The French House - Soho, London
Our Rating: ★★★ | ££££ (£80pp) - Iconic Soho institution serving brilliant French country cooking in an intimate dining room (How we rate restaurants)
We'd been circling The French House for a while. It's one of those places that everyone who knows London food talks about, partly because of the food and partly because it's almost impossible to get into. Reservations open 60 days in advance; the dining room has just 7 tables, and the largest party they can fit is 6. So I was really excited when Alice landed a sunny Friday booking for a long birthday lunch.
It was absolutely worth the wait.
Details
Website: www.frenchhousesoho.com
Phone: +44 20 7437 2477
Opening Hours (restaurant): Lunch midday to 3 pm, dinner 6 pm to 9:30 pm, Monday to Saturday
Reservations: Open 60 days in advance. Two sittings per service. Maximum group size: 6
Bar opening hours: Monday to Friday, 11:30 am to 11 pm; Sunday, noon to 10:30pm. No reservations for drinks, first-come, first-served
Beer is served in half-pints only (except on April 1st, apparently). Lean into it
A Bit of History
The French House has been a fixture of 49 Dean Street since 1891. It started life as a pub called the York Minster, run by a German couple, then passed to a Belgian, Victor Berlemont, in 1914, and then to his son Gaston, who was actually born inside the pub and worked there until he retired in 1989. During the Second World War, it became the unofficial London base for the Free French Forces under de Gaulle, which is how the name eventually came to be. Over the decades, the bar downstairs has hosted everyone from Dylan Thomas to Lucian Freud to Brendan Behan, and you can still feel that bohemian Soho energy the moment you walk in.
The upstairs dining room has its own pedigree. It was opened in 1992 by Fergus and Margot Henderson, before Fergus left two years later to set up St. John in Smithfield. Today, the kitchen is run by chef Neil Borthwick, who took over in late 2018 and is married to Angela Hartnett (Alice’s favourite chef). He's brought back the kind of unfussy, hearty French country cooking the room was made for.
What Makes It Special
There's a famous house rule here: no music, no machines, no television, no mobile phones. It sounds austere on paper, but in practice, it just makes the room hum with conversation. You can hear cutlery, laughter and the clink of glasses from the bar downstairs drifting up through the staircase.
The dining room itself is small, charming and unmistakably Soho. Proper white tablecloths, framed pictures and prints crammed onto every wall, and big windows that we were lucky enough to bag a table next to. Watching Dean Street drift by in the early summer sun while sipping champagne is a very specific kind of London joy that we'd happily repeat tomorrow.
The menu is a single sheet of paper handwritten that morning, with chalkboard specials for the bigger plates. It changes daily depending on what the kitchen has got in, and it leans into proper French bistro territory with a few modern twists. There's more choice than you'd expect from a kitchen this small.
What We Ate
We did the proper long lunch. Three courses, two glasses of champagne to start, a half bottle of Chablis for the mains, and a cognac to round it off. We over-ordered, which we'll come back to.
Starters
Confit garlic and goat's curd on sourdough. Genuinely one of the best things we ate all day. The confit garlic was deep, sweet and almost jammy, the goats curd brought a fresh tang to balance it, and the sourdough underneath had the right amount of chew. Properly umami without being heavy.
Scallop sashimi with jalapeño, apple and celery. Outstanding. We've talked before about being underwhelmed by the scallops at Oma, and this dish is exactly the reason why. The scallops were silky and almost melting, the dressing was sharp and balanced with just enough chilli heat from the jalapeño, and the apple and celery gave it crunch and freshness.t
Mains
Steamed cod with lemongrass and saffron velouté. This was the only miss of the meal. The cod itself was cooked well, but the velouté was much too delicate to carry it. Cod is a fairly mild fish at the best of times, and without a sauce that has real backbone, the whole dish drifts into nothing-territory. We wanted more saffron, more lemongrass, more of anything really. It just didn't quite land.
Lemon sole with brown shrimp and capers. An absolute beauty of a dish. The sole was cooked perfectly, the buttery sauce was rich without being claggy, and the brown shrimp and capers gave it pops of salt and texture in all the right places. Classic, simple, and brilliantly executed.
Frites. Honestly, just average. Fine, but nothing you'd write home about. Not quite as amazing as the ones you get at other French places like www.relaisdevenise.com
Hispi cabbage, lovely. Charred edges, soft inside, and dressed simply. A great green to break up the richness of the fish dishes.
Dessert
Half a dozen madeleines with lemon sorbet. The madeleines are something of a French House signature, and we get why. Six of them arrived warm from the oven, fluffy and properly soft, with a little pot of lemon curd to dunk them into. The French House have absolutely nailed it. A genuine highlight.
A Note on Ordering
Worth flagging this for anyone planning a visit. The lemon sole was billed to us as a dish for one, but it's a whole sole on the bone, and combined with another main it was honestly too much food for two people. If we went again, we'd probably split three starters and one main, or take advantage of the larger sharing dishes on the chalkboard, like the steak or the duck.
The Bill
Our final bill came in around £216 for two, which is on the pricey side for lunch. That said, we did go a bit feral with two glasses of champagne, the Chablis, the cognac and an extra main we didn't really need. A more sensible order would bring you down to around £150 for two, or roughly £75 to £80 per head, which feels fair for the quality and the setting.
Overall thoughts
The French House is properly special. It's the kind of restaurant where the food, the room and the history all pull in the same direction, and you leave feeling like you've actually had an experience rather than just eaten lunch. The cooking is rooted in proper technique, the service is warm and unfussy, and the room itself does a lot of the heavy lifting in the best possible way.
Yes, it's hard to book. Yes, the cod let us down a bit. Yes, we definitely ordered too much. None of that changes the fact that we're already plotting our way back.
If you love food and you love London, this is definitely one to tick off!
Map
49 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 5BG
