From a £99.95 Christmas Day meal to turkey and vegetarian boxes for the home table, Côte is giving festive hosts a choice over how much cooking they actually want to do.
Christmas lunch is supposed to bring everyone together. In practice, whoever is cooking can spend a fair amount of it negotiating with the oven, while everybody else asks when dinner will be ready.
Côte has set out its Christmas 2026 plans with two ways to hand over some of that work: a five-course celebration in its brasseries or chef-prepared meal boxes to finish at home.
There are also festive dishes throughout the season, for anyone who wants a Christmas get-together without committing to the full 25 December production.
Christmas Day at Côte: five courses for £99.95
After opening for Christmas Day for the first time in 2025, Côte is doing it again on Friday 25 December 2026. Its five-course menu costs £99.95 per person and includes a glass of fizz.
Most Côte brasseries are due to take part, but four are excluded: Bluewater, Lewes, Reading and Royal Festival Hall. That is a detail worth checking before you make plans around your nearest branch.
The attraction is straightforward. Everyone can sit down together while the kitchen and front-of-house team do the cooking, serving and clearing away. At almost £100 a head, though, it is sensible to check the full menu, sitting times and booking conditions for your chosen restaurant before committing.
Staying in? The turkey is still somebody else’s project
Côte at Home is returning with five festive meal boxes, designed to be finished using the supplied instructions rather than prepared from scratch. The larger options are the Festive Turkey Feast at £119.95 and Festive Chateaubriand Feast at £149.95, both serving four to six people.
For smaller gatherings, there is a Festive Turkey Box for two at £54.95 or a Festive Chateaubriand Box for two at £74.95. The Festive Veggie Box, also serving two, costs £49.95 and centres on a mushroom and squash Wellington.
The practical distinction matters: these are not restaurant meals arriving ready to put straight on the table. They still need finishing at home. But they offer a way to keep Christmas dinner in your own dining room without taking on every stage of the preparation.
Côte advertises delivery from 16 to 31 December 2026, so the sensible first step is checking which dates are available for your address and how the finishing instructions fit around the rest of the day.
There are extras for those feeding guests beyond the main meal: a Festive Breakfast Box (£69.95, serving two to four), Festive Buffet Box (£79.95, serving two to four) and Côte Hamper (£89.95), along with individual seasonal starters, sides and desserts. The hamper includes French delicacies and a choice of Côte Cuvée Red or two bottles of Meteor Lager.
December dinners without the full Christmas Day bill
From 24 November, Côte will offer seasonal dishes alongside its regular à la carte menu. Its Festive Set Menu costs £34.95 for two courses or £39.95 for three, aimed at the sort of lunch or evening gathering that comes with colleagues, friends or relatives and a fairly crowded diary.
Côte’s announced seasonal dishes include a roast turkey ballotine with beechwood-smoked bacon, sage and onion stuffing, roast new potatoes, carrots, a cranberry harissa pig in blanket and shallot and thyme jus. Other options include golden curried hake and a squash, sage and onion tourtière. Steak enthusiasts have a 10oz rib-eye with truffle hollandaise and free-flowing frites, carrying an £8 supplement.
There is a panko prawn cocktail among the starters, and seasonal desserts include clementine and pistachio crêpe, Christmas pudding ice cream and salted caramel pain perdu. Sides such as crispy sprouts, glazed carrots, braised red cabbage and pigs in blankets can make an ordinary meal feel rather more December-specific.
The choice to keep regular à la carte dishes available is useful. Not everyone at a Christmas gathering necessarily wants turkey, and not every meal in late November needs to be a rehearsal for the big day.
Even breakfast gets a festive appearance
Côte is extending the seasonal menu to breakfast and weekend brunch, with a festive French breakfast, a pigs in blanket sandwich and a French toast stack with spiced clementines and Christmas pudding ice cream.
The drinks list includes a Mulled Berry Spritz with Courvoisier, Grand Marnier, spiced berries and apple juice, plus an alcohol-free Ginger Berry Spritz made with Pentire Coastal blood orange apéritif, spiced berries and ginger beer. Both are priced at £10.50.
Côte says festive diners will also receive a treat for a return visit in January, although the offer’s details have not been specified.
For restaurant menus and bookings, visit cote.co.uk. The home collection and delivery information are at coteathome.co.uk.
Which route makes sense depends less on how Christmassy you feel than on how much of the day you want to spend in the kitchen. For some households, keeping hold of the carving knife is half the pleasure. For others, handing it over is the present.
