Balthazar: Covent Garden take on Manhattan favourite

A fiercely popular red-leathered brasserie with across the pond roots
Balthazaar
David Ellis @dvh_ellis10 December 2017

After a turn in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On, Keith McNally headed to the States to make his name as a New York restauranteur, sometimes known as the ‘man who invented downtown’. In 2013, McNally teamed up with Richard Caring to create a Covent Garden facsimile of his Manhattan original, a place so popular that it gets through a reported 15 gallons of onion soup.
 
The pair did a top job and this classic French bistro hums merrily along, turning out French classics for breakfast, lunch and supper at not entirely outrageous prices. The duck confit is comfort food in its most elegant guise, the steak frites is a pure, uncomplicated cooking that always satisfies. The room itself is big but always murmuring with happy chatter, and stays in a permanent state of flattering low light, warm and orange and little fuzzy. Brian Silva’s cocktail list is artfully put together, too, and absurdly underrated.

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