This is rather late in the writing but better
late than never! Whilst there are
many French restaurants in London – some heavy on the butter, some
service-poor, some vastly overpriced – none except Brasserie Zedel will
actually make you feel as if you’re dining on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
in the heart of Paris. I lived in
the City of Light for six glorious months and I often have periods of craving
the food, the booze and the je ne sais
quoi - it was the most wonderful thing to find it right here in London, without
the cost of a Eurostar ticket.
Brasserie Zedel’s main restaurant is reached
down several flights of stairs.
Walk through the little café at the entrance, a secret nod to the woman
behind the bar - as if you’re in
on some kind of clandestine code, the key to the party – and then walk into the
maroon and gold covered corridor, down the stairs, past the cabaret room and
the coat check into the high ceilinged restaurant of what to all intents and
purposes is a buzzy Parisian brasserie circa 1950. I took my dad along for this one as he had real life
experience of a buzzy Parisian brasserie circa 1950 and could confirm
authenticity – which he duly did.
We arrived on a Thursday lunchtime to find
the place busy – very busy – but we were seated straight away at a white
clothed table, complete sparkling glassware and good, heavy cutlery. Immediately two glasses of champagne
arrived ‘from the chef’ – a great start.
The menu here is a single, unwieldy card - simple and oh so French. The quality of the food is such that if you pick the
cheapest option on the menu – the two course pre fix – what you have will still
be tastier and more satisfying than you would get in most ‘above average’
chains.
We started with the Carottes Râpées
(£2.95) – a perfect French carrot salad, tart, crispy and dressed to perfection
- and Filets de Hareng, Pommes à l’Huile (£3.75) (herring) which lasted around
three minutes. Next, the most
picture perfect plate of Bœuf Bourguignon (£9.75), with achingly tender beef,
smoky bacon flavour and gorgeous curved scoop of mash, whilst on the other side
of the table there was Choucroute Alsacienne (£11.95), a wonderfully rustic
dish of potatoes, onions, smoked belly of pork and a big, comedy frankenfurter. At this point we were wavering a little
on the pudding front, but our wills were strong. So to finish, we had Crème Brûlée (£3.50) (the crack was
there, the creaminess was there, the vanilla was there – it was all there) and Pêche Melba (£4.25) with
fresh peaches and clotted cream.
After that we had to go for a long walk.
What you might not be expecting from the
flowery and over the top way I have raved about Brasserie Zedel is that it is
cheap. I mean, it’s not 99p or
anything like that but you can get a two course meal for £8.75 and feel like it
should have cost you £20 – and that doesn’t often happen. Despite the fact that it’s a French
restaurant in London, it’s unpretentious, straightforward and honest in its
cooking and pricing. They don’t
try and recoup the lower cost by charging for the bread or doubling the price
of the puddings and even something like champagne is within reach, without
settling for something sparkling but sickly. In the middle of a recession, when all you really want is to
not feel like you’re not watching every penny, when you do want to treat
yourself occasionally and you don’t want to pay over the top for the privilege,
Brasserie Zedel has really hit the nail on the head. They’ll feed you like a king, treat you like a queen and
best of all they’ll bill you like a pauper.
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