Steak frites, gougères, frogs’ legs and choux buns: French food is back on the menu in Britain.
This year a new crop of brasseries and bistros have revived the national love affair with our neighbour’s cuisine, after a period when we viewed it as overly fussy and a bit stale. A back-to-basics approach, but with a touch of modern flair, has reinvigorated it for us.
On the one hand, there are inventive dishes such as beef tartare with prawn crackers and Thai basil. On the other, well-loved classics such as poulet rôti and oeuf en gelée are firmly back.
The trend has been spearheaded by London restaurants such as Maison François, Ploussard, 64 Goodge Street, Bistro Freddie, Josephine Bouchon, Marceline and Bouchon Racine, as well as new openings across the country such as Bavette in Leeds, Climat in Manchester, Juliet’s in Stroud and Bistro Coco and the Little Chartroom in Edinburgh. The result is that 2024 is the year we fell for French food all over again.
A back-to-basics take on French food has reignited our passion for the cuisine
CAMERA PRESS/MADAME FIGARO/MARCUS PUMMER
And it’s not just the restaurant scene that’s gone all oh là là — we’re eating more Gallic fare at home too. Searches on waitrose.com for “French recipes” are up 267 per cent compared with the past three months, with dishes such as French onion soup, boeuf bourguignon, tarte tatin and “the best potato dauphinoise” among the favourites. Meanwhile, compared with last year, sales of French salted butter, pain au chocolat, pâté de campagne, saucisson sec and regional French wines are all up at the supermarket.
So what’s behind the new French revolution? Chris Laidler, founder of Climat, describes its cooking as “Parisian expat food” and says the new wave of French restaurants are less pretentious. “We’ve seen the death of the haute cuisine, fine dining French and in its place has come a more rustic home-cooking style. I think people are over the idea of paying £600 for a gimmicky, stop-start meal where they still leave hungry. Personally I’ve never been impressed by food that requires tweezers to assemble or chopping up radishes into perfect matchstick-sized pieces and stacking them like a Jenga tower on top of something else. These days people want robust, wholesome styles of food, not very stingy ones.”
Dishes that have been selling particularly well at Laidler’s restaurant are gougères (a meltingly light cheesy puff) and warming lentil stews with perfectly cooked ducks’ legs.
Searches for “French recipes” on waitrose.com have surged, with French onion soup a favourite
ALAMY
“Creamy sauces are definitely back,” Laidler says. “There’s a whole new sense of abandon. When people don’t have as much money they gain a lot more pleasure from eating. They want to be fed and well, and French food offers that.”
The Waitrose Food and Drink Report, which summed up the trends for 2024, concluded the same thing: “This is partly down to what’s known as the ‘lipstick effect’. Even in economic downturns, most purse strings can stretch to affordable treats such as lipsticks and lip-smacking pastries. This has not been confined to croissants — sales of choux buns, eclairs and other sweet, indulgent pâtisserie have been soaring at Waitrose. It’s against this backdrop, and a general hankering for comfort in a turbulent world, that there’s been a resurgence of interest in all things French — the creamier and more buttery, the better.”
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One item that’s been particularly in the spotlight is the classic dessert crème brûlée, a concept that has been extended. As the Waitrose report put it: “Everything from doughnuts to savoury dips are being crème brûléed thanks to bakeries such as Bread Ahead, which brûléed a doughnut this year, and restaurants including the Barbary, which launched in Notting Hill with brûlée of pepper and feta.”
If feta is being brûléed then you know that the French trend is peaking but Francois O’Neill, co-founder of Maison François and its sister restaurant Café François, says French food never really left us.
Maison Francois in St James’s, London
“It’s part of our DNA and has been an anchoring force in the London restaurant scene for many, many years,” he says. “You only have to look at institutional places like La Poule au Pot in Pimlico or Le Colombier in Chelsea to see that there are some real long-term places that haven’t changed to this day. There was a short fling with modern British cuisine but it was just a take on classic French anyway and, before too long, we welcomed la cuisine Française back into the marital bed. We have been happy ever since. All the things we love in abundance: butter, salt, vinegar and cream.”
O’Neill’s menu leans into tradition while incorporating touches of playfulness. “We could have gone off-piste with our menu but we didn’t, we doubled down with dishes like pâté en croute, Paris-Brest, oeuf en gelée as well as the simplicity of great grilled fish, roasted chicken and steak frites. But we like to add a modern touch too. Take our flatbreads, for example. We have a moules marinière one which is essentially that amazing bit of the mussel dish where you get to the end and you have all the juices at the bottom and you’ve got the butter and the shallots and the mussels and you put it all onto one bit of bread.”
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A large section of the menu is also dedicated to vegetables, giving them pride of place rather than relegating them to dutiful afterthought. There are dishes such as cabbage, anchoïade, breadcrumbs and chilli, winter leaves, fennel, almonds and citrus, and beetroots, citrus, samphire and almonds. Perhaps this has contributed to a renewed love for French food — it feels more varied, accessible and interesting. “I think it appeals to the modern palate,” O’Neill says. “People’s diets are changing and the way we eat has changed and we’ve adapted towards that.”
For O’Neill, who is half French, the country’s food has been a lifelong love. “My mother’s French and my dad had French restaurants and a delicatessen which was very successful, so I grew up around French food. My summers were always in France. We’d drive to my granny’s on the west coast and spend a month there. I remember the food markets and the quality of the produce, and I remember eating moules and steak frites in restaurants because my father loved to go to restaurants, and just things like bread and butter — that beautiful baguette and cold butter. It’s these kinds of flavours I still get excited about.”
Luckily you don’t have to go to France to experience this kind of culinary delight now because it’s all on our doorstep. In fact, Laidler goes one step further. “I’ll probably get shot for this but I think that restaurants in the UK are churning out better French food than you get in restaurants in France. The execution, especially in London, is just so good.”
Vive la révolution, I say.