French restaurants in London have changed tremendously in recent years and all to the good. There was a time when their haute cuisine menus had English subtitles, humbling those without some French, and then there was nouvelle cuisine which looked lovely on the plate but could leave you feeling peckish and making a quick sandwich when you got home. Oh and those fiddly “mother sauces” created by the esteemed saucier as the hallmark of fine French cuisine.
Nowadays it is difficult to categorise what London’s French eateries have in common; there are family resemblances but no essence that must be identified other than carefully prepared food using at least some of a more or less familiar range of ingredients, the presence of cheese and bread somewhere in a meal and, of course, good French wines. A surly waiter is redundant and onion soup, beef bourguignon or a plate of snails need be nowhere in sight.
Head chef Frederick Forster of le Pont de la Tour
This is well illustrated at Le Pont de la Tour, a restaurant famous for its close-up views of Tower bridge but, especially since its relaunch in September 2015 under a new head chef, Frederick Forster, just as renowned for its French cooking. It is no surprise to find Marennes-Oléron oysters here, bred in beds out at sea then matured in shallow ponds called claires, but given that the claires are dug out of ancient salt flats the oysters taste accordingly so the chef also offers Jersey Rock oysters for palates that prefer something more mineral.
The rest of the menu is equally adept at presenting choices and there are pleasurably fastidious touches that some might regard as a characteristic of French cooking – a venison sauce that takes eight hours to perfect – as well as neat touches like grapefruit with the wild duck. The restaurant itself has an entirely new look from Russell Sage Studios: Erte wallpaper, deep red and green colours, gold patterned ceiling and carpets that aid the acoustics in maintaining a subdued atmosphere. The showy trumpet-shaped flowers of a huge amaryllis sit in a bowl in the centre of the dining space, accompanied by pyracantha, adding visual glamour to glamorous food.
Le Restaurant de Paul
The new Le Restaurant de Paul is in the City, 10 minutes from Liverpool St but with little in common with that area’s overcrowded bars and noisy crowds. Restaurant de Paul has, instead, created a little Gallic enclave on the ground floor of Tower 42. Interior design is by a Parisian company, Coorengel & Calvagrac, who seem to have been influenced by the art-deco style of the first Paul eatery that opened in Lille in the 1950s but retro is not the dominant tone and contemporary touches characterise the colours and the use of mirrors.
The style suits a versatile place that is up for breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea and dinners; on evenings you arrive to the pulsing sounds of a DJ playing low-volume house music. It’s tempting to linger at the bar that greets customers at the entrance as the restaurant to one side is not on show. If familiar with the Paul chain of cafés and patisseries you’ll know that bread is an object of worship and with a boulangerie at Tower 42 some self-discipline is necessary at the table.
Glass’s pal, overcome with its deliciousness, emptied the bowl yet still managed to fork more than half of the sharing platter: forgivable, perhaps, because the marinated vegetables, aioli, hummus, cheese gougère and sauce vierge were all too appetising for etiquette to get in the way. The gourmet burgers will appeal to the undernourished but the French-inspired plats principaux are a better reason for coming to Tower 42 and staying firmly on its ground floor.
Le Deux Salons. Photograph: Paul Raeside
Somewhere within shouting distance of Trafalgar Square is an unlikely setting for an authentic Parisian-style brasserie but you will find one there under the name of Les Deux Salons. The two rooms of its name are an informal and buzzy eatery downstairs and a white-tableclothed restaurant upstairs which forms a balcony around an intricate light installation.
The menu for upstairs is not large but carefully constituted to tick all the right French boxes: the mise en bouche are just that, a treat for a mouth in need of titillation, and the starters are just as good: oysters or crab, a foie gras terrine or venison tartare and even the salad manages a continental accent with its truffle dressing.
There are only five main plates – two fish, partridge, venison and a delectable round pie stuffed with wild mushroom and goat’s cheese – but nothing here is superfluous. The atmosphere is calm and it’s easy to wait the 15 minutes that it takes to prepare the prune and Armagnac soufflé. The cheeses are properly French, supplied by La Fromagerie of Marylebone, as is the whole tone of Les Deux Salons. Parfait.
For a special night out, an occasion to bring out the bling, Roux at the Landau is the place to go. The restaurant has an uncommon but aesthetically pleasing shape, around which wood-panelled walls give way on one side to curved windows looking out to the clockface atop the oddly-shaped spire of All Souls Church. BBC’s Broadcasting House lurks behind it. From the high ceiling hang lantern chandeliers, casting a warm glow over proceedings below, and the seating is so arranged that you are assured a degree of privacy increasingly difficult to find in London restaurants.
The food can be expensive – the price of the Dover sole is probably the highest anywhere in the capital at £52 – but the menu for lunch and early or late evenings is far from outrageously priced and includes a half bottle of wine. In return you experience a unique setting, superb dishes like a starter of blue prawns with mango, hot and cold at the same time, with lobster mayonnaise and a touch of coriander.
Jean Jacques is part of a Russian-owned group of French-inspired eateries in Moscow and St Petersburg and this is their first London outing. Deceptively large, seating 100 and spreading over three floors and a small terrace, it’s a bit classier than some of the stranger places in Frith Street. Hare Krishna’s meandering troupe rub shoulders with crocodiles of tour groups in silly T shirts, rickshaw drivers idle along and everyone is out and about enjoying themselves.
The ground floor is cosy and intimate with a definite French bistro atmosphere and certainly the place to be if you want a buzzy atmosphere; upstairs window tables offer a bird eye’s view of loony Soho street life. A single all day menu has something for everyone, from escargots à la Bourguignonne to borsch (the Russian connection), puff pastry to poussin, at affordable prices and a very decent house wine. A lot more fun that queuing next door in the rain at Ronnie Scott’s.
A restaurant full on a Monday night is a good indication that it’s doing something very right and first impressions of Bistro de Luxe reinforce this impression. Old dark wood, antique-looking mirrors, fin de siècle posters, extravagant floral displays and a cheerful staff draw you in to comfortable seating. Neighbours are close but their conversations are lost in the comforting hubbub of genteel conversation.
Like the décor, the waiters seem like something out of central casting. They have the chair pulling, napkin flicking, water dispensing routines down to a T and the sommelier’s commitment to his wines is enthusiastic. The wine list divides the Cabernet-based left bank Bordeaux wines from the Merlot-weighted right bank. Food is carefully thought out and mainly but not obsessively French inspired and with no first and second sittings a meal here is best enjoyed at a leisurely pace.
Working your way around the mime artists, string quartets and camera-toting tourists of Covent Garden brings you to Clos Maggiore in King Street, billed as the most romantic restaurant in London. It’s certainly hard enough to get a reservation in the main room but seeing it will tell you why. Mirrored walls framed in old wooden doors create a sense of hidden pathways, while a wall of hedging, a huge stone fireplace and an arching bower of cherry blossom give the place a magic garden quality.
Tables are snug in this veritable grotto of greenery, managing to maintain intimacy in a crowded room, and it requires an effort to ignore the horticultural roomscape and focus on the menu. The Provençal-inclined food will not disappoint – a suitable finale to the extraordinary range of experiences available to anyone seeking a French connection in London.
by Sean Sheehan