Egalitarian spirit: the dining room, which is upstairs from the refurbished Three Compasses pub
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Midway through university, a mate and I spent a good chunk of our summer in the remote wilds of south-west France. Ostensibly there as live-in, temporary handymen at a vast, cobwebbed former schoolhouse, we painted shutters in the pummelling heat, went on a road trip to Perpignan, and generally lived out what felt like an especially uneventful arthouse film.
It was the Chuckle Brothers as directed by François Ozon; one of those half-forgotten youthful escapades where it is hard to track the exact logic and reasoning that led you there. Still, if there is one lasting thing that summer gave me, then it was a defining interaction with rustic French cooking. Burnished, incapacitating cassoulets; the socky funk of cured meats; a tiny, menu-less village bistro where the opening hours were as mysterious as the animal parts bobbing in the daily stew. From the bubble of my life as a takeaway-loving, black suburban kid, this was my first real experience of the Gallic tendency to bring languor, rugged elegance and ceremony to every dining experience. It was a defining introduction — albeit one that I don’t know if I fully appreciated or understood at the time.
But then, about two decades later, I went to Bouchon Racine in Farringdon — chef Henry Harris’s reimagined version of his venerated French establishment — and so much of what I had caught a glimpse of during that sweltering summer finally made sense. Launched very late last year and already garnering the clamorous praise that other places would kill for, it is a quietly extraordinary opening; a room of gutsy, unapologetic flavours and subtle, twinkling magic that manages to draw something fresh and urgent from perhaps the most obvious and, occasionally, overrated of gastronomic formulas.
It is, in every appreciable way, the real deal. What’s also true is that it has been in the post for some time. Originally in Knightsbridge between 2002 and 2015, Racine is one of those places that sends lunch enthusiasts of a certain vintage into misty-eyed raptures. Harris — as well as embarking on a partnership with now defunct pub group Harcourt Inns — has spent much of the last seven years searching for the right moment and location to mount a full revival. That time is here and now, in partnership with co-conspirator Dave Strauss, set in the partly glass-covered upstairs of the glossily reconfigured Three Compasses pub, and consciously channelling (as evidenced by its new name) the texture, attitude and chest-beating offal lust of Lyon’s darkened bouchons.
That beefy, egalitarian spirit emerges through clever subtleties and occasional provocations. Escarole brought a great, verdant mass of bitter leaves, cloaked in a nuanced tarragon dressing and dotted with creamy swatches of orange mimolette cheese. Harengs pomme a l’huile was a rush of fatty pickled fish, swelling and morphing on the palate like a prolonged orchestral crescendo. Veal chop with roquefort butter had succulent meat and ripe, soul-tickling indulgence. A jellied tripe dish (heure de tripes), meanwhile, looked wholly cursed; like something in a vitrine at the Wellcome. And yet, with healthy swipes of rough-hewn, expertly weighted gribiche, I found I couldn’t stop hunting down something in its murky, savoury depths.
This is a sanely priced passion project that urges us to live in the moment
By the time I gave myself over to the shoulder-kneading succour of an outrageous, rich crème caramel, the space already had the feel of a whirling hospitality industry clubhouse. Harris and Strauss roamed the floor as notable off-duty chefs and restaurateurs availed themselves of Bayonne ham and aperitifs amid drifting clouds of escargot butter. Nigella Lawson, apparently, was in the day after me. I suppose sceptics could justifiably attribute this early hype to both Harris’s popularity and French country cooking’s particular comfort blanket cache among the food world’s more influential figures.
But I think there’s more to it than that. At a time of brazen restaurant cynicism and fearful glances towards the future, Bouchon Racine is a sanely priced passion project that urges us to live, gloriously, in the moment. Every corner of it hums with soul, character and intention. And that, in any language, is worth its weight in gold.
