This article was also published in the Financial Times.
It was 10 pm and I was just leaving Les Deux Salons, which opened close to Trafalgar Square a month ago, when (for the first time since I started writing this column 21 years ago), I was stopped by an FT reader. He asked not only whether I had enjoyed my dinner but also whether I preferred this restaurant to Arbutus and Wild Honey, which also belong to chef Anthony Demetre and his restaurateur partner, Will Smith.
Perhaps he recognised me because my face was in the same position as the profile shown in the FT magazine. As it happens, I was already beginning to grapple with a question that continues to baffle anyone writing about restaurants: how can certain individuals so unfailingly put their finger on the pulse of what so many of us want to eat, drink and enjoy and then deliver it so consistently and with such enthusiasm?
That is certainly what Demetre and Smith have done with their first three restaurants while simultaneously paying scant attention to the seeming relevance of location.
Arbutus used to be a restaurant near Soho Square that had seen better days before they transformed it. They then worked the same magic on Wild Honey, formerly a failing club in Mayfair. They have now completed a hat trick with Les Deux Salons, for which they and their partner paid a premium of £300,000 to take over a somewhat disconsolate bar belonging to Pitcher & Piano with a view of nothing more dramatic than a busy post office. Les Deux Salons is now a serious rival to The Ivy, a few blocks north, as a place to eat pre or post theatre.
There is, of course, more than just personal chemistry involved. Smith let slip that their total investment is over £2 million but his rather anxious face subsequently became a lot more relaxed when he added that they had just served 150 customers for lunch and would serve 270 that evening, far ahead of budget – testimony too to their very fair prices.
Considerable credit for the fact that Les Deux Salons (the name refers to the two private rooms on the first floor) is so immediately empathetic must also be given to the designer Martin Brudnizki. The sense of being transported to Paris comes across instantly; the lights, mirrors and staircase cleverly bind the ground and first floors together rather than make them feel like separate spaces; and the floor, composed of tiles from a Turkish quarry, is stunning.
But none of this would work without the professionals. Smith explained that at the end of the first week, one section of the restaurant just didn't feel right. They had put in the precise number of tables and chairs specified on the drawings but there was no atmosphere. There was, he realised, too much space and not enough buzz. Tables were added and the situation was transformed.
The grander scale of Les Deux Salons also seems to bring out the more expansive side of Smith and his team that always felt somewhat constrained in the two smaller restaurants. And the practice of offering every single bottle of wine by the 250-cl carafe stunned the leading American sommelier we were dining with. Despite years of eating and drinking out he had never before been offered the chance to taste an £80 bottle (J Alberto Malbec 2009 from Bodegas Noemia in Argentine Patagonia) and then choose something else if he didn't enjoy it.
For Demetre, Les Deux Salons represents a bigger change and not just because the menu is more overtly French than his other two and includes a range of 'plats du jour'.
This is his first experience of servicing his restaurant via electric lifts rather than with waiters running the food up the stairs and this, compounded by a personal distaste for food that has gone even slightly cold, has led him to serve several of his dishes in Staub cast-iron pots. These are highly effective, particularly in delivering the hearty main courses that are invariably part of the £15.50 three-course menu at lunch and between 5 pm and 6.30 pm. Do follow the waiter's advice not to touch them.
Dishes that displayed a much defter touch included a fricassée of wild mushrooms with a poached egg from Clarence Court farms in Cornwall that had an almost orange yolk; a ravioli of rose veal where the ravioli is not pasta but thin slices of the veal folded over cavolo nero and goats' curd; a warm sweet onion tart with figs; an Elwy Valley lamb Barnsley chop grilled on the Josper oven; and a fillet of Cornish plaice stuffed with shrimps and kaffir lime that came with the unannounced bonus of some delicious salsify.
I have come away from my three meals at Les Deux Salons with only two disappointments. The first is that Demetre needs to lighten up on his desserts. By concentrating so heavily on French classics such as Paris Brest, rum baba and bitter chocolate mousse, he presents too heavy a selection. I would like to see more fruit and certainly a range of sorbets.
The second cannot be resolved, however. One of the distinctive pleasures of eating at Les Deux Salons is that all the staff on the floor seem to be enjoying themselves too, most certainly because Smith is there leading from the front. It is a great shame that the kitchen brigade cannot witness all the pleasure they are giving.
The only losers from this opening look likely to be Mrs Demetre and Mrs Smith, who may well see even less of their husbands.
Les Deux Salons, www.lesdeuxsalons.co.uk