Bandol in France is a Côte d’Azur seaside resort of temperate climate. Warm breezes, marina nightlife, renowned seafood. Bandol in Chelsea is a new bar-restaurant on Hollywood Road that we arrive at in decidedly not Côte-d’Azur-like conditions, hounded through the doors by driving rain and general greyness.
Inviting comparison between a rain-licked road in south-west London and the mild, barely-winters of southern France? That seems like a punchy choice from Sylvia Kontek and Vittorio Monge, the husband and wife founders.
But somehow Bandol manages an air of alfresco warmth, an impressive feat considering the slightly staid surroundings. My chaperone for the night – and seasoned SW10-explorer – informs me that Brinkley’s, opposite, is more ribald than the greyish frontage implies, and a famed haunt of wealthy divorcees and young men circling each other in mutually predatory fashion. Since Emily’s neither a wealthy divorcee nor young man it’s hard to be sure how solid her intel is, but I take her point – judging a restaurant by its frontage here is a risky game, since you’d have no idea of the Riviera courtyard hiding behind Bandol’s demure wooden doors.
Kontek and Monge already have one successful neighbourhood restaurant to their name: the debonair Margaux on the Old Brompton Road. Margaux’s remit is more general, dealing in classic European dishes against a backdrop of copper-and-chrome. But with this sister restaurant they’ve turned their attentions to the specifically Provençal, with a design aimed at conjuring up those warm breezes and marina evenings – exposed beams, white-washed brick, and smoked glass lighting hanging above the bar. And a ceiling-high olive tree, sprouting from the centre of the dining room.
While I might question the quality of her Brinkley’s intel, Emily’s credentials when it comes to intemperance in the Côte d’Azur are faultless. Where others might be alarmed by the length and range of Bandol’s wine list – bottles from £20 to over £200, and a number of southern French classics available by the carafe or the 75ml tasting glass – or a menu with a section dedicated entirely to different kinds of carpaccio, Emily is unfazed. And entirely uninterested in the 75ml option.
We start with a Picpoul de Pinet and dishes from the sharing plates section of the menu, on advice from our waitress that these can be treated as either preludes to a main course, or as a full meal’s worth of tapas. We end up somewhere in between, with a few tapas dishes between us and then a main course to share, which lets us run free with wild abandon among those multiple kinds of carpaccio.
As a result I can confirm that while the veal carpaccio is excellent – and my chaperone’s most-instagrammable dish of the night, thanks to the marbled effect of dark meat under cream dressing – if you’re homing in on just one carpaccio, it should be the octopus. Slippery with green oil, in a way that makes you think the word oily should be used as praise more often, it’s the hands-down winner in this surf vs turf face-off. And that holds true throughout our dinner, because no matter how rich and sticky the duck leg confit with figs we share – and it’s very much both – it doesn’t hold a candle to the crispy heat of the salt cod croquettes or the black ink risotto with grilled squid. As much as they might conjure up images of the Provençal coast, they conjure up even more powerful ones of stopping by SW10 to sit at the bar with a carafe and croquettes between two, for nonchalant, no-bookings-required pitstops.
We wrap up the meal with a couple of Amaro del Capo digestifs and a lavender crème brûlée that smells of summer. The rain’s still coming down just as hard outside – but for some reason that contrast between Bandol, France and Bandol, Chelsea doesn’t seem quite as strong anymore.
Bandol, 6 Hollywood Road, London SW10 9HY. Website.
