin Hanly for Hot Dinners, on how the kitchen works: "Created from the tiniest of kitchens, the menu changes regularly and is a combination of snacks, small plates and a few larger dishes, and everything can be shared." On the board: "some dishes are tweaked with the seasons, others will be swapping in and out." ref
• The wine is the unevidenced half. It is described as low-intervention, and nobody has named an importer, a grower or a buyer. That is stated here rather than dressed up as a wine programme.

Good to know

• Where: 404 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8LF, on the corner at the Brixton Market entrance, opposite Le Bab. Published addresses for this bar disagree; that one is the register's.
• Seating: a few high tables inside, most of the action at the bar that curls round the open kitchen, and covered tables outside at the market entrance.
• The board: the only menu is a blackboard indoors, and it changes.
• Price: plates were ten pounds when it opened.
• Elsewhere by the same team: Darby's, Bermondsey Larder, Sorella and Maria G's.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, inspected 1 April 2025, all three components clean. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Nothing here is Jeff's. His saved-places export carries an empty Note for Bottle + Rye, so jeff_note stays empty. The master row credited Robin Gill; it is Robin and Sarah Gill, and the entry says so.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — The anchovy toast is the reason and the method is printed. Soft white bread gets a honey wash, then what Heidi Lauth Beasley called a delightfully industrial quantity of butter, then a hard grill, then the Cantabrian anchovies, and the result was named one of The Infatuation's best new dishes of 2022 at 8.1. Robin and Sarah Gill knocked two shops together on the corner where Coldharbour Lane meets the Brixton Market entrance and built a Parisian bar with a kitchen the size of a cupboard. The menu lives on a blackboard and nowhere else, so it moves: it was smoked eel brandade in August and haddock in November. That is rotation you can check rather than claim. It sits at should-visit rather than higher because the wine, which is half of what a wine bar sells, cannot be evidenced on any of the things that actually measure a wine programme. Nobody has named the importers, the growers or the buyer, and the only score anyone has filed is four years old.