If French is the language of love then Gallic cuisine can be taken as proof that the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Legend has it that French cuisine seduced the world when the chefs of the aristocracy found their contracts terminated along with their guillotined employers following the French Revolution and touted their services around the capitals of Europe.
True or not, it was a Frenchman who kickstarted the London restaurant revolution when Auguste Escoffier arrived here at the end of the 19th century. Escoffier developed the kitchen brigade system, codified the five great French sauces (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato) and invented such fabled dishes as peach Melba during his time at The Savoy.
The influence of Gallic gastronomy is so all-pervasive that in 2010, “the gastronomic meal of the French” was added to UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. And yet while almost every cuisine under the sun can now be sampled in London, surely it is still French which corresponds to most people’s idea of what a restaurant meal involves: freshly baked bread, creamy sauces, stinky cheeses and — the French would argue — the finest wines available to humanity.
So from multi-Michelin-starred temples of haute cuisine to neighbourhood bistros, all-day brasseries and even vegan fine dining, here is the crème de la crème of London’s Gallic restaurant scene. Whisper it: you’ll eat better French food in London than you will in Paris these days — vive la révolution!
Les 2 Garçons
The titular two garçons are maître d’ Jean-Christophe Slowik and chef Robert Reid, who met while working at Marco Pierre White’s Oak Room around the turn of the century — a blast from the past which should give you a clue as to the vintage experience on offer here. The cooking runs from the simple to the sophisticated: onion soup or scallops with Champagne and orange butter pour commencer, steak-frites or smoked haddock in chive and mustard butter sauce to follow, apple tarte Tatin or apricot-glazed rum baba for pud. Slowik’s import business takes care of the wines, which are so good that all the booze was nicked soon after they opened, which is a compliment of sorts to his good taste (stealing is the sincerest form of flattery). Reid and Slowik are both Crouch End locals, so know what their neighbours want, namely classic French cooking and dinner in two sittings. It’s a winning formula.
14 Middle Lane, N8 8PL, les2garconsbistro.com
Otto’s
The name might be more Germanic than Gallic but the glorious food on offer at Otto’s bears witness to Austrian owner Otto Tepasse’s training in the 1970s when all the upmarket restaurants in Europe were French. Pride of place goes to a duck press, just returned after a recent biord flu drought, originally made for the Hotel Provençal in Juan-les-Pins in 1927. Pescatarians can indulge in an equally sybaritic pressed lobster, while elsewhere on the menu is the finest foie gras in the capital, pig’s trotter stuffed with calf’s sweetbreads and morel mushrooms, and soufflés flambéed at the table by Otto himself with scant regard for the state of his cuffs. There is an enormously expensive burger, too, which is proving to be a huge hit. The interiors are every bit as heroically eccentric as the owner, all squeaky velvet and candlelight, classical friezes and posters of Marilyn Monroe. London’s most eccentric restaurant? Without a doubt.
182 Gray’s Inn Road, WC1X 8EW, ottos-restaurant.com
Paulette
Paulette succeeds primarily because it excels where so many fall short: it has personality. The city is littered with restaurants that all seem damningly alike. In this way, dining in them feels transactional, cynical, charmless. Paulette is the opposite of this: mustard yellow, joyful in a somewhat let-loose, unhinged kind of way. Owners François Guerin and Jean-François Lesage seem to have found a way to put their hopes and dreams and ideals into the very walls and floor of it. The menu offers everything a bistro should — snails, mussels, saucisson and cornichons, confit duck — but changes monthly with the mains. There will always be a steak on, and usually something that requires a mustard sauce. Terrifically good wine list, too. Perfection, then.
18 Formosa Street, W9 1EE, paulettelondon.com
Maison François
All-day French cooking served up in slick, modern-retro brasserie surrounds in old-school St James’s has proved an entirely likely recipe for success at Maison François. The namesake founder is Francois O’Neill, an affable Anglo-Irish chap whose father Hugh was clearly a believer in nominative determinism; François transformed his dad’s Brasserie St Quentin into the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Brompton Bar & Grill before living up to his name and going full-on French with this place. A few years into opening, the restaurant has quietly become more and more assured, and is now easily among the capital’s best. It also has considerably lengthened its menu since its early days, offering everything from lambs tongue brochette with mint sauce to côtelette de porc with a classic sauce moutarde; those wanting to keep prices down should go for the Budget Buster menu which, though it changes from time to time, usually means a diner can get out with a belly full for £20. Basement wine bar Frank’s is a name to impress your booze-savyy friends with when you can’t get into Dukes; nothing cuts through the fattiness of paté en croûte like a glass of Champagne. On the other side of town, little sister Café François — a canteen style place — offers a busier, less refined setting, but the food is impeccable.
34 Duke Street, SW1Y 6DF, maisonfrancois.london
Casse-Croûte
One might assume that Casse-Croûte were a pastiche if the quality of cooking were not so exceptional. Paper sheets spread over red-checked tablecloths are made for gathering wine stains from dinky glasses that hold about two gulps, luxuriantly bearded waiters rush across a black and white tiled floor, while the menu du jour is chalked up on a blackboard between posters of the Folies Bergère on nicotine-coloured walls. In other words, everything is absolutely comme il faut, not least cooking which might bring ham and parsley terrine with rémoulade ahead of steak served not so much rare as blue. Best of all is anything involving cream, which not only goes for main courses such as veal marengo but desserts like pot au chocolat. Reservations, naturellement, can only be made by telephone — and made they must be: the tiny dining room has room for around 20 diners. For something more every day, nearby offshoot Pique-Nique offers rotisserie chicken and chips.
109 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XB, cassecroute.co.uk
Bouchon Racine
Racine was one of the hottest tickets of noughties dining, the mention of which tends to make middle-aged foodies go all misty-eyed about the perfect renditions of marmite Dieppoise and Mont Blanc knocked out on Knightsbridge by chef-patron Henry Harris. This resurrection of sorts above the Three Compasses pub in Farringdon was the hardest-to-book table of 2023, and still remains something of a difficult get. Don’t worry about the hype — it is entirely justified. And so, ignore it and apppreciate the place for what it is: a billet-doux to simplicity and bonhomie that is more casual, more romantic and much warmer in feel than the Knightsbridge original. Harris has taken the rough-and-ready bouchons found in the backstreets of Lyon for inspiration in the likes of chunky chicken liver pâté tasting assertively of offal, a magnificent magret of duck with thyme and garlic sauce, and a comme il faut crème caramel. Génial! And perhaps London’s best restaurant.
66 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6BP, bouchonracine.com
64 Goodge Street
Borrowing from a colour palette of a rearranged box of After Eights, 64 Goodge Street characterises itself as “French cooking from an outsider’s perspective.” The menu is a litany of new takes on classic fare, with hors d’œuvres featuring the likes of snail, bacon and garlic bon bons and crispy frog’s leg lollipops. First courses boast quail forestière with sauce Albufera and trout amandine with sauce vierge; while mains offer ballotine of Basseri chicken, girolles and tarragon and its now somewhat signature dish of lobster vol-au-vent with sauce Américaine. However, be sure to save room for desserts like mille-feuille Gariguette strawberry and black forest coupe amaretto chantilly. The wine list is also incredibly thorough and varied, with selections of aperitifs, several crémants, Champagnes — all the way to a 1983 Leoville-Las Cases Grand Vin de Leoville, Saint-Julien. At lunch the menu is 3 courses for £59 and at dinner 3 courses for £85.
64 Goodge Street, London, W1T 4NF, 64goodgestreet.co.uk
La Poule au Pot
With a tricolore billowing over pretty Orange Square, La Poule au Pot wears its French colours proudly. Tarte a l’oignon, quiche au fromage, coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon: all the Gallic classics are here, saved from cliché by well-timed cooking that ensures the blushingly pink magret de canard tastes as melt-in-the-mouth as it did on your last jaunt to the Dordogne. There’s nothing ground-breaking and, to be honest, nothing that a skilled home cook couldn’t knock up themselves — but La Poule au Pot is the perfect illustration of why we often choose to eat out: comfortingly familiar food, gallons of house wine, handsome waiters and the sort of idiosyncratic interiors that have accumulated over years like strata of soil (or terroir, to use the French word). Even if you’re not having an affair, a table in a candlelit nook or bric-a-brac-filled cranny will make even the stalest relationship feel deliciously illicit.
231 Ebury Street, SW1W 8UT, pouleaupot.co.uk
The French House
For about 130 years, a pub has stood at 49 Dean Street in Soho. Without getting sentimentally nostalgic, that matters, not least as The French House is a pub where it pays to know one’s history: this is where Charles de Gaulle is reputed to have written his wartime rally to the French people, “À tous les Français”. Seventy or so years later, the ground-floor boozer remains wedded to Gallic idiosyncrasies, not least the rule of only serving beer by the half pint. The upstairs dining room, meanwhile, up a rickety flight of stairs, has long been home to some of the brightest British restaurant talents (Margot Henderson, Russell Norman) though current longterm toque Neil Borthwick, there since 2018, cooks with a strong French accent on a charming menu that, though it doesn’t change as much as it might, is still an absolute pleasure. If the calves brains aren’t on the menu, ask for them: they are one of Borthwick’s speciality. Otherwise? Expect to see oysters, a pâté of some kind (rillettes, brawn, chicken liver parfait), likely a pair of steaks.
49 Dean Street, W1D 5BG, frenchhousesoho.com
Chez Bruce
Not a French restaurant as such, Chez Bruce is the home of chef Bruce Poole, above, who takes France as a heavy inspiration before adding his own interpretation to fresh and seasonal cooking for which the best definition is simply “delicious”. Roast chicken breast is served alongside stuffed leg, wild garlic, crêpes Parmentier and truffle velouté, veggies get mushroom gougères with asparagus, Comté fonduta, poached egg and chives, while an aioli-blobbed salad of squid, chickpeas and chorizo will mainline you to the Med faster than a TGV to Marseille. The cheeseboard is close on legendary. One of those rare restaurants worth crossing town for.
2 Bellevue Road, SW17 7EG, chezbruce.co.uk
Le Colombier
With its pressed white tablecloths, cerulean blues and the deep rouge of blue steaks, Le Colombier offers a true tricolore. Lauded as one of the most old-school brasseries in London, go for côte de bœuf à partager with French beans bound with a ribbon of celery skin and an ethereal oeufs a la neige ou île flottante. Named after the colombard grape, Le Colombier does not skimp on the wine, slaking thirsts of any ilk with a list of 60 bottles and by-the-glass options. Word to the wise, however — reservations are a non-negotiable.
145 Dovehouse St, London SW3 6LB
40 Maltby Street
Tucked under the arches of the line to London Bridge station, 40 Maltby feels like a bunker, with its convex roof of corrugated metal muffling the rolling thunder overhead. Shelves teem with Loire wines and vignettes of classic French cookery are captured in small, winged dishes — all flickering with sultry candlelight in the evening. A tiny kitchen fortified with neatly-labelled tupperware sees just two cooks pirouette between themselves as if choreographed, to deliver dishes such as chicken, bacon and hazelnut terrine; egg in jelly; confit duck, green beans, apricots, almonds and spelt; and desserts of apricot sorbet or buttermilk pudding with red gooseberries and shortbread. With a strict no booking policy, be sure to get there early.
40 Maltby Street, SE1 3PA, 40maltbystreet.com
Bistro Freddie
As much a British restaurant as a French bistro — it was in part inspired by Sweetings, after all — Bistro Freddie nevertheless does enough to merit a spot on this list, mostly owing to recent changes in the kitchen. These have seen the quality of the food rise astonishingly; it’s almost not the restaurant it was on opening. Still, it feels the place to be and the menus, though simple, comfort. Expect monkfish floating in a bouillabaisse, or steak in a very good sauce au poivre, or perhaps just a simple summer salad. The wine list holds some gems — explore carefully and there are some bottles to linger with.
74 Luke Street, EC2A 4PY, bistrofreddie.com
Gauthier Soho
Alexis Gauthier is on a mission to prove that gourmet vegan is not an oxymoron incompatible with the world of haute cuisine. The Avignon-born chef himself became vegan in 2015 and has moved beyond the clickbait of replicating French classics sans meat (”faux gras”; a carrot tartare shredded at the table in a vintage mincer) to focus instead on the innate flavours and textures of the vegetable patch: white asparagus with stuffed morel mushrooms and heart of palm, say, or a seashore assembly of Jersey royal potato with samphire and sea buckthorn. The wine list, naturally, is free from animal products, while the setting in a Georgian townhouse is as elegant as veganism gets in London.
21 Romilly Street, W1D 5AF, gauthiersoho.co.uk
Galvin Bistrot & Bar
Galvin Bistrot de Luxe was one of the most famous restaurants of the noughties, a recreation of a Parisian brasserie that brought the elan of the Boulevard Saint-Germain to grimy old Baker Street. This Spitalfields nod to it does a convincing and convivial job of resurrecting the original, with bentwood chairs, a pewter bar and metro tiles (plus the copper tanks of fresh Pilsner Urquell left over from the Galvin brothers’ previous incarnation of the site). Kick off with sausage rolls and charcuterie, tarte flambées and croquettes ahead of steak-frites and duck confit, rum baba and tarte Tatin. Price are more Square Mile than bistro du coin but with cooking this enjoyable, there’s no quibbling, not least if you’re sitting on the lovely terrace, plus there’s a three-course lunch for £33. Fancy a somewhat fancier time? La Chapelle, next door, retains its long-earned Michelin star, and is a beauty.
Entrance on Bishops Square, 35 Spital Square, E1 6DY, galvinrestaurants.com
L’Escargot
Perhaps the most famous restaurant in Soho, glorious L’Escargot has been serving the flâneurs of Greek Street since 1927. The building itself dates back to 1741, a Georgian heritage which has bequeathed a warren of velvet-swagged rooms illuminated by chandeliers and hung with art that one assumes is a print but turns out to be the original. Escargots come by the garlic-drenched dozen, flambéed or in a fricassee with wild mushrooms and foie gras; there’s lobster bisque and paté en croûte, halibut in Champagne sauce or chicken breast with morels, while the special of the day might be coq au vin calf’s sweetbreads. The Tournedos Rossini is practically a London A-lister. None of this, hélas, comes especially cheap, but there’s exceptionally good value if you eat at lunch or before 7pm, when there’s a three-course set for a remarkable £28; they also have a wonderful “snack menu”, with things like a Croque Monsieur for £10, or the L’Escargot burger for £15. As for the wine list, if you feel uncomfortable ordering anything with a French name, this probably isn’t the restaurant for you, though the charming staff are too polite to point out any mispronunciations.
48 Greek Street, London W1D 4EF, lescargot.co.uk
Josephine Bistro, Chelsea
At the time a step in a new direction for the enterprising Claude Bosi and wife Lucy, Chelsea’s Josephine began as an ode to his grandmother as a bouchon at first, evolving to a bistro. This signalled a move from more regional cooking to something more broadly French. Expect to find frog’s legs in garlic butter; skate wing, brown butter and caper sauce, croutons; veal sweetbread, morel mushroom sauce and French rabbit, mustard & tarragon sauce to share. However, Josephine’s strength arguably comes from its bicep curl of a set menu featuring Andouillette and mustard sauce, brioche and morteau sausage, red wine sauce Traditional Lyonnaise beignets, chocolate sauce with two and three courses for £24 and £29.50, respectively. The sister site in Marylebone is not, alas, quite of the same grade.
315A Fulham Road, SW10 9QH, josephinebouchon.com
La Petite Maison
Few restaurants offer glamour like La Petite Maison, with its timeless evocation of the ritz life on the Riviera. The restaurant’s origin story tells how Arjun Waney, the man behind Zuma and Coya, bought the global rights to the name after splurging his casino winnings at La Petite Maison in Nice’s old town; true or not, it's something fun to bring up over lunch. LPM is known for its A-list clientele, but the quality of its cooking too. Take the lamb cutlets with a handle of bone, which prove that it is acceptable to eat with your hands if you carry it off with enough sang-froid. To really feel in the pink, La Petite Maison’s oyster-cum-cocktail bar has one of the UK’s most extensive offerings of rosé wine. Meals here feel faultless, timeless.
53-54 Brook's Mews, W1K 4EG, lpmrestaurants.com
Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester
It is a mark of Alain Ducasse’s importance as an icon of Gallic gastronomy that the chef’s departure from Paris’s Plaza Athénée hotel in 2021 made headlines around the world. Monsieur Ducasse is still very much in residence at this three-Michelin-starred dining room at the Dorchester and, although day-to-day kitchen duties are overseen by talented executive chef-patron Jean-Philippe Blondet, rest assured that he cooks in his master’s voice of whispered luxury (albeit with a somewhat international outlook: pasta and wasabi appear here). Dishes might include lobster with chicken quenelle, or pigeon with aubergine and sardine. As for the size of the bill… try to think of £215 for three courses, five for £250 and seven for £285 (yes, really) as good value compared to a trip to Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco. And it should be noted that on a recent visit, the place was better than ever.
The Dorchester, Park Lane, W1K 1QA, alainducasse-dorchester.com
