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Bar des Prés, London W1: ‘The £8 vanilla-flavoured mash reawakened my inner witch’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants
I’ve done a lot of smiling graciously, but being relentlessly supportive of restaurants couldn’t last for ever
Although my restaurant columns have taken on an increasingly taut, Pollyanna-ish “I’m just glad to be out of the house” tone over the past three months, I think Bar des Prés in Mayfair has finally broken me. It was somewhere between the vanilla-flavoured mashed potato and the moment when I realised French celebrity chef Cyril Lignac was not, in fact, cooking in his kitchen during this heavily hyped launch, and was instead jazz-handing about the place in casual clothes and allowing the predominantly French clientele the sumptuous treat of meeting him.
“Non, Cyril,” I thought, “ce n’est pas OK. How about putting on some whites and popping backstage to handle more important matters? Perhaps starting with some sort of judicial inquiry into that purée de pommes de terre à la vanille?” Et voilà! There she was, the old pre-pandemic Fenella The Kettle Witch in me. Not dead, after all, just lying dormant. All it took to reawaken her was an eight-quid side of mash that tasted a bit like Birds Eye arctic roll.