Aah Bistro!

Such was the popularity of Les 2 Gar?ons in my neighbourhood of Crouch End in north London that it moved down the road to larger premises, but I’m pleased to say it retained its classic bistro décor, accessible French cuisine and affordable pricing. We’re talking about perennials on the menu such as a starter of soupe à l’oignon gratinée, followed by le boeuf with frites and sauce au poivre, and finishing off with a Baba au Rhum with crème Chantilly.

The venue sits very comfortably within the definition of a bistro as a small, relatively simple restaurant, especially one offering French or French-style food. And it seems we can’t get enough of this style of dining right now. They are akin to the British country pub, whereby there is a certain mythology around these places where a specific ideal comes to mind. There’s an archetype, and it really exists, and I’d question whether it has been improved upon by any other dining format.?

We’ve been inundated with experimental cuisines over recent years that might have been more about chefs playing about and satisfying their own whims rather than the appetites of their customers. Small plate concepts and multi-course sensory experiences seem to have been more to the fore, along with Instagram-fuelled restaurants reliant on one dish and a ludicrously fickle customer base. We’d almost lost sight of the traditional two or three-course meal of perfectly executed tried-and-trusted dishes using recognisable ingredients. The reality is, we love bistro cuisine with its meaty backdrop, ubiquitous fries and vegetable-lite approach that translates to garnish in French.

When money was cheap, experimentation was all well and good, but in these current challenging times, with the unpredictability of governments and interest rates fuelling the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, this is putting extreme pressure on both people’s budgets and hospitality operators.?

This has curtailed not only the extravagance within certain parts of the hospitality industry, but also the risky nights out of diners who were willing to chance their arms on uncertain cuisines. Instead, people have increasingly retreated into the embrace of sure-fire winners like the good old French-style bistro. You pretty much know what you are going to get, and this sits very comfortably within today’s landscape.?

Much-respected chef Henry Harris recognised the zeitgeist when he opened Bouchon Racine to rave reviews and long queues. He also won Opening of the Year 2023 at the National Restaurant Awards. He brought back the comfort foods he’d honed at the original Racine, which was a pioneer of the bistro concept in the UK when it opened in 2002 and was arguably more Parisian than many of originals over the channel that it copied.

He has been followed by an army of new bistros, including Bistro Freddie, whose owner, Dominic Hamdy, puts his finger on the changes we’re seeing in the restaurant industry when describing his creation. “Sometimes you find places where there’s a slight disconnect,” he said. “When they’ve tried to execute a concept, used the normal design firm, hired the big name chef and ended up with a luxury box-fresh restaurant that has no soul to it. I think you can feel that. We’re not reinventing the wheel…we’re just delivering stuff that you really want to eat.”?

Big name chef Claude Bosi has done years in box-fresh luxury restaurants, including the recent opening of Brooklands at The Peninsula, but it is his new neighbourhood bistro Josephine that is the closest to his heart. It serves the French classics he grew up with in Lyon, including the venerable onion soup, beef fillet with peppercorn sauce and rum baba with Chantilly cream. Sound familiar? It is a homage, of sorts, to the small bistro his parents ran.

Other venues satisfying the insatiable appetite for the bistro are 64 Goodge Street, Camille in London’s Borough Market, Bavette in Horsforth near Leeds, and the uber bistro Maison Fran?ois in St James’s. We’ve also seen major refurbishments of some of the more successful C?te restaurants (albeit alongside some closures of weaker outlets) with their concept version of the French bistro.

There are more to come, it seems, as chef Jackson Boxer and Experimental Group are to open the bistro Henri at The Henrietta Hotel in Covent Garden, following on from their success with a bistro-inspired dining room at Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds. Boxer sums up very well our enduring love for such venues. “For all the affection and admiration I hold for the global and eclectic nature of my home turf, my reverence for the exceptional produce and imaginative verve of the Parisian bistros of my youth remains undimmed,” he said.

The French might have the Olympics this year, and they will undoubtedly win plenty of gold medals, but none will shine as brightly as the county’s most gleaming export – the simple French bistro – which is certainly enjoying something of a renaissance here in the UK.

Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider

This piece was originally published on Propel Info where Glynn Davis writes a regular Friday opinion piece. Retail Insider would like to thank Propel for allowing the reproduction of this column.