Additional Information:
Frenchie, 16 Henrietta St.; 44-207-836-4422; frenchiecoventgarden.com. An average dinner for two, without drinks and tip, is 86 pounds ($113); the five-course tasting menu is 55 pounds. A 12.5 percent tip, marked "optional," is added to the bill.
There is no shortage of expat restaurants in the busy Covent Garden area of London; the original outlets of most, like Orso and Balthazar, call New York home. A newer import from France is a branch of Frenchie, one of the trendsetters of Parisian bistronomy. But despite its name, Frenchie’s accent is as British as it is French.
“Frenchie was my nickname when I worked in London for Jamie Oliver, just after I got out of cooking school,” said Gregory Marchand, the chef and owner. “I spent my 20s in London, and it left a huge impact. It’s a city I love.” Now 38, he is more seasoned, and seven years after planting his flag on a back street in Paris, he has returned.
The space, which opened in February, is a deep rectangle, done mostly in subdued gray and pewter lit with white. A bar stretches toward the rear opposite a line of bare tables set against banquettes and chairs. A downstairs room, squarish, faces the bustling open kitchen. There, Marchand has inaugurated tasting menus in the evening.
The menu betrays little in the way of French roots: bacon scones, Cornish crab with Jerusalem artichokes and lemon, Cornish turbot, Lincolnshire guinea fowl and Yorkshire rhubarb with Brillat-Savarin cheese. In a playful twist, the cheeses in Paris are English (from Neal’s Yard Dairy, where Marchand also once worked), and the London menu features those from France. (The borders are staying open here, Brexit or not.)
There’s an extra charge for crusty whole-grain bread that’s not made in-house but worth having alongside the porky slab of Huntsham Court Farm terrine with piccalilli. (The highlighted farm, in Herefordshire, specializes in rare breeds.) A tangle of grilled baby leeks strewn with crispy shallots was another satisfying starter.
Charred blocks of moist boneless short rib are set over creamy mashed potatoes, with a swath of green garlic like a scarf. And dusky olives, espelette pepper and lemon confit swagger among broad golden ribbons of pappardelle with rabbit ragu. A signature dessert called banoffee combines banana, coffee and chocolate in an opulent custard dome flecked with nutmeg.
Frenchness is in play via precise techniques and well-defined flavors, not haughty service.
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