As won’t have escaped your attention, we’re not in Europe any more. At least, not so much that their machines recognise our passports.
Unwittingly, our exit has also left a few holes in those old jokes about a European heaven where the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers and Italian and the police are British (never quite got that last one), and a European hell where the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the police are German (funny because it’s true?).
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As it is, I doubt much of this was going through Parisian chef Cyril Lignac’s head when he crossed la Manche in 2021 to open Bar des Prés on Mayfair’s eternally scruffy Albemarle Street, not least because rather than fusing his French foodie genes with any of those of his European neighbours, he instead turned to the Japanese.
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Five years on, he’s uprooted and upscaled his London outpost, moving across Mayfair to a larger and more salubrious plot on South Audley Street. Spear’s took a friend and went to check it out.
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Design & Interiors
Is it a bistro? Or a Japanese speakeasy?
The Franco-Japanese/Japo-French vibe created by Lázaro Rosa Violán Studio means you get glass vitrines overlooking the street that echo the cafés of the posh Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood where Lignac first birthed his concept a decade ago, and then dark polished woods and marbles that reminded me of a very jet-lagged dinner I had a few years ago at the Old Imperial Bar in Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
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We were ushered through the main restaurant into a back room, dubbed The Salon, which with its low ceiling and intimate table clusters all felt deliciously clandestine, or at least a handy place to get deals done away from the prying eyes of passers-by. Fine by me.
Food & Drink
Some might think it a bad habit, but I tend not to look at menus when reviewing. Most are written in an alien language riddled with baffling food-related neologisms, and I’ve long since realised I don’t have the imagination to decipher them.
My order tends to be ‘give me your best stuff,’ which seems fair. On a first date, you don’t wear your second best pair of pants.
Anyway, in Bar’s case, their best stuff is really very good. The first pairing was a seemly introduction to its east-meets-west posture. The Gallic crunchy crab and avocado galette was pretty to look at and even prettier on the palate, being somehow soft and oily and yet crunchy and crabby all at once, which I now realise sounds unpleasant, but that in the moment was write-home-about delicious.
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Alongside that, we were presented with prawn, sobacha and tobiko (that’s buckwheat tea and flying fish roe, fellow Googlers) California rolls, which the maître d’ said had already earned perennial menu status, and all I’ll say is I can see why. Sharing them hurt.
There followed sashimi and a crispy prawn salad, all of which passed pleasingly enough, before a slice of black cod caramelised with miso arrived that was exceptionally tender and buttery. I’ll come to the beefy part in a moment, and conclude only that the shared profiterole desert would have turned in to a spoon battle, had my friend, poor fellow, not found he was full.
As for drinks, we started with a pair of Gari Negronis, so named, we discovered to our mutual disappointment, because that’s what the ginger the bartender infuses it with is called. Sometimes, I don’t mind a made-up anecdote about a Florentine taxi driver who had one too many, ended up asleep in Lignac’s basement and is now godparent to his youngest daughter, it turns out.
Service
I have another terrible restaurant habit, which is trying to make waiters laugh, but then quickly tiring of them when they linger and look to keep the badinage going. To their credit, Bar’s waiting staff were on to me early, and while we had a nice little bit of back and forth as I ordered ‘two Garys’ – which they generously considered hilarious – they never overstayed their welcome.
Instead they were quietly effective, and food arrived in a sort of continuous train so that we never noticed we weren’t eating, while never feeling there was too much on the table to survey at once.
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Never quite sure how they do that, so when it’s done right, it’s worthy of praise. One duff note was that the sommelier was commissioned, but he/she never materialised. In the event, the red served by-the-glass was deep and rich, and a fabulous accompaniment to the pinky wagyu rib-eye with vanilla mashed potatoes, whatever it was.
The crowd
The awkward thing about South Audley Street has always been that – unlike Albemarle – it’s in the wrong place. Just about any Mayfair landmark, hotel or shopping precinct has another street or square where you can get a good feed or a new pair of very expensive trousers closer by.
But of course that’s also what means it’s in the right place and that those who get there tend to have made the effort. A block away from Bar des Prés, Harry’s Bar is never overrun by gawpers, while I’ve yet to eat at 34 further up the road and wish I’d stayed at home.
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As such, there were precious few preening iPhone junkies posing for their own feeds at Bar des Prés, nor a line of blacked-out G-Wagons parked on the double yellows outside. Instead, our fellow diners seemed genuinely interested in their food, their wine and the company they were keeping. I know. Remarkable.
The verdict
Franco-Japanese, Japo-French – call it what you will, Bar des Prés’s combination of worlds absolutely works. Go before it moves again and into a part of town where people will find it by accident.
More information
- Address: 41A South Audley St, London, W1K 2PS
- Website: bardespres.com
- Contact for reservations: reservations@bardespres.com; +44 203 908 2000
