Le Café Anglais 8 Porchester Gardens W2

This exciting new restaurant is scheduled to open on November the fifth.

It is located high above the rooftops of West London with views across Queensway to Hyde Park. It is the brainchild of Rowley Leigh and Charlie McVeigh and it’s named after the greatest Parisian restaurant of the 19th-century. In the film Babette’s Feast the heroine learnt her trade at the café Anglais where many classic dishes were first invented. The new restaurant will have an open kitchen displaying a giant rotisserie which customers can watch as their chickens, partridges and joints of beef turn slowly.

The extensive menu will contain many classic dishes and ingredients will be sourced with Rowley’s customary care and passion for quality. There will be a lunchtime set menu attractively priced at £12 50 for two courses and every evening there will be a special roast such as goose with apple sauce. Rowley Leigh is one of our most respected and thoughtful cookery writers. He was head chef for 20 years at Kensington Place after having worked for the Roux brothers at the Gavroche. He has a regular column in the Financial Times on Saturday which I always make a point of reading.

Clifford Mould October 2007