Italian restaurant near Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell
Exmouth Market is one of Clerkenwell's best-loved streets, lined with cafes, restaurants and independent shops. It also has a surprising Italian connection. ...
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Gray's Inn is one of London's four Inns of Court, the historic societies that call barristers to the Bar, and its gardens, the Walks, are one of Holborn's quiet surprises. From the Inn's main gate on High Holborn it's about 1.7 kilometres to Fiena, our family-run Italian cafe, bar and restaurant at 4 Medway Court, Judd Street, London WC1H 9QX, roughly a 20 to 25-minute walk north-west through Bloomsbury. Here's a little about the Inn, and how to fit in a meal with us.
Lawyers and their apprentices have been on the site since at least 1370. The Inn takes its name from the Grey family, the Barons Grey de Wilton, whose townhouse, or "inn", it originally was. It flourished under Elizabeth I, who was its patron, and by 1619 it had more than 200 barristers. The Inn was famous for its revels: at Christmas 1594, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors was performed in the Hall before such a rowdy crowd that the night became known as the "Night of Errors".
Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman, was a member and served as the Inn's Treasurer, overseeing the first proper laying-out of its gardens and walks. The Inn was badly damaged in the Blitz in 1941, when the Hall, the Chapel and the Library were all hit, and rebuilding by the architect Sir Edward Maufe took until 1960. Today it's the smallest of the four Inns. Background from Wikipedia's Gray's Inn page.
Details from Gray's Inn's Find Us page; check there before you go, as facilities can close or change.
From Lady Hale Gate it's about 1.7 kilometres on foot to our door, roughly a 20 to 25-minute walk heading north-west through Bloomsbury (walking route from OpenStreetMap). On the way you'll pass close to the places in our posts on Lamb's Conduit Street, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Foundling Museum.
Morning: we open at 08:00 every day and serve our breakfast menu until 14:00, from the Classic Benedict to the Fiena English breakfast, with Italian coffee alongside. It's an easy place for a breakfast meeting.
Lunch and dinner: the main menu starts at midday, with pasta such as Linguine Fiena and Spaghetti carbonara, pizzas, risotto, grills and fish. For something lighter, there are salads such as the Goat cheese salad and Chicken Caesar or salmon. See our posts on salads and light lunches and after-work dinner.
Plenty of guests drop in for a quick lunch. Neil wrote: Food was great, arrived quick, service was lovely.
(Neil, Google review) And Nick, who ate alone on a business trip, said the level of service and the quality of the food was really good
(Nick, Google review).
“Excellent food. Excellent service.”
Ann, Google review, 2026
From the Walks to Judd Street in about twenty minutes. Book a table or just walk in.
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