Baby Eats Shellfish
It’s a Saturday between Saturdays, the ordinary time of late winter, the hinge between the great Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter. Duke Street off Piccadilly is best known for aristocratic period art galleries like Moretti but more recent arrivals – if not quite breaking the mould – are stirring the mix. White Cube, a contemporary art gallery, suitably white and appropriately cuboid, opened in 2006 in Mason’s Yard which is tucked behind Duke Street.
Virginia Overton’s new body of work called Paintings is the current exhibition. It’s an exploration of the relationship between architecture, sculpture and painting. A series of low relief wall compositions is assembled from salvaged industrial materials gathered by the artist. Virginia’s reconstructions reflect both artistic legacy and functionalist origin in the space and shape of canvases. She employs line, form and colour to reinterpret Modernist sculptural traditions through the idea of painting. Plenty of food for thought then and then the thought of food. Across the street.
The Honourable François O’Neill was brought up on the 400 hectare country estate of Cleggan Lodge near Broughshane in County Antrim. The house was built as a shooting lodge for nearby Shane’s Castle, the seat of his grandfather’s cousin Raymond Lord O’Neill. On 8 October 1960 Woman’s Mirror ran a feature on the owner of Shane’s Castle. “Raymond Arthur Clanaboy O’Neill, for years one of Britain’s most eligible bachelors, has just about everything a girl could wish for. He is 4th Baron O’Neill, descendant of the Kings of Ireland. He loves parties, jazz and vintage cars, and likes his friends to call him Ray. He owns estates in Ireland and Leicestershire, and runs a garage in Belfast. How he has avoided the clutches of Mayfair’s husband hunting debs and their mothers is a mystery – and an achievement.” Three years later, Raymond would marry Georgina Scott, eldest daughter of Lord George Scott who in turn was the youngest son of John 7th Duke of Buccleuch.
Back to the younger O’Neill. François spent childhood summers with his mother Sylvie’s family on the Côte Sauvage. His father Hugh, 3rd Baron Rathcavan, ran Brasserie St Quentin in South Kensington for decades and when it closed in 2008, François opened Brompton Bar and Grill on the same site and kept that going for six years. New decade, new era, new location, new brasserie. Maison François on Duke Street is now celebrating its fifth birthday.
The host building is another one of the more recent insertions stitched into the historic urban fabric of St James’s. Upper floor reticence contrasts with lively street presence of planting, seating and awnings in front of picture windows. The double height interior is eclectically finished, from a Brutalist cement ceiling to latticed walnut screens inspired by the pews in Gottfried Böhm’s St Mariä Heimsuchung’s 1960s Modernist church in Impekoven. Designer John Whelan suggests, “The client wanted to reference traditional European brasseries but create a contemporary version.” Things are even more industrial chic down under: Frank’s, a basement wine bar, has white painted brick walls and a polished concrete floor. Catchpole and Rye bathrooms are a subtle Irish link.
Head Chef Matt Ryle’s comprehensive menu reflects its all day offering. Le Pain: five choices (with caviar and truffle supplements). Hors d’Oeuvres et Charcuterie: 10. Les Salades et Les Légumes: nine. Les Pâtes: three. Les Poissons et Les Viandes: eight. Fruits de Mer: six. Les desserts: 13. Les glaces: three. Les sorbets: three. La fromage: two. Lunch begins with life enhancing melted cheese canapés that look like tiny County Antrim haystacks. Anchovies, burrata, chilli, pain grillé à l’ail en Français is wonderfully crisp and garlicky. Cornichons are served as a side for everyone’s hors d’oeuvre. Matt was the first Head Chef at Isabel in Mayfair, an outpost of the boujee Buenos Aires restaurant which François helped launch, but Maison François provided the opportunity to make the menu truly his own.
After Philipponnat Champagne, it’s a swap of regions, heading northeast to Alsace for Domaine Heywang Riwerle 2023. Pumpkin, champagnes sauvages, truffe is a deconstruction of the fruit using line, form and colour to reinterpret Modernist sculptural traditions through the idea of dining. Next: the pudding trolley! A double drawered chariot of sweetness! A Wardian case on wheels! Lunch ends with an éclair menthe posing as the maquette of a snow topped Slemish Mountain. François takes the by now well tested template of the London brasserie – think Chris Corbin, Jeremy King, Richard Caring – and infuses it with Franco Northern Irish vivacity and verve.
