The news earlier this year that the legendary Le Gavroche was closing may have sounded like the death knell for old-school French cuisine in London, but in fact it has undergone something of a revival recently. Not only are many new restaurants choosing to give themselves a French name – sometimes without much by way of a typically French offering – but some exciting new restaurants are opening up that wouldn’t be out of place in Paris or Lyon.
Leaving aside Hélène Darroze and Joséphine, the new restaurant of chef Claude Bosi (of famed Michelin two-star Bibendum at the top of the Fulham Road, SW3), most are run by English chefs with a longstanding passion for French food and wine, and doing it every bit as well as their colleagues on the other side of the Channel. And while they’re not always priced as low as they are in la belle France, you at least save the cost – and hassle – of a trip on the Eurostar. Take your pick.
Hélène Darroze at the Connaught
£££££
Carlos Place, Mayfair W1K 2AL
Hélène Darroze at The Connaught. Credit: Jerome Galland
There’s a word for top-flight restaurants in Paris – ‘palace’ – and Hélène Darroze at The Connaught is indubitably a palace. The food is of course superb, but it’s everything around it that makes it special. The service – they greet you at the door as if you’re their best customer – the decor, much warmer, softer and less imposing than in the past, and above all the wine. The restaurant has any of the big-name wines you ever wanted to drink housed in verticals in a cellar downstairs with its own small private dining room.
This is a chef at the top of her game, utterly tuned in to the way we want to eat now: elegant, light, seasonal food executed with a talent that has deservedly been recognised in the restaurant’s three Michelin stars. A dish of lobster from the Isle of Mull served with tandoori spices, carrot, citrus and coriander was just dazzling. Wine and Armagnac pairings – the latter with Darroze’s famous ‘signature’ baba, which is also anointed with the same spirit – are impeccably sure-footed.
The downside, of course, is the price. While this is probably not the best place to visit if cash is limited, that being the case, your best bet is to go for the £125 set-price lunch (for which you need to ask ahead) and order wine by the glass – but maybe not the DRC Echezeaux at £1,250. A place for a very special treat.
Camille
££ – £££
2-3 Stoney Street, Southwark SE1 9AA
Camille
Camille is the kind of cool natural wine bar you expect to find in Shoreditch rather than bustling, touristy Borough Market, but is all the more welcome for that. Opened by the talented team behind Ducksoup in Soho and Emilia in Ashburton, Devon, it serves the sort of food – and wine – you’d find in one of the more fashionable Parisian arrondissements. The largely small plates menu changes all the time, but typical dishes would be their great take on devilled eggs (topped with smoked eel), crispy pig’s ear with green beans and shallots, and a stellar skate wing schnitzel. The wine list will gratify or annoy depending on where you stand on the natural wine issue, but it has a regularly changing list of impeccably sourced wines by the glass. The best way to enjoy it is as a wine bar. Sit at the bar with a refreshing glass of pét-nat, have a dish, then carry on with your food shopping.
Bouchon Racine
££££
66 Cowcross Street, Farringdon EC1M 6BP
Henry Harris. Credit: Drakes
There was much relief when ardent francophile Henry Harris opened his own place, Bouchon Racine, in 2022 after having closed the original Racine in Knightsbridge back in 2015 and working for other people during the intervening years. It’s an unabashed love letter to France – you’ll generally find French bistro classics such as jambon de Bayonne with céleri rémoulade, salade de museau and hareng pomme à l’huile on the menu. When the fashion is to present everything as small plates, it’s great to find a place that does substantial main courses and there are always some splendid dishes for sharing. A dish of milk-fed veal with morels I had earlier this year with a superb Frédéric Magnien Gevrey-Chambertin was perfection on a plate. The flipside of it being a small and cosy place is that it can be noisy, so if you’re after a romantic meal for two, you’re better to go at lunch than dinner. It’s much loved by people in the industry, so you’re likely to find at least a couple of Harris’ fellow restaurateurs at a nearby table. Booking essential.
Joséphine
£££ – ££££
315 Fulham Road, Fulham SW10 9QH
Joséphine
To describe this as a neighbourhood restaurant is a touch misleading – bear in mind the neighbourhood is Brompton and I would say that, judging by the look of the well-heeled clientele, most of them live in the multi-million-pound properties around the corner. That doesn’t make Joséphine as flash as you might expect. Rather, it’s faithfully Lyonnais, from the food to the decor and down to the way they serve the house wine, which is measured by the metre. While that’s fun, particularly if you’re eating with a crowd, it’s not the best way to enjoy Claude Bosi’s high-end cooking, which includes such haute cuisine classics as quenelles sauce Nantua and soufflé au St-Félicien (divine with white Burgundy), and unctuously deep, rich, reduced sauces, such as the one that came with my duck. And who can resist a PDT (pommes de terre) menu – or the oeufs à la neige, which come with the fabulously well-priced lunchtime menu de canut at £24.50 for two courses or £29.50 for three. Smoothly oiled, solicitous service makes you feel like a regular. I’ve already been three times this year and I don’t even live in London.
Maison François
£££ – ££££
34 Duke Street, St James’s SW1Y 6DF
Maison François’ Paris-Brest. Credit: Steven Joyce
At first sight, Maison François looks a touch corporate, with its functional blonde wooden booths, but it’s far more individual than appearances suggest. It has a real sense of theatre. Steak tartare, for instance, is served from a trolley with an array of seasonings and toppings to add to your taste, including grated horseradish and anchovy breadcrumbs. Or head there in the afternoon for a cake from the superb dessert trolley and a glass of Champagne. Classics such as oeuf en gelée, and a superb old-school pâté en croûte are impeccably done. The wine list is eclectic yet more than decent, but it’s usually worth going for a glass of the wine of the day – recently it was Kumeu River’s Coddington Chardonnay 2017 from magnum. (Ask what else they have open under Coravin.) And there’s free corkage on Sunday evenings after 4pm. At the slightly funkier Franks wine bar downstairs you can have a glass of wine and slake your appetite with a few oysters pre theatre – it’s conveniently located just off Piccadilly.
Pique-Nique
£££ – ££££
32 Tanner Street, Bermondsey SE1 3LD
Grilled langoustines and a trio of strawberry beignets with homemade pistachio ice cream and crumble at Pique Nique
It was a toss-up whether to include Pique-Nique or its nearby sister restaurant Casse-Croûte in this round-up. Casse-Croûte is tiny, cosy, the quintessential Parisian bistro. At first sight, Pique-Nique is less obviously French – it’s housed in a former pavilion in the middle of a small park – but the wine list is more wide-ranging and longer, and the food is still resplendently old-school. They pride themselves on their pastry skills – the paté en croute is divine, as is the veal Wellington, which you should definitely order if they have it on. They do a stellar chicken and chips, and a daily soufflé. The wine service is particularly engaging – co-owner Alex Bonnefoy is more concerned with sharing the love for the lesser-known bottles he’s discovered than convincing you to trade up. There’s a very good by-the-glass list, but if you like the look of something they have on by the bottle they’ll open it for you. Their wine pairing skills are impressive, too – I loved the suggestion of an Alsace Pinot Gris with paté en croute.
Henri
£££ – ££££
14-15 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden WC2E 8QH
Chocolate sabayon cake at restaurant Henri
The most recent arrival on the scene is Henri, Jackson Boxer’s tribute to the Parisian bistro. Unlike Bosi and Harris, old-school France doesn’t run deep in Boxer’s bones. He’s an inventive chef who seeks to put a contemporary spin on the French classics – and succeeds. He does a wonderful take on snails, which come with an equally rich, earthy veal rice, a seaweed canelé and – the pièce de resistance – a Royal Opera torte topped with a Pedro Ximénez sabayon, which is paired not with PX but with a D’Oliveiras Malvasia Madeira 2009. In fact, the wine list is remarkably wide-ranging for such a popular location (in the heart of Covent Garden). Alongside an impressive Champagne list, there are also wines from top New World winemakers such as South Africa’s Eben Sadie. There’s a well-priced set-price lunch, an early evening supper deal and an outdoor terrace. Smart, chic and central.
