5 of my favourite French restaurants in London

For the past few years French food has been eclipsed by more fashionable Italian and Asian but there are still some great places to go if you want a taste of Paris without having to cross the Channel.

In no particular order:

Casse-croute - Bermondsey

I struggled to get into this tiny bistro when it first opened and even recently only managed to score a 6.30 reservation but if you’re a Francophile you’ll absolutely love this kitsch little dining room. Given the size of the operation the menu is sensibly short - 3 choices for each course - but you can also dip into the bar menu. Mains such as (a very good) bavette gratin sauce dauphinoise and pig’s cheek with sauce moutarde mash are also well priced at £14-£14.50: desserts like tarte tatin are just £4.50. A short list of simple French wines from small producers, available both by the glass and carafe completes the picture. (The menu changes every day - check the restaurant's Twitterstream @Cassecroute109 for updates.)

Brasserie Zédel - Piccadilly

A brilliant reincarnation of the classic Parisian brasserie by those ace restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King of The Wolseley fame. The food isn't totally consistent (though that's also true of Paris) but the prices are ridiculously good and the room is just dazzling. Amazingly given its central location (just off Piccadilly Circus) there’s an £8.95 prix fixe menu though I’d pick your own entrées myself. Carottes rapées (£2.95), Céleri Rémoulade (£3.25), Tarte aux Poireaux et Gruyère (£3.25), Oeufs durs mayonnaise (£3.75) - you wouldn’t do better on the Left Bank. There’s also a plat du jour for £12.95 and three different types of choucroute, the house speciality.

Racine - Knightsbridge

A great tribute to bourgeois French cooking by Francophile Henry Harris, this smart little Knightsbridge bistro is a long-term favourite. You’ll probably go for the well-priced prix-fixe lunch (£17.75 for two courses, £19.50 for three including, currently, Middle White pork rillettes, grilled Iberico pork with Morteau sausage and white beans and Poire Belle Hélène) but end up being tempted to stray onto the à la carte (grilled rabbit with mustard sauce and smoked bacon (£17.75), tête de veau, sauce ravigote (£17.75), braised lamb ‘à sept heures’ (£19.50) or, for a real splash-out, the Côte de boeuf (£78.50 for two), the ideal way to enjoy one of the best bottles on Harris’s excellent wine-list.

Le Gavroche - Mayfair

For classic old-style French dining and service to match there’s nowhere to beat Michel Roux’s family-run Le Gavroche. Prices are now so steep they don’t even put them on the website so stick to the three course ‘business lunch’ at £54.60 which sounds a lot but includes a half bottle of very decent wine (French, obviously). The menu changes regularly but the website currently shows dishes such as calamars sautés en persillade et risotto a l’encre de seiche, la piece de boeuf, grillée echalote et sauce au vin rouge and soufflé glacé aux noisettes. If you do stray onto the à la carte (don’t say I didn’t warn you) don’t miss the soufflé suissesse - a featherlight cheese soufflé with double cream.

Green Man, French Horn - St Martin’s Lane (Trafalgar Square)

One of a number of French-inspired restaurants and wine bars run in partnership with natural wine importeres Les Caves de Pyrène (others are Terroirs just round the corner, Brawn in Hackney and Soif in Battersea). GMFH theoretically serves food from the Loire region though many of the dishes, like andouillette, can be found elsewhere in France - if you're lucky, these days. The French influence is not slavish - many dishes like leek, crab, egg and horseradish (£9.75) and gurnard, monk’s beard and shellfish vinaigrette (£19) are given a modern twist. There’s a cheaper lunch and pre-theatre menu for £14.50 for 2 courses. Wine from £4 a glass though spend more and you’ll be rewarded.

Boulestin, St James’s Street: London’s latest French restaurant isn't quite there yet

You’d think London had enough in the way of new French restaurants lately but along comes Boulestin in another bid to seduce the city’s Francophiles. Does it succeed?

I have to admit I didn’t eat there in ideal circumstances, with the edge taken off my appetite by a caviar tasting (first world problems . . . ) but food wasn’t really the issue.

For a high profile opening - and a Thursday night - the room was strangely empty and lacking in atmosphere. We later spotted that there was a terrace outside where several diners had been eating on an unseasonally warm September night and a full private dining room downstairs. It’s still early days for the restaurant so maybe they didn’t take as many bookings as they might have done? Or maybe it’s just not a great site (at the bottom of St James’s Street) which could be more worrying for new owner Joel Kissin who formerly worked for Terence Conran and should therefore know his oignons.

He should also know how to train his staff. Our rather flappy and over-effusive waiter was clearly of the school that thought it strange for a couple of women to be dining on their own and therefore that we had to be incapable of choosing our wine. Which was ironic as he clearly didn’t know his own wine list, offering me a glass of St Chinin (sic) which was only available by the bottle rather than the (perfectly nice) Minervois ‘Cuvée Orlic’ above it which was listed by the glass.

Staff hovered to whisk away our plates the moment we’d set our cutlery down meaning we got through a three course meal in an hour and a quarter. Hardly relaxing.

That said, the food - or my food at least - was very good. Given the caviar episode we stuck to salads to start with: my nicely conceived artichoke salad with fennel, tomatoes and preserved lemon being way more interesting than my companion’s (the other Fiona) endive, French beans and Per Las blue cheese which was significantly short of beans.

They were frustratingly already out of the plat du jour - “chef ‘ad to send the rabbit back”, according to The Deeply Annoying Waiter but a huge hunk of dark sticky daube of beef* with mash and beautifully cooked carrots and turnips more than compensated (and was very good with the Minervois). Sorry the photograph's crap, I know. Taking pictures of braised meat in low light is never a good idea but I wanted to give you an idea of the size of it.

The other Fiona had grilled wild seabass with fennel which she thought was marginally overcooked but, being more conservative about my fish, I thought was fine.

I also fared better with my dessert, a fabulously wobbly Sauternes custard with the consistency of a crème brûlée, served with Agen prunes in armagnac. In normal (non-caviar) circumstances I’d have ordered a glass of Sauternes at a pretty reasonable £10.85 to go with that. Fi’s rather solid lemon cheesecake, an odd inclusion on a menu that also featured lemon tart, was less impressive.

There were some other appealing dishes on the menu, especially the game (wild pigeon, girolles, lardons and kale would certainly ring my bell) but if you’re not careful it would be easy to rack up a significant bill - unless you go for the well priced pre- or post-theatre prix fixe at £19.50 for 2 courses which happily includes the daube.

The main problem for Boulestin though is that there’s a lot of competition if you feel like a French meal at this level including Brasserie Chavot just off Bond Street which has just picked up a Michelin star. Despite the quality of the cooking it doesn’t have enough going for it as a restaurant experience to make me want to go back. Except possibly for that custard . . .

Boulestin is at 5 St James's Street, London SW1A 1EF. Tel: 020 7930 2030. There is also an all-day café in the front of the restaurant, Café Marcel.

London's leading critics seem divided on the restaurant. Read Jay Rayner of the Observer's review here and Nick Lander of the FT's here.

I ate at Boulestin as a guest of the restaurant.

Les Grès, Lindry - a breath of fresh air in Burgundy

Burgundian restaurants are some of the most traditional in France but Jérôme Bigot’s charming, original Les Grès wouldn’t disgrace Paris’s fashionable 10th arrondissement.

It’s in the depths of the country in a tiny village outside Auxerre* yet managed to pick up an award for best ‘bistrodidacte’ this year from the influential restaurant guide Le Fooding

The evening menu - no choice 7 course tasting menu - ticks all the contemporary boxes - local sourcing, smoking and pickling (there are, unusually for France, well-thumbed copies of the Noma, Faviken and Mugaritz cookbooks on the bar)

While we were waiting for the meal to begin they brought a pretty-as-a-picture amuse of pickled vegetables, fruits (including the local Yonne cherries) and (surprisingly delicious) pickled elderflowers. The chef used to be an painter and it shows.

There was a superb dish of incredibly tender squid and mealy fresh coco beans in a natural, sweet tomato broth, a cumin-spiked sardine with a bold slash of smoky aubergine purée and a perfectly cooked piece of rare duck (sous-vided, I’m sure) served with pickled cucumber and mushrooms about which my husband raved. And he doesn’t like his duck rare.

Then a fantastic dish of bavette with miso and a smoked red onion purée, a startling combination of almost raw meat, smoke and umami. The cheese dish too was brilliant - a scoop of ivory-white fromage blanc floating in an emerald green soup of basil and coriander topped with oregano flowers.

Inevitably with food this experimental a couple of the dishes didn't come off. Snails, in my view, need a more robust accompaniment than cucumber and capucines (nasturtiums) and a dessert of finely sliced peaches, apricots, confited black olives and chibouste had a bit too much going on but then I can remember eating dishes that didn't work at El Bulli.

Two other things might put you off. They obviously like to serve everyone at the same time so if you arrive early, as we did having skipped lunch, you may find yourself waiting for a good three quarters of an hour for the first course to arrive.

And the short, carefully chosen wine list, which has been put together by Jerome’s wife Marie Hélène according to this blogpost, is made up of natural wines - but that’s a plus in our book. And no, that doesn’t mean they’re all ‘cidery’ or funky - there’s plenty to please more conventional palates including Thomas Pico’s pristine Domaine Pattes Loup Chablis ‘Vent d’ange’ which we tasted at the domaine the following day and the bottle we ordered, Fanny Sabre’s fresh, elegant Bourgogne Passetoutgrains, which suited the food very well.

You can also opt for the ‘menu carafe’ which has four well-chosen matching wines but which adds another 30€ each to the bill.

You wonder at first how they can survive in such a remote spot but they’re well within reach for Paris weekenders and holidaymakers a large party of whom were in the restaurant with their very sweet, well-behaved kids, all tucking into this crazy colourful food.

If you’re after traditional Burgundian cuisine, Les Grès won’t be for you but we loved it. One of the best meals of the year.

Our meal cost 49€ for 7 courses plus 25€ for wine. There's a lunchtime option of 29€ for 4 courses though it's closed on Mondays. It’s a small restaurant so you’ll need to book, especially at weekends.

Restaurant Les Grès, 9, rue du 14-Juillet, Lindry (89240 ) Tel: +33 9 52 31 64 10

* yet just off the A6 motorway

Bistro d'Alex, Florensac - a real find in an unlikely location

On a return visit this week to Bistro d'Alex in Florensac I found it just as good as it was when the review below was written five years ago - and the set menu, now 18€ (£15.50) for two courses, only 3€ more expensive.

We have actually been a couple of times in the interim - and been unable to go even more often than that. It's always packed, especially at weekends, so it's essential to book.

The menu is a little longer and more ambitious with a number of dishes that attract a supplement including the inevitable foie gras and a lobster lasagne but we stuck to the basic menu: a nice riff on pissaladière with marinated sardines, a pokey potato salad with jarret de porc and plenty of mustard (obviously using up leftovers), roast pork belly and rosemary potatoes, onglet with a strange but rather delicious creamy pasta 'risotto' and a fig tart (below) which we shared.

Wines which come from the co-op which rents out the space are still a ridiculous 2€ a glass. Total damage 42€ for two. Still one of the best places to eat in this part of the Languedoc, I reckon.

My review of February 8th, 2008:

Le Bistro d’Alex sounds like a smart Parisien neighbourhood restaurant. In fact it’s anything but. It’s a clever and ambitious initiative by the cave co-operative at Florensac down on the Languedoc coast.

Co-operatives are the traditional way of selling wine in the area. Owned by the local growers they would vinify the grapes and sell wine in bulk. Derided for their poor quality wine they’ve been getting their act together over recent years bottling their wines instead of selling them in plastic ‘cubis’ and even producing the odd prestige cuve. But the Florensac co-op has gone one stage further and opened a restaurant next door to a very large showy tasting room and shop, a complex they’ve dubbed Vinipolis.

We turned up on spec and were nearly turned away until I reassured them that we would wait for a table. The place was heaving. A local winemaker who was hosting the tasting room for the morning offered to take us through a few bottles. (This was standard treatment - he had no idea I was a wine writer).

The wines we tasted - 5 whites - were simple and clean. Decent everyday quaffing but there’s a time and place for that. The sauvignon in particular, a ridiculous 3.99€ (£2.97/$5.78) a bottle was a real bargain.

The food though was something else. We each had six fabulously fresh oysters from the nearby Etang de Thau (a very good match with the Sauvignon) then I had a deliciously savoury hunk of veal that had been roasted on the rotisserie served with a creamy wild mushroom risotto. With it I drank a perfectly decent glass of Merlot that cost - wait for it - just 2€ (£1.49/$2.90) for a 175ml glass. My husband had an exemplary tuna a la plancha with fried aubergine chips. Our menus cost just 15€ (£11.18/$21.74) a head.

Although the space itself is quite utilitarian it’s been stylishly decorated and the tables are set with good quality glasses and cutlery.The eponymous ‘Alex’ - chef Alexandre Fabre - used to work for a one-starred restaurant called Léonce (now closed) in Florensac, which accounts for the quality of the cooking and presentation. If you’re in the area it’s a real find. But make sure you book ahead.

Le Bistrot d’Alex, 5 avenue des Vendanges, 34510 Florensac Tel: 04 67 77 03 05

(NB At the time of writing there were no signs to the restaurant in the town. If your sat nav lets you down follow the signs to the Cave Co-operative)