It may be the least arriviste movement of all time. London’s food scene is quietly having a French moment, with a crop of new restaurants taking timeless inspiration from across the channel. This anti-trend manifests itself in summer berry and lavender choux buns at Battersea Rise bistro Ploussard, or Basque chicken ballotine at 64 Goodge Street. It’s there, too, in the classic frog legs at Josephine in Chelsea (or the outpost in Marylebone, for that matter), the veal sweetbreads at Haggerston Wine Club/bistro Planque, or the even more challenging tête de veau calf’s head at Bouchon Racine, chef Henry Harris’s much-loved Farringdon follow-up to his original Racine. If you’ve read a Jay Rayner rave in The Guardian in the last few years, there’s a decent chance it involved some degree of comforting, quality-driven Frenchness.
In Covent Garden, chef Jackson Boxer joined this nouvelle vague with the smart, Parisian-inspired Henri at the Henrietta Hotel – owned by the French Experimental Group, and itself part of an influx of Francophile London hotels, including Hôtel Costes relative One Sloane and Notting Hill’s Grand Hotel Bellevue. With its marble-topped tables with coffee-coloured skirts, highlights on Henri’s menu include crispy-unctuous pied de cochon (pig’s trotters), and an £8 carrot râpée with black olive and sesame, cooked in carrot reduction with lime and fermented chillies for an explosive take on the traditional cafe carrot salad.
For Boxer, this wider pirouette towards all things Français is multi-faceted. “There is a sense of nostalgia about French food,” says the chef, who masterminded low-key London classics Brunswick House and Orasay before veering into French at Cowley Manor Experimental in the Cotswolds. “To me, it’s family holidays, Interrailing, and really learning to eat in Paris. But while I respect tradition, with Henri we didn’t just want tradition set in aspic, but a familiar framework to seduce, and create something new.” Above all, Boxer says Henri is inspired by a certain restless Parisian spirit. “Paris to me is an innovative, witty, seething mass of restless creativity and independence, where good small chef-owners can still make it if they’re good enough.”
François O’Neill, owner of the beautiful art deco Maison François in St James’s, is more au fait than most with how to make a French restaurant work in London. He grew up doing stints in the kitchen at Brasserie St Quentin, owned by his father, Hugh, Lord Rathcavan, and the late restaurant critic Quentin Crewe, who was famed for pioneering the sort of scabrous takedowns that are a common pleasure today (again, see Jay Rayner). Brasserie St Quentin was London’s first brasserie-style restaurant when it opened in the 1980s – and it became a style-set favourite all over again in 2010, when a 24-year-old O’Neill took it over and rebranded it as The Brompton Bar and Grill. Many of those regulars – think royals, artists and Delevignes – have followed “Frank” to Maison François, which opened in 2021, with Dorchester-trained former MasterChef finalist Matthew Ryle in the kitchen and Scott’s alum Ed Wyand managing a slick front of house team in suits and Stan Smiths.
£
