aixcentric

If your 2020 plans involve a trip to London, you might be interested in trying Brasserie Zedel which oozes Parisian ambiance but is literally a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus tube station.

We were scurrying in from Christmas shopping in the rain, but descending the Art Deco staircase into the large brasserie was like stepping into a gilded and marbled left-bank film-set in the heart of London’s West End.

The restaurant was once a ballroom, part of the Regent Palace Hotel which opened  in 1915 and was at the time the largest hotel in Europe.

The building has had a chequered history since its heyday in the twenties and thirties, but the restaurant has been taken over by the creators of celebrity hangouts, the Wolseley, the Ivy and the Delaunay, who aim to bring classic French cuisine to diners at affordable prices. It is hugely popular with 500 lunches served daily.  This is a place where you really do have to book, as the queues we saw attested.

Menus are based on traditional brasserie fare, take a look: https://www.brasseriezedel.com/menus.  Rather un-Parisian though is the comprehensive Vegetarian Menu from which I selected a salad of shredded carrots in a Dijon mustard dressing, followed by crepes with spinach and ricotta.  Too bad I hadn’t bandwidth for the very French desserts.

If time is short and you just want a look-around and a coffee, there is a ground-floor café; alternatively, the Bar Américain serves cocktails.

Details of directions, times, background of building and so on: https://www.brasseriezedel.com  Thank you to Carol for suggesting this lunch-stop.