The French House’s goat’s curd on toast with confit garlic.Ī newcomer to The French House might wonder if there’s any lunch going there at all. Because here is a place to talk all afternoon about nothing. This is why Borthwick’s all-new, not-new French House is so welcome. ![]() Whatever your view, it is inarguable that Dean Street has been gobbled up by Crossrail, Tesco Metro and bleak co-working spaces where the macchiato-fuelled shout into Skype about start-ups. It’s worth mentioning that other locals say this is rot, and that the place still lends itself to being a moral abyss. The bohemians have scattered, they say, and the knocking shops have slowed their knockings. There is a school of thought that claims “Soho is dead” killed off by developers, petty residents and the damned council. ![]() Yes, Neil Borthwick, formerly head chef of Merchant’s Tavern, may have taken the reins upstairs in this Grade II-listed building, but his approach is to preserve and conserve this patch of Dean Street’s wonky honour. Furthermore, it is rare that I begin a review of a brand new venture by grounding it in the dusty, what-went-before, but in The French’s case, the past is not a foreign country. ![]() I’m sure Francis Bacon, who drank copiously at The French House in Soho, would have curled a lip at a lowly critic prancing in to assess a space that he and Dylan Thomas had already deemed near-perfect. I t’s a hollow task to review a restaurant that has tottered on already, entirely without my gilded bon mots, for more than 100 years.
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