Perhaps the Goodge Street area near London’s West End has never quite broken through as a destination dining spot because it simply sounds so unromantic. “Meet me on Goodge Street,” no one has ever purred seductively, although perhaps they should. Yes, Fitzrovia sounds like a bodily crevice, but it is also a hotbed of smart, impressive places such as Monica Galetti’s Mere, Lisboeta, Akoko, Roka, Rovi and so on. Now 64 Goodge Street has entered the fold. It’s from the Woodhead Restaurant Group, which runs The Quality Chop House, Portland and Clipstone, three reassuringly brilliant places that I keep up my sleeve, marked for “dinner guest who is hard to please”. Woodhead creates earnestly thought-out restaurants with top-class chefs and diligent service. One of my happiest food memories is a lunch at Clipstone back when Merlin Labron-Johnson was chef, and The Quality Chop House, the home of mince on dripping toast and confit potatoes, never goes out of fashion.
You’d think Woodhead might call it a day after big hits such as these and preserve its magical legacy, but, instead, it has taken over a former travel agency, gutted it and re-imagined it as an elegant French bistro. Or at least a refined, compact, boutique restaurant of oak browns and bottle greens, serving scallops and lentils in beurre blanc with pommes aligot, rabbit niçoise salad and snail bonbons. There’s also squab pigeon with lyonnaise sausage and sea bass with a sauce mouclade.
