Recommended French Restaurants in London

The first and best fine cooking in London was French, back a couple of hundred years. Lately, it’s been displaced by what’s known as “modern British” (though Gordon Ramsay and several other chefs here trained in France, and most chefs still talk in kitchen French when describing food and technique). The rise of good Italian restaurants, and the arrival of other cuisines, have cut into the supremacy of French cooking somewhat, but it’s still terrific when it’s good, still like coming home. (Available websites are at the end of the listings.)

LA TROUVAILLE

La Trouvaille is a slightly quirky bistro featuring the robust food of southern France, with a good selection of the same sort of wines. There’s a wine bar on the ground floor and a small, casually elegant restaurant upstairs. The beef and quite savoury mutton are free-range and organic; ingenious seafood’s worth a try too, things like whiting with comté cheese on a bed of sauteed lemon-flavored leeks, or a casserole of freshwater fish in red wine with new potatoes. On the meat side, there’s a lusty pork filet and trotter (pig-foot) ragout, or guinea hen stuffed with tomato and eggplant with sweet baked beets on the side. Finish with the ginger crème brulee. Lunch is £18.50 for three courses, dinner £33, admirable bargains. Big food=big wines; it’s syrah heaven, and there are also offbeat blends, usually obscure varieties and Cabernet Sauvignon. Chateau Simone’s “Palette” has some finesse, Clos Boste is an intriguing Madiran (Tannat and Cabernet), and Domaine Trevallon, and Domaine de la Rectorie are likeably robust. Among whites, Alain Brumont’s Gros Manseng or Domaine des Lauriers’ Picpoul de Pinet are almost opulent. The wine list has about 50 selections, well annotated, about half under £30, good selection by the glass. The name means “the find,” and it is.

La Trouvaille, 12A Newburgh Street, London W1F 7RR. Tel: +44 (0)20 7287 8488.

Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday.

Nearest Tube: Oxford Street

Nearby Attractions: Regent Street shopping, Carnaby Street

RSJ

This informal but pleasantly sedate old-timer serves a kind of Sunday-dinner French cuisine that’s increasingly rare, quite marvelous, quietly elegant in its simplicity. Dinner is served, efficiently and smoothly, from an early hour so diners can walk to the National Theater, Festival Hall, or National Film Theater on time for a performance, but RSJ is deservedly a destination on its own. Start with roulade of duck and foie gras, or poached smoked haddock (aka finan haddie) with horseradish, baby beets, and a soft poached egg, and move on to excellent calf’s liver, poached sea trout with dill and caviar, or pan-fried red mullet with pernod vinaigrette. There are quite a few good desserts. RSJ specializes in the light and lovely wines of the Loire Valley, more than 200 of them—Vouvray, Muscadet, Sauvignon Blanc, Chinon, and Bourgueil, among others, from the likes of Huet, Dageaneau, Ogereau and many others, dry or deliciously sweet, all reasonably priced. The wine list is very well annotated, and staff are extremely helpful.

RSJ, 33 Coin Street, London SE1 9NR. Tel: +44 (0)20 7928-4554

Open for lunch Monday-Friday, dinner (from 5:30 p.m. onward) Monday-Saturday

Nearest Tube: Waterloo

Nearby Attractions: South Bank Center (theaters and galleries), London Eye

LE GAVROCHE
As befits London’s best French restaurant, Le Gavroche is self-confidently genteel (softly dark green walls, large colorful paintings, silver table settings and decorations), and truly hospitable. The solicitude and attention to detail runs through every aspect of the meal, achieving a precise, high standard of service and cooking. The restaurant is in its 38^th year and second generation, with Michel Roux, Jr. still turning out elegant, lightly modernized renditions of classic French cooking: his coquille St. Jacques is perfumed with ginger, and the lobster fricassee comes with a rich pasta. Michel’s current favorite? “Saddle of rabbit with galette au parmesan [rich cheese pancakes], delicate yet gutsy, pleasing to the eye and the palate, a perfect foil for a great wine.” With an well-chosen, encyclopedic wine list built up over nearly four decades, the only problem would be choosing just one.
Le Gavroche, 43 Upper Brook Street, London W1K 7QR. Tel: +44 (0)20 7408 0881.

Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, and dinner Saturday
Nearest Tube: Marble Arch
Nearby Attractions: Oxford St., Selfridge’s, Hyde Park

MIRABELLE
Marco Pierre White’s very swanky makeover of an old favorite near Berkeley Square is decorated in the style of those smart supper clubs Fred and Ginger used to sashay around, and the menu is what it would have been back then, too: oysters raw and cooked, omelet Arnold Bennett, foie gras, potted shrimps, grilled lobster or sole, veal a la Holstein, calf’s liver and sage--very much haute brasserie, a classy, nicely executed throwback. The wine list is cosmopolitan, too, well-balanced, carefully assembled from around the world, 400+ bins, 50 vintages of Chateau d'Yquem (the 1847 is £30,000). Even so, it’s tame compared to the ‘extensive fine wine list’—multiple vintages of top Bordeaux and Burgundy (Lafite, Petrus, Romanee-Conti, like that). It’s a treasure trove. (Note: MPW sold his share recently, but so far there haven't been any major changes.)
Mirabelle, 56 Curzon Street, London W1Y 8DL. Tel: +44 (0)20 7499 4636.

Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner
Nearest Tube: Green Park
Nearby Attractions: Green Park, St. James’s

CLUB GASCON
Club Gascon is a Francophile’s dream and one of London’s hottest restaurants. It’s as if a first-rate bistro with talented cooks had been transplanted intact from Gascony, the land of duck, foie gras, Armagnac and D’Artagnan. Best bet is to graze a long menu of small plates at moderate prices, things like spicy paté, foie gras flan, cassoulet, piperade, delicious chips fried in duck fat, veal sweetbreads in dense sauce, or smoked eel with horseradish cream. Best of the wine list is regional too, from Cahors, Madiran, Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh–assertive reds and lightly tangy whites, straightforward wines mostly under £30, suited to the hearty food.
Club Gascon, 57 West Smithfield, London EC1A 9DS. Tel: +44 (0)20 7796 0600.

Open Monday-Friday for lunch, Monday-Saturday for dinner
Nearest Tube: Barbican
Nearby Attractions: Barbican Centre

RACINE
Some of the most intriguing French cooking in London right now is by an estimable and well-traveled chef-patron named Henry Harris. He’s perfected a lively style of robustly flavoured provincial French food, with well-defined flavours that dovetail neatly. There are some good old ideas brought back from undeserved limbo, like tomatoes baked with basil and crème fraîche, or the spiced crab-butter sauce on a fillet of roast cod. A salad of smoked duck, green beans and tomatoes with anchovy dressing or a slab of roast skate with broad bean and caper relish, both perfectly done, are a good definition of eating well. The wine list doesn’t offer the same consistency. Of the 125 bins, half are international, well-chosen, good value, and match well with the food; the French side, oddly uneven, has at least a few winners, mostly from southern France. (Note: Harris is indeed well-traveled--he's done it again, selling his share and moving up to a position as a corporate executive chef. A recent lunch here, after the sale, was just fine; the foundation's still solid.)
Racine, 239 Brompton Road, London SW3. Tel: +44 (0)20 7584 4477.

Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner
Nearest Tube: South Kensington
Nearby Attractions: Victoria & Albert museum, Natural History Museum, Harrods

WEBSITES: Reservations are always a good idea, and these are also good previews: La Trouvaille at www.latrouvaille.co.uk, RSJ is at www.rsj.uk.com; Le Gavroche at www.le-gavroche.co.uk; Mirabelle at www.whitestarline.org.uk.

Next month: More good values from regional French restaurants

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