Success is sometimes found in fraught circumstances. For Crispin restaurateur Dominic Hamdy, the idea for his latest hit, Shoreditch’s Bistro Freddie, came amid family catastrophe. “My dad was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago,” he says. “And at that time, I was like, I need to think of my next move, what are we going to do? His name is Freddie so I thought, well, I’ll do somewhere called Freddie’s or something like that.”
The influence of his father — who remarkably has since recovered and dined at the corner restaurant bearing his name — runs deeper than a few letters over the door. The bistro, all cream walls and wood panelling, and candles spilling their wax over old wine bottles, is perhaps half French, half English; a measure of Casse-Croûte with a pint of Andrew Edmunds poured in. It is, says Hamdy, a cocktail from his childhood.
“When I was growing up, my parents had loads of dinner parties, and they served snails — Every. Single. Time. It was very exotic for Nineties Yorkshire,” Hamdy grins. “My dad had gone to French schools; he’s half Alsatian. And we’ve gone to France every year of my life. My godfather is a monk in a monastery in Lyon, so we’d go there, make jam…”
He remembers his mother preparing for parties with “the big red wine glasses, the Riedels, the smaller white ones, the water glasses. I’d always help set the table.” This lifelong imprint may be why Bistro Freddie works, and why it’s become a name approvingly murmured most weeks in restaurant circles and beyond. Despite, bafflingly, no national review from a critic, the place is “full for lunch and dinner, which means everything” and has had flattering write-ups everywhere from Vogue to the Financial Times, the Independent to Esquire. TopJaw raved, while Great British Chefs named Anna Søgaard, who heads up the kitchen, as one to watch. And her signature dishes — the chicken and tarragon pie, the steak in peppercorn sauce, the snail flatbread doused in garlic and studded with crispy chicken skin — seem to pop up constantly on social. “That pie is the new Instagram thirst trap,” says the Standard’s fashion editor Victoria Moss. “And the whole fashion industry, despite being on Ozempic, is in there at the moment.” Case in point? Parisian brand Soeur decided to hold its London launch there last month.
What does Hamdy put it down to? “I think it’s a very genuine restaurant and there’s an authenticity to it. I think sometimes you find places where… where there’s a slight disconnect. When they’ve tried to execute a concept, used the normal design firm, hired the big name chef and ended up with a luxury, box-fresh restaurant that has no soul to it. I think you can feel that.”
More modestly, though, he thinks some of it comes with diners wanting what he calls “classic hospitality.” He cites the success of places like the Devonshire, Bouchon Racine and 64 Goodge Street by way of example.“We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we’ve got amazing suppliers, brilliant chefs in the kitchen, and we’re just delivering stuff that you really want to eat,” he says. “And you can have three very different experiences here. You can have a chef’s table experience up at the counter, you can be in the corner away from everyone, enjoying a really private dinner, or you can be right in the middle of the action, the energy, the vibe.” It seems to be working.
“It bridges a gap between industries and demographic. It’s people who just want good food and wine. You’ve got super young people who’ve seen us on TikTok, and then you’ve got 60-year-old City CEOs who’re ordering £300 wines for lunch. It’s a really broad range, and that’s really interesting. It’s quite hard, too.”
Given the popularity, are there plans for what’s next? Hamdy is keen for more space. “Maison François is a restaurant I love. The execution is just phenomenal, the quality and consistency incredible. And it’s a massive brasserie. I sit there and see the kitchen and I just want to know what we’re capable of with a bigger site, a better-equipped kitchen.” He talks excitedly about sommelier Alexandra Price and what she could offer with more cellar space, too. He’s constantly on the lookout, he says, but “there’s no desire to roll out a concept, or sell this and do something else”.
Besides, he adds, for now his hands are full with a new project. “We’re taking Crispin to Clapham,” he says. “We’re opening Crispin at Studio Voltaire in the spring.”
A move south, he says, was never really on the cards — “I’ve never lived there, it wasn’t really on my radar” — but Studio Voltaire, a not-for-profit gallery and collection of artists’ studios in a former church, offered a setting too good to pass over. “It’s a haven, and feels such a special place.”
Over 50 covers, 10 of them at a bar, and with a terrace outside, Hamdy wants to take what he’s learnt from the success of Bistro Freddie, and “offer the next step of Bar Crispin. We’re just going to try to do a great restaurant that people want to go to, with a menu of dishes that you really want to eat.” Design-wise, he says, inspiration will come from Sir Terence Conran’s Blueprint Cafe in its Nineties heyday.
Given the gallery is a working one, Hamdy says the restaurant will be designed to fit it and those creating there. “It won’t feel like a starter-pack bistro,” he says. “It’s a working space, and the artists need to feel at home. We know it’s a gallery and we don’t want to pretend it’s not. So we’ll do an artists’ menu, to bring them in.”
Accordingly, he says, prices will match Voltaire’s egalitarian spirit. For now, there’s no detail of the dishes, though pastas, chargrilled meat and fish and small bites like croquettes are all expected. Looking after the food will be Michael Miles, formerly of Manteca and Joe Laker’s Counter 71, with sous chef Ella Williams moving from Mountain, Soho. Lewis de Haas, Crispin’s executive chef, will keep an eye on things.
The other thing Hamdy is excited by, he says, is the gallery’s events space. “We’ve already got a couple of weddings booked,” he says, smiling. “In fact, Anna [Søgaard] is getting married there in June, which is such a lovely thing. And Lewis is doing the menu and cooking.” Keeping it in the family. That figures.
