APRES Food Co, unassumingly positioned in St John St in Clerkenwell for almost four years now, continues to quietly turn out healthy food that is conscientiously prepared, cooked with acumen and designed to please the stomach as well as taste buds.
Co-founder Catherine is an accredited nutritional therapist who has worked with the Chelsea soccer club – as rival fans point out, they need all the help they can get – and has an open mind when choosing and mixing ingredients for her restaurant’s various menus. “Who on earth told us,” she asks in her blog, “we had to have breakfast cereal in the morning or that breakfast should be shaken from a box? Or that we have to drink cow’s milk with the cereal? That bread should be made with wheat flour containing gluten?”
Gauthier Soho
Gauthier Soho
The results of Catherine’s critical thinking are to be found in the delicious breakfasts, brunches, lunches and suppers available at her cosy restaurant. Everything, including the puddings, snacks and cakes, are free of gluten and refined sugar but there is nothing faddish about the choices available to diners. On the evening of my visit, the main dishes included a plate of braised heritage beef slowly cooked with ale and chestnut mushrooms, in a pie topped with Roquefort shortcrust pastry.
Vegetarian and vegan choices included an aubergine sabich flatbread pizza and a plant- and nut-based Thai curry, while piscatarians could consider rope-grown Scottish mussels or a tasty fillet of cod.
The menus are also available for delivery or collection and home dining choices are increased by a range of ready-made dishes for enjoying at home. Everything is meticulously prepared and packaged, making Apres Food Co a rather special eatery.
Gauthier Restaurant is located in an unmistakably different part of London but, as the Michelin guide rather snobbishly puts it, “detached from the rowdier elements of Soho”. When Alexis Gauthier was chef at Roussillon in Pimlico (now closed), the famous French guide annually awarded the restaurant a star until he left and opened Gauthier in Soho (promptly wining a star there also).
Alexis Gauthier became vegan in 2016, a logical progression from his increasing interest in non-meat cooking. At Roussillon, he broke new ground with his vegetarian menu dégustation and diners who now take a seat in Gauthier Restaurant have a choice of a meat- or plant-based menu for lunch (four courses) or dinner (seven).
Without being pushy or evangelising, this is the place to bring a carnivore companion who might harbour traditional ideas about what constitutes fine dining.
Gauthier Soho
Alexis Gauthier
With his recent introduction of a Vegan Box for nationwide home delivery, Alexis has reached a new level in alchemy of the edible. It starts with a whimsical amuse bouche, a faux gras terrine, before getting into gear with a herb and onion brioche that gains tanginess from its pomegranate marmalade. Seven more courses follow, including a fragrant coconut broth with lime, ginger and glass noodles and a superb braised white chicory with leek and chestnut.
Contentment levels rise with each course, though the “riso cauli” – cauliflower chopped into rice-sized pieces in a parsley jus – created a difference of opinion in the group of four I joined for an evening extravaganza of food and wine (a two-bottle wine pairing is an option).
Apres Food Co and Gauthier Restaurant may be in very different parts of London but they are soul siblings in their dedication to making the good food available on their premises available for home delivery. In doing so, they may be pioneers in effecting a paradigm shift in the nature of takeaways.
by Sean Sheehan
Gauthier Soho, 21 Romilly Street, W1D 5AF
Tel: 0207 494 3111