Brasserie Zédel

Anyone who, like me, was living in London in the 1990s will remember Atlantic Bar & Grill. Owned by the then-coolest cat in town, Oliver Peyton - the Russell Norman of his day, now better known for his role as a judge on Great British Menu - Atlantic, with its snappy bouncers and seemingly untraversable velvet rope, was for a time at least the place to see and be seen, if only you could get in.

It's rather poetic then that in its new incarnation as Brasserie Zédel, what was once London's most exclusive venue is now among its most democratic, offering all-day dining at extremely accessible prices to a staggering 240 covers at a time. Reservations are taken (fancy!) but a substantial proportion of tables are kept for walk-ins meaning that, unlike Atlantic, any and everyone is able to get in.

And get in they must if Rex Restaurant Associates, the Chris Corbin and Jeremy King-helmed investment vehicle behind Zédel  is to make back the fortune that must have been spent on the decor, one of London's most jaw-dropping rooms by a country mile. Shayne Brady, the impishly-handsome head designer at David Collins Studio has turned what was a dark and imposing subterranean space into a light, even dazzling room with acres of pink-hued marble, brass railings and real gold leaf on the capitals atop the room's mighty columns.

As for the pricing, much has been made of how cheap many dishes on Brasserie Zédel's all-French menu are - not least the soupe du jour at a no-it-can't-be £2.25 - but it's not necessarily a cheap restaurant; on my most recent visit, one of several since it opened, four of us clocked up a bill of about £40 a head once a couple of decent bottles of wine had been added to the mix. Rather, it is one offering value for money almost unheard of not just in London's West End but just about anywhere.

Starters start with that soup and peak at £7.75; particularly brilliant are the crème Dubarry - a thick cream of cauliflower soup - and the soupe de poissons at £4.75, almost as good as The Ivy's at two-thirds of the price. Salads, too, impress, particularly endive and roquefort which happily marries the bitterness of chicory to the saltiness of blue cheese.

Of the main courses, even the simplest steak haché - £7.50 on its own or available as part of the £8.75 for two courses or £11.25 for three prix-fixe - is noteworthy, using good beef and enlivened by a perky sauce au poivre. The vast choucroute Alsacienne, £11.75 and a meal in itself, is as delicious a mountain of pickled cabbage and pork as you'll ever find.  

Desserts continue the theme of being far better than one would expect for the price. I simply can't fault the ile flottante - £2.75! - and even the café gourmand with the prix-fixe is a generous serve, three mini pastries with a cafetiere of decent filter coffee. There's also all manner of ice-cream coupes, sorbets, tarts and cakes, all for under a fiver.

In a restaurant of this size, serving this many people, choreographing service is bound to be a challenge and to date my only real gripes with Brasserie Zédel have been around this. Firstly, wherever the kitchen is in this behemoth of a building, it is clearly too far from the dining room to ensure that food arrives piping hot; nothing I have eaten has been much hotter than tepid although it's tasted none the worse for that. 

Also, in the time it takes for plates to arrive at the tables, sauces can congeal; a quick whisk with a fork at the service station before presentation would help no end. Worst of all, on my most recent visit our main courses arrived before we had even finished our starters and rather than being taken away, they were served while one of our party raced under pressure to finish her soup, which is a serious no-no in my book. So it's not perfect, but it's still early days for Brasserie Zédel and with luck and a little more time these glitches should iron out. 

Everything else - the reasonably-priced wine list, the perfect classic cocktails being served in the beautiful Art Deco Bar Americain, the camp coral pink napkins one of which, mea culpa, found its way into my handbag - make this easily one of the most exciting new openings in London this year.

As I write, reservations have just opened for Corbin & King's next project, Cafe Colbert on Sloane Square; with its SW1 location and aristocratic landlord it is unlikely that it will be as democratic as Brasserie Zédel.  No matter; for here is a restaurant that in both pricing and geography is truly accessible to anyone - and not a velvet rope in sight.

Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, London W1F 7ED Tel: 020 7734 4888 http://www.brasseriezedel.com

 

 

 

Posted by +Hugh Wright

The Delaunay

From the reverence afforded in some quarters to restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, you'd think that they'd done far more for London's dining scene than open one successful restaurant - The Wolseley - in the past ten years. But up until late 2011, when The Delaunay opened on Aldwych, that was indeed the sum of their achievements, St Alban - an ill-fated attempt to replicate The Ivy, which they once owned - having lasted barely three years.

By the end of 2012 however, you'll barely be able to turn around in central London without finding yourself near a Corbin & King-owned restaurant, as in addition to The Wolseley and The Delaunay plans are already well underway for the openings of Brasserie Zedel off Piccadilly and Cafe Colbert on the former Oriel site on Sloane Square. With a hotel due to open in 2014, a chain, albeit a rather grand one, is being forged.

Unsurprisingly, for their first post-St Alban outing Corbin and King have chosen to stick to the same schtick as The Wolseley; The Delaunay, too, is 'an all-day cafe-restaurant in the grand European style'.  This means a large room given an opulent makeover by interiors legend David Collins to look like it's always been there - acres of marble and antiqued, rather than antique, mirrors abound - while the lengthy menu of brasserie staples is almost indistinguishable, in content and typography, from The Wolseley's.

If the overall effect is somewhat ersatz, it doesn't prevent The Delaunay from being an absolutely lovely place to be. I'd booked in for dinner with two friends and fellow Mitford sisters obsessives for the latest of our occasional 'fan club' outings, whereby we convene somewhere glamorous of which we think Nancy Mitford would have approved and read selected favourite passages from her and her sisters' writings to each other (sorry, but if you wanted someone who does butch things in his spare time you are reading completely the wrong blog). The Delaunay was a perfect choice; we couldn't have had a nicer time.

Having booked only a day before we were denied a table in the main dining room but were perfectly happy with our table in the adjacent Salon. While some diners seated here might consider it to be second-class accommodation compared to first next door, we certainly didn't feel at all hard done by and service couldn't have been better - friendly but nicely formal, presided over by general manager Sebastian Fogg, a man so dapper and cosmopolitan in his three-piece suit that I refuse to believe he isn't descended from Phileas.

Food was uniformly good; not at all exciting, but then grand European café food isn't meant to be. My starter of steak tartare was silky and well-spiced, although I missed being asked how spicy I like it or being offered condiments to tweak it to my taste, as usually happens elsewhere. The Client's liverwurst with pickled walnuts and toasted rye bread was an elegant Teutonic take on paté on toast.

For main courses, Karin and I ordered from the 'Wieners' section of the menu that offers a brace of five slightly different sausages, or your choice of any two, garnished with sauerkraut and potato salad for only about a tenner. I no longer remember which we had - I was too busy declaiming Deborah Devonshire to take notes - but I know that we very much enjoyed everything and remarked on what good value it was. The Client was similarly enthusiastic about his fish 'n' chips (naturally rather more grandly styled as 'goujons of plaice' and served with a dainty muslin-wrapped lemon half, but undeniably fish 'n' chips).

As is often the case, the best course was dessert. Pudding is a big deal at The Delaunay, with an entire third of the menu being dedicated to Desserts - ice cream, fruit salad, mousses - Patisserie from an alluring display and Coupes, wonderful ice cream sundaes. The Client chose the refreshing Seville, consisting of blood orange sorbet with orange compote, while I went for the boozy Highland - whisky and coffee ice creams, laced with ginger and topped with whipped cream. Both were delicious, retro and fun - words which pretty much sum up The Delaunay itself.

Pricing is reasonable; a couple of bottles of Gruner-Veltliner, after-dinner drinks and service pushed the bill up to about £40 each though you could easily get away with a main course and a glass of wine for around half that. The atmosphere is lively, The Delaunay's location on the edge of Theatreland ensuring  a steady flow of customers throughout the evening, with speculative walk-ins arriving even as we were leaving - clearly not put off by the very stern doorman whose unwelcoming stiffness was the only real duff note of the evening.

The Delaunay is very much a branch of The Wolseley - its name, like its sibling's, taken from a vintage car, as is [Brasserie] Zedel's - but if its deep-pocketed investors' backing is conditional on a manifesto of 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' no-one can blame them for that. Whether London's appetite for the format will be enough to sustain another (and another) in a similar mould remains to be seen but for now, The Delaunay looks guaranteed to give Messrs Corbin and King a long-awaited second success.

The Delaunay, 55 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BB Tel: 020 7499 8558 http://www.thedelaunay.com



 



Posted by +Hugh Wright