There is something deliciously reassuring in the knowledge that, while the world burns through trends like kindling, a few restaurants remain gloriously, defiantly themselves. No QR codes. No disco cauliflowers. No chefs wielding tweezers like scalpels, arms inked with semiotic intent. Just courteous service, elegant food – and, yes, if required, a gentle, unironic chorus of Happy Birthday.
LPM London opened quietly in 2007, the year Gordon Brown took the keys to Downing Street, the first iPhone made its way into British palms, and Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant appeared on BBC Two, coaxing would-be chefs through béchamel and breakdowns. In a discreet mews beside Claridge’s, LPM began as it meant to go on – with pastel tones and poise, laying a foundation not for spectacle, but for something far rarer: longevity.
Its spirit came from Nice – La Petite Maison – a few warm steps from the Old Port, where the air is steeped in garlic and salt. It cooked like home, and let the world come to it. What followed was less a chain than a constellation: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Miami, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Limassol, Doha, Las Vegas, and now Mykonos – each one a glittering satellite of that original sunlit promise.
Yet it is the London outpost, the elder sibling, which remains the most cosseting. You step through the curtains not so much entering as arriving: a gentle portal to somewhere distinctly Mediterranean, requiring no jet and no jolt. Within, there are fresh flowers, perpetual vodka sorbet, and a sunlit composure which evokes a terrace lunch in Cap Ferrat, back when lunch was something to linger over. A seafood bar glows through an arch, inviting another glass of rosé, another postponement of responsibility.
The wine list reads like a love letter to Provence penned in half-bottles and magnums, with formats large enough to launch a yacht. Its author, Andrea Fasan, learned hospitality in the bars of Veneto, picked up French in kitchens, German for the tourists, and English while working as a room attendant on Baker Street. He reached The Ritz by diligence, and 50 St. James’s by distinction – pouring Romanée-Conti, Lafite, and Palmer for those who wagered more than their shirts. Palmer stuck. There’s now a vertical on Fasan’s list titled ‘Petit Voyage au Château Palmer’ – a phrase as louche as it is literary.
Today the global head sommelier and wine buyer, Fasan champions the more reflective corners of Provence – Bandol, Cassis, Les Baux-de-Provence – alongside grower Champagnes he dubs ‘les petits récoltants’, and closer to home, a finely etched Blanc de Blancs from Hundred Hills in Oxfordshire. Each year, he makes a pilgrimage to Château Figuière to secure the restaurant’s own rosé: white-peach-scented, organic, wax-dipped magnums, drawn from vines rooted in schist and quartz beside the sea – a wine which rarely loiters on the list for long.
For those who prefer their aperitifs shaken rather than poured, the house cocktail remains the Tomatini – born in Dubai in 2010, a cool détente between Bloody Mary and Martini. Vodka, tomato, and white balsamic, garnished tableside with a twist of black pepper from a towering, painted mill on its frothy cap, a cherry tomato, and a suave wink. It sounds improbable. It drinks impeccably.
Yet for all its finesse – the yuzu-pepped oysters, caviar-accented tuna tartare, the thick veal chop cooked just so, the sea bass baked in salt, and of course the famous warm chocolate mousse with malt ice cream – what sets LPM apart is not just what it serves, but how it sees you. It remembers names, preferences, and anniversaries. It sings Happy Birthday not from obligation, but from intention. In a city smitten with novelty, that sort of grace feels quietly revolutionary.
It is a rare and rather lovely thing when a restaurant chooses not to reinvent, but to refine. LPM never set out to conquer the world – though, in its own way, it rather has. Its intention was always simpler: to welcome the world in. As the French say, ‘soyez les bienvenus’ – be our guests. And in doing so, it has become not just a restaurant, but a ritual.
LPM Restaurant & Bar, 53-54 Brook’s Mews, London W1K 4EG. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.lpmlondon.co.uk.
