In 2010, Brunswick House finally started getting some serious love. You imagine that more than one billionaire developer has gazed upon the prime Thameside footprint this shabby old building takes up, and shook their fists in rage upon hearing of its protected Grade II* listed status. A proud but tatty Georgian mansion, it sits stubbornly amongst the looming, ever-multiplying tower blocks of Vauxhall, refusing to let the churn of modernity and encroaching flashiness knock it from its precarious perch. There’s something inspiring about Brunswick House. The asparagus, glowing white buttery batons, were meatier than any piece Taste the food and you’ll understand why. As far as mid-meal theatre goes, it makes Salt Bae’s crumbly hijinks look feeble.Ĭhefs have spoken to me in hushed, reverential tones about Otto’s. To whit: give the restaurant adequate notice and Otto will cheerfully crush the carcass of a quacker at your table in an antique vice, cook down the results, and serve it as a sauce. Otto is also famous for bringing (unasked, one presumes) the centuries-old Breton tradition of ‘duck press’ to London. Even if you are next door to a dry cleaners. When it comes to service his restaurant is as polished and posh as they come. Otto worships, in a completely unironic way, at the tricolore altar of gastronomie francaise. Behind the geniality however, there is a touching seriousness. The man’s as convivial as they come, an upright, tidy presence who not only remembered my dining partner from a visit years previous, but also the name of her dad. Like you’ve been invited into the home of an enigmatic, semi-mythic Danubian count. I now count myself among their number.ĭespite the jolly decor, there’s something very ‘gothic fiction’ about Otto Albert Tepasse’s gaff on the Gray’s Inn Road. The people in the latter category are correct. Depending on who you ask, Otto's French Restaurant is either a tragic, gaudily decorated shrine to a bygone age or an idiosyncratic bastion of fine-dining traditions, worthy of actual pilgrimage.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |