db Eats: Brasserie Chavot

If 2012 was the year of the steakhouse in London, 2013 will be remembered as the year of the brasserie.

Chris Corbin and Jeremy King’s Brasserie Zedel in Piccadilly kicked the all-day dining party off in earnest with its opening last year, offering absurdly good value food in opulent Art Deco surroundings. The pair followed up this year with Colbert in Sloane Square, taking inspiration from the boulevard cafés of Paris.

Not to be outdone, in April, Bethnal Green-born father of five Keith McNally upped sticks from New York to open the hotly anticipated London outpost of his hugely successful and oft star-studded Balthazar in Covent Garden.

Steak tartare

The latest to saunter onto the brasserie bandwagon is seasoned French chef Eric Chavot, once described by the fearsome seller of stock cubes Marco Pierre White as “the best”.

With two Michelin stars under his belt from an extended tenure at the Capital Hotel in Knightsbrige, Chavot is the real deal. In keeping with our penny-pinching times, Brasserie Chavot focuses firmly on rustic, regional French dishes, with signature dish snails Bourguignon given top billing.

Taking up residence within The Westbury hotel in Mayfair in a long, elegant space that most recently served as The Gallery, run by former Claridge’s chef Brian Fantoni, many of the design details from The Gallery remain, from the Art Nouveau-style mosaic floor and the glinting chandeliers to the soaring Corinthian columns, though the addition of blood red banquettes gives the space a decidedly French feel, hammered home by the piping of chirpy accordion music through the speakers – where’s Piaf when you need her?

Chicken liver parfait

The menu is relaxingly brief – presented in traditional brasserie fashion on a giant single page, and while the chef may be of Michelin calibre, the prices are refreshingly reasonable, particularly given its Mayfair address.

Dining with a wine writer friend fresh from a stint as a cellar rat in Oz, her return to Blighty was marked with a glass of Ruinart Rosé that had the elegance of one of Degas’ ballerinas with its feminine bouquet of wild strawberries and spice.

What followed can only be described as the best steak tartare of my life – and I’ve had a fair few in my time. Neatly spooned into a clear dish, a soft boiled duck egg rested suggestively on top, its sunshine yellow yolk spewing onto the raw meat beneath, which was vivifying in its freshness and enlivened by the addition of aerating mustard and salty capers flecked throughout into a creamy and indulgent ensemble so satisfying, I was tempted to order a Le Creuset full of the stuff and call it a night.

Duck a l’orange

A tough act to follow, my starter of chicken liver parfait gave the tartare some serious competition. Served on a wooden board smeared with grainy fig and prune chutney and lined with hunks of toasted peasant bread, the parfait came in a dish so tiny, I initially felt short changed.

But what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in flavour, boasting both a richness and a texture so finely spun, the only thing to come close is Heston Blumenthal’s heavenly Meat Fruit dish at Dinner. The parfait perfectly showed off Chavot’s pedigree, having been handled with such skill and dexterity, rendering the simple magnificent.

While duck a l’orange ran the risk of becoming a Fawlty Towers pastiche, Chavot shone again, serving up two plump slices of pink flesh that glistened with the sweet citrus sauce like toffee apples at a fairground. Cleverly balancing out the sweetness was the bitter tang of endives that added gravitas to the dish, while the zesty duck was delightfully fresh.

French fries

Craving a little bit on the side, no visit to Chavot is complete without experiencing the French fries, if only for the way they’re served: lovingly wrapped in the pages of Le Figaro. Mash meanwhile is indecently creamy and impossible to ignore.The wine list veers heavily towards organic and biodynamic producers.

A Montagny premier cru 2008 from Stephane Aladame charmed with texture, minerality and finesse, while a Hacienda Grimon Crianza 2010 from Rioja proved a perfect partner for the duck, its velvety structure and savory notes harmonizing with the sweet meat.

The one area of the menu Chavot needs to fine tune is the desserts, which seemed something of an afterthought. My promising sounding Floating Island, formed of a marooned meringue amid a sea of crème anglaise was cloying and childlike in its unrelenting sweetness. A giant crème brûlée did better, but the interior lacked a perceptible vanilla note and ended up falling flat.

But there is much to love about Brasserie Chavot. Serving up classic French fare in classy, convivial surroundings, Chavot has achieved what Heston did before him at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal – created a destination restaurant in its own right outside the confines of the hotel it inhabits. I’ll be back for the snails Bourguignon.

Brasserie Chavot, 41 Conduit St, London W1S 2YF; Tel: +44 (0)20 7183 6425