Je ne sais quoi: Richoux
(Picture: Steven Joyce)Sometimes you do not necessarily want to be challenged or surprised by a restaurant. Sometimes, either through tiredness or a mind dulled by the news, all that will do is the consoling certainty of golden frites in a gleaming metal tub. Sometimes — and this could just be a personal one, based on the fact I have somehow still not been on a plane in more than two years — you want to induce the sense of a far-flung hotel by quietly dispatching an Emmental omelette at 3pm.
There is a timelessness to these impulses. And it seems to me that the essential truth of them, not to mention their newfound relevance, is what has given us Richoux: an unexpectedly buzzy new all-day spot on Piccadilly that sees a fallen 113-year-old patisserie brand cannily reborn by young chefs Jamie Butler and Lewis Spencer as a cost-conscious, vaguely grand Parisian cafe.
