........Trump Card of Rib of Beef!.... the menu reads like a Francophiles wish list........
More ‘Allo Allo’ than Parisian chic, this friendly all-day restaurant and bar is a favourite with the Clapham crowd. Mirrors, soft lighting and French memorabilia set the tone, but the food is not a cliché. Michel Roux Jnr brought in chef Eric Landeau, who has given the menu an extra edge. Try moules marinieres or chicken fricassee with mushrooms. The piece de resistance is the cote de boeuf for two, served on a wooden platter."
"Apparently the French are drinking half as much red wine as they used to, they eschew berets and the last Gauloise factory on French soil recently closed. Francophiles can rejoice though, as some traditions are being furiously protected in a little corner of Clapham. The indomitable Gauls of Le Bouchon-meaning ‘the cork’-have succeeded in recreating an authentic French dining experience on Battersea Rise (aided considerably by the involvement of Michel Roux Jnr), complete with ‘Allo’ Allo staff and French road signs on the walls. The wine list, assembled by charming sommelier Frederick, favours the big hitters of Bordeaux and the Loire, with only a passing nod to ‘vins étrangers’, and the food couldn’t be more French if it arrived at your table on a bike with a string of onions around its neck. All in all the experience is an object lesson in the joys of classic French cuisine, and for the most part that joy consists of huge chunks of beef, cooked to pink-centred perfection and carved up on wooden board a table. Additional theatrics include the chef bellowing ‘Chateaubriand!’ to waiters, like some MC dramatically announcing the arrival of a debutante to a roomful of salivating suitors. It’s not all meat though, Brittany oysters were delightfully huge and pan-fried cod was cooked to perfection and paired with a wonderful garlicky rich, black ink risotto bearing a cameo of squid sautéed in parsley butter. Crème brulée was, as expected, exemplary. Our unfinished plates were more a case of Mr Creosore (even a water-thin mint would burst the belts), than any comment on the formidable French food. Parents of young children will appreciate the weekend crèche and in nappy valley one assumes you should arrive early to make the most of it. "
After a stroll on the common it is well worthwhile popping into Le Bouchon Bordelais for lunch or dinner.
This gem of a French brasserie has been around for quite a while. I used to drop in with friends in the wine trade for a glass or two and perhaps a croque monsieur.
Today is seems to have expanded somewhat like my waistline, now there is a brasserie, a bar and the restaurant. All look quite French, certainly French enough to an inhabitant of that country to feel at home.
The wine list is very good with some wonderful surprises hard to find in London like Picpoul de Pinet. I have never found this delicious and inexpensive white wine in the UK before. It is my favourite Sunday lunch tipple to wash down my oysters. Each Sunday I buy a dozen in the market for 3.50 Euros and a bottle of the aforesaid wine for a similar price. ‘Tis no wonder that we who were born in the UK rush off to France at any slight excuse.
But you can save your airfare, your taxi to the airport, the hassle of security and all the other things which annoy the hell out of me when I am traveling; just pop into Le Bouchon Bordelais and you are in France.
Moules by the score, snails, chateaubriands and specials or as they say in France plats des jour. The day I had lunch with the lovely Diana the offering was baby lobsters. Dash it, temptation rules KO.
The chateaubriand for two costs £34. A place just across the river charges £60.
Ah! London you are an expensive damsel.
On the 14th July there was a special menu at £25; foie gras, rougets, cheese and pud. That was washed down with gallons of Beaujolais Villages, more Picpoul, a very nice white from Daumas Gassac plus? Sadly the other wines escape me for the moment.
Recently Michel Roux Jnr. has got involved at Le Bouchon Bordelais. He has introduced Eric Landeau, his ex-head chef from Le Gavroche. If I could find a horse to bet on with this pedigree I would be a very rich man. Ian Stoppani, the owner must be delighted as he is the man who has his bet on.
Good luck to Ian, Michel and Eric, you, as a punter need no luck, you will enjoy.
Thank you Diana for taking me back to old pastures.
This gem of a French brasserie has been around for quite a while. I used to drop in with friends in the wine trade for a glass or two and perhaps a croque monsieur.
Today is seems to have expanded somewhat like my waistline, now there is a brasserie, a bar and the restaurant. All look quite French, certainly French enough to an inhabitant of that country to feel at home.
The wine list is very good with some wonderful surprises hard to find in London like Picpoul de Pinet. I have never found this delicious and inexpensive white wine in the UK before. It is my favourite Sunday lunch tipple to wash down my oysters. Each Sunday I buy a dozen in the market for 3.50 Euros and a bottle of the aforesaid wine for a similar price. ‘Tis no wonder that we who were born in the UK rush off to France at any slight excuse.
But you can save your airfare, your taxi to the airport, the hassle of security and all the other things which annoy the hell out of me when I am traveling; just pop into Le Bouchon Bordelais and you are in France.
Moules by the score, snails, chateaubriands and specials or as they say in France plats des jour. The day I had lunch with the lovely Diana the offering was baby lobsters. Dash it, temptation rules KO.
The chateaubriand for two costs £34. A place just across the river charges £60.
Ah! London you are an expensive damsel.
On the 14th July there was a special menu at £25; foie gras, rougets, cheese and pud. That was washed down with gallons of Beaujolais Villages, more Picpoul, a very nice white from Daumas Gassac plus? Sadly the other wines escape me for the moment.
Recently Michel Roux Jnr. has got involved at Le Bouchon Bordelais. He has introduced Eric Landeau, his ex-head chef from Le Gavroche. If I could find a horse to bet on with this pedigree I would be a very rich man. Ian Stoppani, the owner must be delighted as he is the man who has his bet on.
Good luck to Ian, Michel and Eric, you, as a punter need no luck, you will enjoy.
Thank you Diana for taking me back to old pastures.
Nothing steals the thunder of traditional French cooking-especially when a master is on board. Jay Rayner hails a revitalized south London brasserie.
Le Bouchon Bordelais, 5-9 Battersea Rise, London SW11(020 7738 0307). Meal for two including wine and service, £80.
Snails in garlic butter. Steak frites. Profiteroles. Let me repeat: smailsbaked in garlicky butter, the shells crusted with chopped parsley; steak cooked au point, seared without, purple within, chips and luscious bearnaise on the side; profiteroles of the lightest choux pastry, filled with a vanilla ice cream rich enough to invite the sanction of law. Just the sound of those dishes makes me feel warm in all the right places. I’m almost moved to make like Julie Andrews and give you a few choruses of ‘My favourite Things’, but it might frighten the children.
This is the problem, and the obscenity, of the job that I do: it cultures gastronomic ennui, much as babies culture colds. Yes, I have been thrilled by the promise of millefeuille of duck gizzard with chorizo-spiked puy lentils, say, or fillet of sea bass with oyster caramel dressing, pan-fried fiddleheads and shiitake mushrooms. Salt and pepper quail? Yes please. Crispy pig’s spleen? Bring it on.
But, inevitably, there comes a time when I crave the basics. It might be less than politically correct to say this, perhaps even grossly Eurocentric, but in the restaurant game first position is the French bistro. Everything else derives from there. (No really: according to Rebecca Spang’s scholarly study The invention of the Restaurant, the very first was opened in Paris by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau in 1766.)
Le Bouchon Bordelais in Battersea is a good French bistro, or at least, it is now. It hasn’t always been this way. For a long while the food at this bar and restaurant and at its nearby sister, Le Bouchon Lyonnaise, was as ersatz as the nicotine-stained paint on the walls. The menus read right but they didn’t always eat right.
Recently, though, something wonderful happened. Le Bouchon Bordelais acquired a new partner in the business, Micheal Roux, chef-patron of Le Gavroche in London’s Mayfair. The Roux name is about as good as it gets in matters of British French restaurants. It’s like getting Wayne Rooney in to player-manage a bunch of Conference wannabes. Le Gavroche, opened in the Sixties by Michel’s father and uncle, is as classy an operation as you can hope to find in Britain, making a virtue of the essentials done properly.
Michel Roux Jnr has brought the same sensibility (though neither the complexity nor the prices) to bear on what is, essentially, a suburban operation. One of this former head chefs, Eric Landeau, is at the stove. Now the menu both reads right and eats right. I don’t need to tell you what I had because it is there in the first line and it was as lovely as it sounds. The chips could have spent another 30 seconds in the fat, but I will forgive them this for the completely reliable execution of everything else.
My wife had a starter of scallops in a light wine-based sauce, in an open puff-pastry case baked with care and precision, then leg of lamb with green beans and dauphinois potatoes, and a plate of perfectly kept cheeses to finish. The meat was of the very highest quality and the pricing fair: £5-8 for starters, £12-15 for all main courses, save for the Chateaubriand and cote de boeuf at £34 each for two, which passed by on their carving boards, shyly surrendering the pink. My appetite for braised squirrel and crispy pig’s spleen will come back, but for now, steak and chips does it for me.
Le Bouchon Bordelais, 5-9 Battersea Rise, London SW11(020 7738 0307). Meal for two including wine and service, £80.
Snails in garlic butter. Steak frites. Profiteroles. Let me repeat: smailsbaked in garlicky butter, the shells crusted with chopped parsley; steak cooked au point, seared without, purple within, chips and luscious bearnaise on the side; profiteroles of the lightest choux pastry, filled with a vanilla ice cream rich enough to invite the sanction of law. Just the sound of those dishes makes me feel warm in all the right places. I’m almost moved to make like Julie Andrews and give you a few choruses of ‘My favourite Things’, but it might frighten the children.
This is the problem, and the obscenity, of the job that I do: it cultures gastronomic ennui, much as babies culture colds. Yes, I have been thrilled by the promise of millefeuille of duck gizzard with chorizo-spiked puy lentils, say, or fillet of sea bass with oyster caramel dressing, pan-fried fiddleheads and shiitake mushrooms. Salt and pepper quail? Yes please. Crispy pig’s spleen? Bring it on.
But, inevitably, there comes a time when I crave the basics. It might be less than politically correct to say this, perhaps even grossly Eurocentric, but in the restaurant game first position is the French bistro. Everything else derives from there. (No really: according to Rebecca Spang’s scholarly study The invention of the Restaurant, the very first was opened in Paris by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau in 1766.)
Le Bouchon Bordelais in Battersea is a good French bistro, or at least, it is now. It hasn’t always been this way. For a long while the food at this bar and restaurant and at its nearby sister, Le Bouchon Lyonnaise, was as ersatz as the nicotine-stained paint on the walls. The menus read right but they didn’t always eat right.
Recently, though, something wonderful happened. Le Bouchon Bordelais acquired a new partner in the business, Micheal Roux, chef-patron of Le Gavroche in London’s Mayfair. The Roux name is about as good as it gets in matters of British French restaurants. It’s like getting Wayne Rooney in to player-manage a bunch of Conference wannabes. Le Gavroche, opened in the Sixties by Michel’s father and uncle, is as classy an operation as you can hope to find in Britain, making a virtue of the essentials done properly.
Michel Roux Jnr has brought the same sensibility (though neither the complexity nor the prices) to bear on what is, essentially, a suburban operation. One of this former head chefs, Eric Landeau, is at the stove. Now the menu both reads right and eats right. I don’t need to tell you what I had because it is there in the first line and it was as lovely as it sounds. The chips could have spent another 30 seconds in the fat, but I will forgive them this for the completely reliable execution of everything else.
My wife had a starter of scallops in a light wine-based sauce, in an open puff-pastry case baked with care and precision, then leg of lamb with green beans and dauphinois potatoes, and a plate of perfectly kept cheeses to finish. The meat was of the very highest quality and the pricing fair: £5-8 for starters, £12-15 for all main courses, save for the Chateaubriand and cote de boeuf at £34 each for two, which passed by on their carving boards, shyly surrendering the pink. My appetite for braised squirrel and crispy pig’s spleen will come back, but for now, steak and chips does it for me.
If there are too many children on the scene, S. freaks out by that, of course, I mean too many children in the restaurant. It’s a reaction unique to the kind of spoilt, childless, middle-aged Englishman who just wants to have his Sunday lunch in peace and maybe even a nice nap afterwards. So S. hesitates at the door of Le Bouchon Bordelais, a stricken look upon his face. To his left, a poppet stuffs fries into her mouth with a chubby fist. To his right, two scrubbed little boys swing their feet under the table, forks expectantly clasped in their hands. In front, waiters swish around with wooden platters of roasted chickens, trailing an aroma of golden, herby succulence behind them.
With his beady eye on a thicket of empty pushchairs, S. asks the maitre de’: ‘Do you have crenche for customers?’
‘Yes, sir, but I’m afraid it’s only for the children’ he replies, somehow managing to keep a straight face.
S. still isn’t sure. Oh, for God’s sake. After some gentle persuasion- my foot planted in the small of his back, then leg extended like a piston- we burst into the restaurant and he gingerly selects a table as far away from ‘those little squashy things’ as possible. As we get settled, a waiter hands him a wine list that, the owner claims, offers some of the best-priced cru classe wines in London. Studying this keeps him happy and occupied for quite some time. Phew! Now can we please get on with lunch?
Le Bouchon Bordelais and its sister restaurant, Le Bouchon Lyonnais, have been popular with London-based French and local Francophiles since they opened in the late 1980s. Lyonnais was the slightly posher of the two, while it’s standing room only in the television bar at Bordelais for any Anglo-French sporting event.
Neither was ever known for the excellence of its cuisine and, in truth, both restaurants are now slightly battered around the edges, with décor that reflects that exact moment in British life when we thought that to be French meant cigarette posters, framed Richard advertisements, thickly varnished woods, burgundy paint and ceilings stained with a faux-vieux ochre wash. Bordelais is divided into three sections decorated in variations of this theme: the brasserie where you can pop in for a croquet monsieur and a beer; the aforementioned bar; and the restaurant itself, where we are today.
So, from both outside and inside, it looks like any other neighbourhood French restaurant, but – and it is a very big but - the recent involvement of Le Gavroche’s Michel Roux Jnr means that Le Bouchon Bordelais is not quite what it seems, Roux, noted as one of the most talented chefs in the country, has installed his ex-Le Gavroche head chef Eric Landeau, in the kitchen here and also tweaked Le Bouchons’s menu. Why has he done this? Perhaps he is planning to lauch a chain of French restaurants of his own? No, says the restaurant. Roux has done it simply because he is a great friend of Les Bouchon Bordelais’s owner, Ian Stoppani.
The result of this fraternal largesse is a menu studded with robust French classics, the kind of standard dishes that never go out of fashion because everyone just loves them. So we have fish terrine, oysters, snails with garlic and parsley butter, moules marinieres, scallops in puff pastry, tournedos Rossini, steak frites, roast rack of lamb with saure potatoes and a clutch of green beans wrapped in bacon, grilled salmon with rosemary sauce, and whole roast chickens to share.
We begin with a ballotine of foie gras fabulous goose not everyday duck, generously served, a little overcooked, but good-and a so-so cheese salad with the plus of mache nicely dressed with nutty oil, but the minus of hurried clumps of Parmesan hefted on top. A sweet little toasted goat’s cheese salad-not on the menu-is what I am longing for here.
With his beady eye on a thicket of empty pushchairs, S. asks the maitre de’: ‘Do you have crenche for customers?’
‘Yes, sir, but I’m afraid it’s only for the children’ he replies, somehow managing to keep a straight face.
S. still isn’t sure. Oh, for God’s sake. After some gentle persuasion- my foot planted in the small of his back, then leg extended like a piston- we burst into the restaurant and he gingerly selects a table as far away from ‘those little squashy things’ as possible. As we get settled, a waiter hands him a wine list that, the owner claims, offers some of the best-priced cru classe wines in London. Studying this keeps him happy and occupied for quite some time. Phew! Now can we please get on with lunch?
Le Bouchon Bordelais and its sister restaurant, Le Bouchon Lyonnais, have been popular with London-based French and local Francophiles since they opened in the late 1980s. Lyonnais was the slightly posher of the two, while it’s standing room only in the television bar at Bordelais for any Anglo-French sporting event.
Neither was ever known for the excellence of its cuisine and, in truth, both restaurants are now slightly battered around the edges, with décor that reflects that exact moment in British life when we thought that to be French meant cigarette posters, framed Richard advertisements, thickly varnished woods, burgundy paint and ceilings stained with a faux-vieux ochre wash. Bordelais is divided into three sections decorated in variations of this theme: the brasserie where you can pop in for a croquet monsieur and a beer; the aforementioned bar; and the restaurant itself, where we are today.
So, from both outside and inside, it looks like any other neighbourhood French restaurant, but – and it is a very big but - the recent involvement of Le Gavroche’s Michel Roux Jnr means that Le Bouchon Bordelais is not quite what it seems, Roux, noted as one of the most talented chefs in the country, has installed his ex-Le Gavroche head chef Eric Landeau, in the kitchen here and also tweaked Le Bouchons’s menu. Why has he done this? Perhaps he is planning to lauch a chain of French restaurants of his own? No, says the restaurant. Roux has done it simply because he is a great friend of Les Bouchon Bordelais’s owner, Ian Stoppani.
The result of this fraternal largesse is a menu studded with robust French classics, the kind of standard dishes that never go out of fashion because everyone just loves them. So we have fish terrine, oysters, snails with garlic and parsley butter, moules marinieres, scallops in puff pastry, tournedos Rossini, steak frites, roast rack of lamb with saure potatoes and a clutch of green beans wrapped in bacon, grilled salmon with rosemary sauce, and whole roast chickens to share.
We begin with a ballotine of foie gras fabulous goose not everyday duck, generously served, a little overcooked, but good-and a so-so cheese salad with the plus of mache nicely dressed with nutty oil, but the minus of hurried clumps of Parmesan hefted on top. A sweet little toasted goat’s cheese salad-not on the menu-is what I am longing for here.
Where is it? French bars were the pioneers of the themed establishment. Long before Welsh churches started being dismantled to provide building materials for Oirish pubs from Tel Aviv to Bangkok, and tin sheds recycled to bring a taste of Bullamakanka to downtown Wrexham, the zinc counter and those little circular white tables with the gold edge had popped up in the most surprising places. Like the Celtic and Oztralian versions, one certainty about such reproductions is that there is precious little chance of finding the genuine article there, people-wise. But at Le Bar de Magis, attached to a French restaurant where the South Circular roars through Battersea, the zinc counter is in evidence and so, for once, are the French.
What’s it like? The Magis boasts not only a zinc bar but also classic ‘Bar-Tabac-Café’ signs, a sturdy wooden floor and marble tables. These combine with such creative touches as an entire wall of broken mirror shards, creating an ambience that attracts expats seekings refuge from the British and their mysterious ways. The largely French staff appear chosen to soothe the homesick, including a dynamo of a waitress who’s very free with her bonjours and ca vas, and is clearly far too friendly to cut it at home in Paris. Indigenous locals also patronise the Magis, but during French international rugby and football matches they are completely swamped as the place becomes a solid outpost of les bleus. Punters can be seen outside afterwards, usually crying.
What do they drink? If you’re after beer it’ll help if you like Kronenbourg, for which the Magis boasts four taps. A lot of wine from the decent list also gets drunk, and there’s a healthy turnover in stronger French refreshments. Particularly pastis, that deceptive stuff that tastes like a soft drink but in fact removes your brain. A few glasses, the right squint at the grey Battersea traffic, and suddenly you’re back in those golden Paris spring times. Even if you’ve never been there. RICHARD BRASS
What’s it like? The Magis boasts not only a zinc bar but also classic ‘Bar-Tabac-Café’ signs, a sturdy wooden floor and marble tables. These combine with such creative touches as an entire wall of broken mirror shards, creating an ambience that attracts expats seekings refuge from the British and their mysterious ways. The largely French staff appear chosen to soothe the homesick, including a dynamo of a waitress who’s very free with her bonjours and ca vas, and is clearly far too friendly to cut it at home in Paris. Indigenous locals also patronise the Magis, but during French international rugby and football matches they are completely swamped as the place becomes a solid outpost of les bleus. Punters can be seen outside afterwards, usually crying.
What do they drink? If you’re after beer it’ll help if you like Kronenbourg, for which the Magis boasts four taps. A lot of wine from the decent list also gets drunk, and there’s a healthy turnover in stronger French refreshments. Particularly pastis, that deceptive stuff that tastes like a soft drink but in fact removes your brain. A few glasses, the right squint at the grey Battersea traffic, and suddenly you’re back in those golden Paris spring times. Even if you’ve never been there. RICHARD BRASS