‘If we’re happy with quality, wine can come from Mars’: In conversation with Isa Bal and Jonny Lake
“If we are happy with the quality, then the wine can come from Mars. We don’t care where it is from”, with one exception, “I would never list wine from a fascist.” Two months after launching Labombe in Mayfair, Isa Bal MS and Jonny Lake talk Amelie Maurice-Jones through the philosophy behind the wine list and the realities of staffing in 2025.
In the beginning, there was the empty, disused Met Bar in Park Lane’s Como Metropolitan Hotel. Then, Isa Bal and Jonny Lake said ‘let there be heat’ and the open kitchen came to life with the monumental instalment of the grill. Then, ‘let there be light’ and Turkish architect Umay Çeviker of Derin Yeşil, brought soft lighting, neutral tones, choicely placed books and leather banquettes. Then, ‘Let there be art’ and the walls were adorned with paintings from young British artists embodying “tastes, textures and scent”, in a final flourish. And then there were evenings (at first, Tuesdays to Saturdays, now, seven days a week), chock-a-block with excited industry pals.
Lake (chef) and Bal (master sommelier) saw all they had made, and it was very good.
“We’re settling in now,” Lake, who hails from Burlington, Canada, tells me. “We have a lot to learn, but we’re super happy with where things are at.” A few whirlwind months have passed since Labombe officially launched in September. Masterminded by Como Hotels owner Christina Ong, and Lake and Bal, who first met while working at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, Labombe follows from the duo’s first Bermondsey eatery Trivet, which has amassed a huge fanbase since winning its first Michelin Star in 2022 and second the following year.
Not Trivet 2.0
The Labombe concept actually began in Trivet, as a wine bar that opened on Mondays for brief two-hour stints. Blink and you’d miss it. Bal jokes, “it was nice to have the shortest opening hours of a wine bar anywhere in the world; maybe not the best business idea.” The restaurant version of Labome still shares Trivet’s philosophy: an à la carte menu with refined, seasonal cooking, top-end ingredients and punchy flavours. But it’s also distinguishing itself, with shareable fire-led dishes and a Eurocentric wine list. Lake says: “It would have been easy to almost copy the wine list from Trivet”, which begins in 7,000 BC and follows the chronology of winemaking to the modern day, “but we needed to come up with something different to really try to separate the two places.”
Why not just make Trivet 2.0? “What are you going to tell the media?” he points out, “‘hey, we’re opening another evening at Trivet… I don’t think anyone really cares about that”.
Wine can come from Mars but it must not come from fascists
Before it was a wine bar, Labombe was the name of a fictional restaurant, invented by Lake as part of a school French project. Surveying his handiwork, Lake’s teacher queried, “où sont les boissons?” Well, Bal, alongside UK sommelier of the year 2024, Philipp Reinstaller, have that in hand. Bordeaux, Tuscany, Brunello, Burgundy, Piedmont and Barolo all glow on the wine list which forks into two categories: ‘A’ (wines for everyday drinking) and ‘B’ (wine-producing areas starting with the letter B). Beyond the classic nations, Lebanon, Armenia and Georgia are spotlighted, and there are several new world picks too, including the ‘21 Qualis’ Gate Family Reserve Chardonnay, from British Columbia, which nods to Lake’s Canadian roots.
150 wines are priced under £100 and 280 under £150 on the list, largely curated by Reinstaller. “Classic Europe wines, then a bit more Mediterranean influence in the rest of them,” Bal sums up. “That’s the longer-term vision”. But it’s not like there’s a checklist: “Anytime we come across a good wine that would be good on our list, we put it on. That gives us the freedom to be really flexible, and that’s important to keeping a wine list fresh, for the guests, but also for the people working.”
Ultimately, quality is all that matters. “If we are happy with the quality, then it can come from Mars. We don’t care where it is from or who it is made by,” professes Bal, who previously told Douglas Blyde that “nothing is flatly excluded – our offering is intricate but simple”. There is one exception. He chooses his words carefully. “I’m really tempted to say something here, but I’ll hold my tongue on that one… let me put it this way: knowingly, I would never list wine from a fascist.”
Favourite bottles
Completely fair. So on his wine list, does Bal have any favourites? “Many, many,” he effuses, “I don’t like selling them mostly, but you have to.” There’s a £2,200 ‘97 Brunello Soldera Case Basse Riserva, which Bal heralds as a “wonderful bottle of wine.” (“I’m pleased to say somebody actually did drink a bottle of it, which I felt very jealous about”). There’s also a “generic” 2022 Domaine Cecile Tremblay La Fontaine Bourgogne Rouge, priced at £150 a bottle: “It’s an amazing glass of wine without having to think too much about it.”
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And like kids, it’s unfair to truly have favourites. “Generally, there are quite a few I really like, that’s why they’re on the list to begin with,” Bal justifies. There’s a brief non-alcoholic section, which includes a tipple from Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company, and a pair of Austrian Wachstum Konig natural juices in cherry and pear, chosen to quench the growing thirst for no-and-low drinks. However, Lake remarks, “we don’t really see people not drinking.”
What are people drinking?
Despite the talk of consumers cutting back on alcohol (and it’s backed by data — 49% of young adults are opting for ‘now and low’ alcohol to moderate consumption according to Drinkaware), Lake is skeptical: “People choose when to drink, how to drink, where to drink, and they still drink. Maybe they are not drinking as much, but they are still drinking when they go out.”
Anyhow, that’s good news for a wine bar. So what exactly are people drinking? Bal says the divide between the “the nutheads, the natural wine guys” and the conventional wine-lovers camp, is blurring. “There isn’t that straight-out rejection from either side anymore. They are happier to give it a go, and see where it goes.”
Lake believes “different people are looking for different things,” and as a restaurant, it’s important to be open to all of them. The menu, headed by Lake and head chef Evan Moore, reflects this in its playfulness: the dishes creatively span from a duck heart skewer, to Bottarga toast to Dutch veal on the bone, to crème caramel. “If you’re like ‘this is what we do, if you don’t fit within that we’re not bending’, people don’t respond well to that anymore,” according to Lake. “Within what you do, you want to be open to what people need and are looking for.”
Recruitment woes
If you don’t, others will. Running a restaurant in London in 2025 is a tough game. In September, London restaurant openings peaked at an eight-year high, which means more competition in a sector that’s already suffocated by soaring operational and labour costs.
At Labombe, sourcing staff is the main hurdle. “I don’t want to go into the reasons for it because if I do I’ll get political and I won’t be very nice,” says Bal, so Lake takes the reigns: “Without sounding too conceited, maybe we thought this”, he gestures to himself and Bal, “felt like a really perfect combination. You get to work with us, and there are perks to partnering with Como that an independent restaurant can’t provide, like staying in hotels all around the world for a discount.”
Feelin’ good
“It seems like that would be super attractive,” he continues, “but there are just way more restaurants than people at the moment. This is an imbalance, but that’s been tricky. We’re probably doing better than most, but it’s still a problem. It takes time to establish yourself as a good place to work.”
The good news is, Labombe’s quickly building a catalogue of regulars, as well as an oeuvre of glowing reviews, like the recent one from the drinks business that delighted in dishes with “measured heartiness and pleasure”, and The Times, who instructed, “go immediately and gape in awe”.
On the whole, Lake adds, “it’s feeling pretty good”.
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