As noon approached, the bells of the nearby St Anne’s church began to peal. The sun shone and even the streets of Soho took on a charming demeanour.
As I walked into The French House – pub on the ground floor, restaurant above – my lunch guest, Vernon Mascarenhas, was deep in conversation with the chef Neil Borthwick about an upcoming tuna-fishing expedition the latter was going on shortly from Brixham Harbour (sadly, I subsequently learned, without catching any). We chatted before saying goodbye to Borthwick and carried on up the stairs.
Which brings me to my first caveat: these stairs are steep and narrow, so be prepared – although the many photos and pictures on the walls will distract you as you make your way upstairs. The kitchen, which is on the floor above the restaurant, must be manned by a fit brigade. There are no more than three, including one kitchen porter, as Mascarenhas explained. ‘When I began thirty years ago I used to supply this restaurant with vegetables. The only way to comfortably carry a sack of potatoes is over one’s shoulder. But the stairs and the turn here are too narrow so that the only way to carry them up to this particular kitchen is on your front, like a pillow, which is awkward and painful. And after the third sack, I was knackered.’
We finally got to the restaurant and my second caveat: it is tiny if perfectly formed. The sunlight was streaming in through the five windows. The walls are crowded with predominantly black-and-white photos, including one of de Gaulle, and facing me was a bright red poster for Bières Meteor in Alsace. In the far left-hand corner is a bar crowded with an espresso machine, scores of wine bottles stored horizontally, a blackboard with that day’s specials handwritten on it, and numerous bottles of spirits on the right-hand corner. Just by them was a vase of orange calendulas.
All this was highlighted by the white tablecloths and napkins on every table. Vitally necessary for acoustics in such a small dining room, these are also a welcome sign of continuity and history. This restaurant was first opened by Fergus Henderson and his wife Margot in 1992 and, after Henderson had left to open St John in 1994, his distinctive style of cooking was carried on by Margot with Anna Hansen as head chef (an old 1990s menu used to hang in our kitchen with one dessert being listed simply and bravely as ‘a bowl of cherries’). Borthwick took over the kitchens in 2018.
Continuity and history are also provided by Borthwick’s landlady, Lesley Lewis, who is only the fourth landlady in the pub’s history. It was opened by a German couple in 1891 as the York Minster pub. They passed ownership to Victor Berlemont in 1914 and in 1984 the pub changed its name to The French House after fire destroyed the original Minster in the city of York. Its French nature, emphasised in 1914, was cemented during the Second World War when de Gaulle’s speech rallying the French people, À tous les Français, is said to have been written here. Berlemont’s son Gaston, who took over from his father after the war, ran the place until 1989, when Lewis took over as the licensee.
Lewis and Borthwick form a unique and compelling partnership, with her warmth felt predominantly in the artwork that covers the many walls of all floors of the establishment while to Borthwick falls the responsibility of writing the daily-changing menu and maintaining quality in the restaurant. But while Lewis has said that ‘a pub is nothing without its customers’, Borthwick is a little more hardline. ‘My customers would really like to eat nothing other than steak and frites, but there are plenty of lovely alternatives.’
Our menu revealed them. I could not quite believe it when, on such a sunny day, I saw that the first special of the day was an ajo blanco, one of my favourite starters. This is a soup (hurrah!) from Andalucia in southern Spain that is reputedly the forerunner of gazpacho – ie it existed before the introduction of tomatoes from the Americas. The creamy, traditional mixture of ground almonds, garlic, stale bread and olive oil was accentuated by the addition of cockles which had arrived that morning and which had cleverly been added by Borthwick’s sous chef, Paul Sheehy, and which added extra salinity. With this my guest enjoyed a vast tranche of ham hock, ox tongue and parsley terrine, its size owed to the fact that when it was being made the correct-size moulds could not be found.
Both our main courses proved highly suitable for the side order of excellent pommes purée: Mascarenhas’s cuttlefish braised in ink (and these were cuttlefish as opposed to squid) and fennel and my excellent fillets of John Dory. These were served in a bowl of white wine sauce, heavily enriched with diced shallots and cream and enlivened with lemongrass. We finished by sharing a Pump Street chocolate-and-rum mousse that was modern in the quality of the chocolate used but timeless in its generosity. (The bill of £153 included a couple of glasses of Hugel Riesling 2023 from an entirely French wine list but no coffee.)
It was now 1.40 pm and the restaurant was packed. As though to emphasise quite how small it is, at a table of two that had become a table for three, the extra chair contrived to block our exit. But we finally made it down the stairs.
Back down at the bar I managed a chat with Borthwick (above). Born in Edinburgh, he has an impressive CV that includes stints cooking at Michel Bras’s acclaimed restaurant in south-west France (‘the most exciting restaurant I have worked in’, according to Borthwick) and London’s Connaught Hotel for four years where he first learned of the happy combination of fish stock and lemongrass. But my first question to him was related to something we share.
This is our membership of the Denis Thatcher Club, set up by an old friend (sadly deceased) who, like Borthwick and me, was married to a woman far better known than her husband. He was married to a well-known fashion designer while Borthwick is happily married to chef and media personality Angela Hartnett. We agreed on the enormous pleasure it gave us both, that neither of us could envisage a present or a future without our successful partners, and in his particular case he agreed with me when I said that it was fortunate for them both that Hartnett’s speciality has been Italian cooking while his has been, for the past 25 years, the cooking of France.
I had warmed to Borthwick even before this meal when I read his answer to a question about shortcuts in cooking which was, ‘I don’t do shortcuts – it takes the same amount of time to do something properly as to do something badly’.
And after our 15-minute conversation I realised that he had spoken about several individuals other than himself. One was his editor at Fourth Estate on his forthcoming cookbook, provisionally entitled A Soho State of Mind. He was obviously pleased that her red-inked comments on his copy were decreasing in number. He also spoke of his happy working relationship with his landlady and her respect for tradition as the pub continues its long practice of serving beer only in half-pints (except on 1 April), and of how he continues to be excited by working alongside his brigade. ‘Oh’, he added, ‘and there’s the pleasure of cooking for Angela and her mother.’
This brings me to my final caveat: because of Borthwick’s assured cooking and the restaurant’s paucity of seats, obtaining a table at The French House is never easy.
The French House 49 Dean Street, London W1D 5BG; tel: +44 (0)207 437 2477. Restaurant closed Sunday.
Every Sunday, Nick writes about restaurants. To stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
