Because here is a place to talk all afternoon about nothing. This is why Borthwick’s all-new, not-new French House is so welcome. Whatever your view, it is inarguable that Dean Street has been gobbled up by Crossrail, Tesco Metro and bleak co-working spaces where the macchiato-fuelled shout into Skype about start-ups. It’s worth mentioning that other locals say this is rot, and that the place still lends itself to being a moral abyss. The bohemians have scattered, they say, and the knocking shops have slowed their knockings. There is a school of thought that claims “Soho is dead” killed off by developers, petty residents and the damned council.
INSTAFEED 2018 PATCH
Yes, Neil Borthwick, formerly head chef of Merchant’s Tavern, may have taken the reins upstairs in this Grade II-listed building, but his approach is to preserve and conserve this patch of Dean Street’s wonky honour. Furthermore, it is rare that I begin a review of a brand new venture by grounding it in the dusty, what-went-before, but in The French’s case, the past is not a foreign country. I’m sure Francis Bacon, who drank copiously at The French House in Soho, would have curled a lip at a lowly critic prancing in to assess a space that he and Dylan Thomas had already deemed near-perfect. I t’s a hollow task to review a restaurant that has tottered on already, entirely without my gilded bon mots, for more than 100 years.
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