Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
Perfection is blander than personality. A mantra for the aesthetically insecure? You’ve caught me. But it’s still true. Not very fair to say that restaurants have become too good-looking, but lately there’s been a glut of places that appear uncannily like CGI renders. Always unsettling to walk in somewhere and wonder if an actual person had any input, or if it came from the AI overlords.
It’s not that Bistro Sablé is unique: inside the shell of a red-brick pub, it’s pinched from the well-thumbed playbook of precarious candles and mismatched chairs. There are the expected blackboards and booze posters, the empty bottles, the blue-and-white tiles that fill Parisian bathrooms. You’ll have seen it before — especially if you’re a regular at 63-69 Canonbury Road. The room is mostly identical to its time before as Smokehouse, though thankfully now there are fewer antlers. And so we have a room that feels thoroughly fashionable but in reality has recycled what’s been there for more than a decade. But it has charm, helped by an open fire and the cheering welcome dogs are given. Lately there has been a lot about how hospitality is getting stiffed by the financial illiterates in government. Sablé is a reminder that not every opening needs to start from scratch. Paint and smarts go a long way.
Owners Noble Inns usually do gastropubs, as Smokehouse was, but they suit the new guise as restaurateurs, even if it’s just them putting on stripey tops and bunches of onions and wishing everyone a good moaning. Authenticity might be lacking, but execution isn’t: you’d have to be actively stitching someone up to order badly, like asking for a martini with a twist of pomme purée. Though I’d probably still have a sip, strictly as a professional.
I could eat it all: the Coquille Saint-Jacques (gratin-coated scallops), the pâté en croûte, the moules marinière, confit duck, crème brûlée. Truly, there are no points for originality. In other times — times of prosperity and creativity — maybe this would matter. But this is shitshow 2025, when most of us feel harder up than ever before, or sense we are about to be. Diners are going out less frequently and spending less, taking fewer risks. Familiarity suggests dependability — at the very least, you know where you stand. Don’t like comforting French classics? Sablé’s not for you. But in that case, food generally might not be, either.
But if you do? Oh boy. Crudités on the house make a nice start: fine radishes, pickles and small cauliflower bouquets. Escargot arrived in the famous Staub snail pan, radiating heat and solace, under the moss of garlic and parsley butter, the usual flavours here dialled up without any pretence of subtlety. A mound of comtè-and-cheddar soufflé, spottily browned, sat as a rock in a sea of its own ingredients seemingly spooned over it (a trick repeated later, and just as effectively, with a cinder block of gorgeous gratin dauphinois). On a cold Saturday night, tired as hell and late, it seemed to dissipate the week’s worries, quiet them down. There have been tears lately, and this helped.
Comtè-and-cheddar soufflé, spottily browned, sat as a rock in a sea of its own ingredients
For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to find a French onion soup that tasted the way I remember it as a child, tangy with Worcestershire sauce, stock and sweet onions. Here is the closest I’ve found, even besting the half dozen I’ve had this year in France. Beef bourguignon, with soft, sugary shallots and strips of pancetta, inspired that same warm feeling of safety that comes, sometimes, when there’s a rainstorm outside, but you’re curled up under a blanket with someone you love, watching old movies. Only a lacklustre tartare — it wanted more mustard heat, more prickly cornichons — let the side down.
Sablé could have felt cynical — “pub group does trend of the year in cheap profit grab” — but didn’t. Perhaps it was the prices: enough starters in the lesser-spotted single digits, all the mains under £26 (Dover sole at £45 aside), wine from £6 a glass, £5 negronis. Perhaps it was the people. There were lots of jokes and kindness. No flashiness, but plenty of personality. Not quite perfect, but who of us is?
63-69 Canonbury Road, N1. Meal for two about £130; bistrosable.co.uk
