Boxcar Fire & Wine

Last Updated on July 22, 2025

Rebranding a favourite restaurant in Marylebone

4.3 out of 5.0 stars

Who doesn’t love a good Sunday lunch? A while ago, my colleague reported excitedly that she’d found a hidden treasure in Marylebone at Boxcar. I was intrigued – and even more so when I learnt that the very restaurant where she’d had that stunning Sunday lunch had a new chef and a new identity, albeit more of an evolution than a revolution. On June 17th, Boxcar reopened as Fire & Wine by Boxcar, showcasing a special wine list featuring low-intervention producers and a new culinary identity defined by open-fire cooking. Headed up by a new chef, Zisis Gkalmpenis, who originates from Greece, the new menu has a Southern European sensibility and is shaped by Zisis’s time at Pied à Terre, Cord by Le Cordon Bleu and The Greyhound in Beaconsfield.

The small terrace outside, to the front of Fire & Wine, was very popular on a hot summer evening, and a large party took up the small rear courtyard. We enjoyed a drink or two on the terrace before heading inside for our meal. The cocktail list is a playful twist on classics, and my companion’s Mona Lisa, featuring mezcal, marmalade, and jalapeño, was a spicy take on a margarita. At the same time, my Gold Digger was a variation on a classic champagne cocktail, with fizz, spiced rum and mint. I’ll be trying to recreate this one at home.

The Fire & Wine food menu comprises snacks, small plates, large plates and sides, with plant-based and vegetarian options marked throughout. We selected a combination of snacks and small plates to share, followed by one large plate each and a few side dishes. Possibly more food than we needed, it would still have been hard to give up any of the dishes.

Snacks at Fire & Wine really are single mouthfuls, so we picked four. Pressed potato with nori tarama was a dish of agria potatoes, cooked and carefully pressed together overnight with a subtle nori mixture piped on top. The chicken liver parfait was a lighter mixture than pate, garnished with blackberries and served on toasted brioche. Peppery and woody, it was full of flavour.

The pretty Stilton gougère, with a filling of green apple cream and topped with a piquant green apple gel, was light and refreshing, while the tomato concassé with anchovy on toast was full of flavour. I wish I knew the secret to making the tomatoes you can buy in the UK taste this good!

We shared our small plates – a delicious house-made flatbread topped with artichoke and stracciatella and burnt leek with ajo bianco and piquillo. The flatbread was a definite favourite and rather pretty too.

My companion’s main course was also a winner. Brest chicken cooked in vine leaves with a rich madeira and chicken jus looked and tasted amazing.

Trying to get a real feel for the ‘fire’ element of Fire & Wine, I ordered the market fish (Cornish plaice). It was honestly hard to assess properly because it had been cooked on the bone but then skinned and filleted to serve. We asked why and learnt that customers the week before had suggested that it would be a better presentation. For me, it simply meant that the fish had dried out a little and that, without any skin, there was little opportunity to understand the benefit of cooking on fire.

Throughout the meal, we enjoyed a bottle of Albariño – Sobre Liás, Casal Caíro, Rias Baixas. A subtle and delicate mouthfeel, light, minerally, and fresh, it paired particularly well with the snacks and small plates.
The Fire & Wine wine list is built around small producers, with an emphasis on sustainable and natural winemaking. Most wines are available by the glass, carafe, or bottle. A house-label rosé called Tinted Glasses, made in partnership with Château Saint-Maur in Provence, is among the highlights (obviously we need a return visit).

We also feasted on the side dishes, and particularly enjoyed the simple yet effective courgette ribbons with pecorino and mint.

For dessert, we shared the Pink Lady terrine with vanilla diplomat cream and a glass of Akashi-tai, umeshu plum-infused sake, mostly because I can never resist a plum-infused sake.

It’s a warm and friendly space, and the rebrand is part of a broader effort to create a neighbourhood restaurant focused on quality ingredients and simple, confident cooking. The space at Fire & Wine has been redesigned to reflect this shift, featuring a pared-down interior with natural wood and rustic finishes. Just a stone’s throw from the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street, Fire & Wine by Boxcar is somewhere to remember when you’ve finished shopping and want a break. But it’s worthy of being a destination restaurant too, one where you can meet with friends, share food and wine and relax.

• Monday: Closed
• Tuesday & Wednesday: 5 pm – 11 pm
• Thursday – Saturday: 12 pm – 12 am
• Sunday: 12 pm – 5 pm

Fire & Wine
23 New Quebec Street
London
W1H 7SD