July, an Alsace-inspired restaurant, is a lovely idea, which is how all restaurants begin. Nobody, back in the blue-sky-thinking days of opening a joint, has ever planned to open a stinker. Restaurants are perilously expensive ventures. Pop stars KLF may once have burned £1m on Jura, but at least they got to go to bed afterwards. Hospitality, however, never sleeps, so if, like Solynka Dumas and Julian Oschmann, you are burning money by opening a 44-cover, all-day German/Swiss dining experience at the hectic end of London’s Charlotte Street, you’ll be pretty tied up.
The pair’s new restaurant in the heart of Fitzrovia is decked out in sumptuous, sunset-hued suede and leather, and offers a list of low-intervention wines that’s apparently curated by that wine-world name du jour, Honey Spencer. July also splashed the cash on employing someone to take lovely snaps of its Alsace-themed fantasy menu, including yummy-looking breaded deep-fried munster , pork terrine, herb dumplings in broth, exquisite salads, lamb hearts with green sauce, and white asparagus with ham and hollandaise. The dreamy list goes on: at weekends, I’m told, there will be whole Fosse Meadow chickens with homemade mayo, which I imagined as a bit like Bob Fosse chickens, having danced wild and free, and built up plenty of lovely, tasty flesh.
