If you’re looking for a London restaurant where the food, service and interiors are as faultless as Anna Pavlova’s pirouettes, Galvin La Chapelle is where you should hasten before the conclusion of 2024. In fact, it being obvious to everyone how much Santa enjoys good food, I’ve emailed him to suggest he factor in a detour on Christmas Eve. Sorry if he’s a little late this year children, but I did take the trouble to forewarn the restaurant’s sommelier that Santa better not look at the exemplary wine list or he might forget his duties altogether.
The name Galvin has been synonymous with exceptional French cuisine for decades, with 1 Michelin-starred Galvin La Chapelle in East London’s foodie Spitalfields flying the culinary flag and upholding the reputation which chef brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin forged back in 2005; having quit working for other people, they launched their first joint venture, Galvin Bistrot de Luxe on Baker Street. The restaurant gave the brothers an antidote to the fine dining style they’d been cooking and offered discerning food lovers superb French classics at a reasonable price such as the customer favourite, oxtail and black pudding parmentier with pommes mousseline and a red wine jus.
Regulars understandably mourned its closure following a mass exodus of staff in the wake of Brexit, and patrons are still grief-stricken that the glitzy Galvin at Windows, located on the 28th floor of the London Hilton on Park Lane, closed this April after 18 years due to a still ongoing multi-million pound renovation of the hotel by Hilton. Happily, the Galvin restaurant empire continues to flourish with The Green Man in Essex in addition to the flagship Galvin La Chapelle and its more relaxed baby sister, Galvin Bistrot and Bar, right in the heart of the hipster-meets-corporate vibe of Spitalfields and the merging of old and new London which fits the ethos of the Galvin brothers like a glove.
The words ‘French’ and ‘fine dining’ no longer conjure up the kind of formality that was still a feature of the capital’s Michelin ranked French restaurants as recently as twenty years ago. I recall my 18th birthday celebration at a 2 star establishment in Mayfair as almost comically regimented, with a procession of waiters marching from the kitchen to our table, each server bearing a cloche-concealed main course as carefully as if they were transporting the Crown Jewels on a velvet cushion. Nor did the theatricality end there, for they coordinated the removal of the highly polished silverware with better timing than any synchronized Olympic swimmers vying for gold. It felt like a hangover from the days of French-food-loving King Edward VII, and which a young Chaplin might easily have turned into a Vaudeville routine with flying dishes aplenty.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a deep affection for traditional service and the kind of magic achieved with crisp table linens and impeccably trained waiters, something the Galvin brothers have perfected without ever expecting to present diners in central London with a menu they require fluent French to decipher. There was a day not so long ago, when even the most experienced and knowledgeable restaurant-goer would sooner have faced a firing squad than dare make a complaint to the po-faced and clerical-looking front of house, never mind the intimidating chefs who refused to place salt and pepper on the table because diners couldn’t possibly make such a judgment about their food. The fact that Galvin La Chapelle’s chefs and charming front of house couldn’t be more accommodating is essential to the restaurant’s popularity.
Galvin La Chapelle offers a modern and elegantly relaxed French fine dining experience with the added appeal of a spectacular venue. The impressive Grade II-listed Gothic-inspired building that was once the chapel of a girls school makes for a breath-taking backdrop due to the tall arched windows and soaring vaulted ceiling. The purpose-built mezzanine dining area, ‘The Gallery’, grants a unique vantage point and is much in demand for private parties, so too ‘The Arch’, nestled within the main restaurant. With a fairy-lit foliage arch gracing the entrance and an enormous Christmas tree positioned near the bar, the atmosphere of sophisticated merriment, the chatter and laughter of business colleagues, friends and couples celebrating the season on the run-up to Christmas turned our own dining experience into an occasion. Galvin La Chapelle’s runs early (£115pp) and late (£225pp) sittings for their New Year’s Eve spectacular featuring luxurious favourites such as Dorset crab raviolo and Cumbrian beef fillet with Roscoff onion, oyster, BBQ potato and À la Bordelaise.
Just as the modernity of the City of London rubs shoulders with its historic past and the former school chapel has morphed into the prestigious venue of a Michelin restaurant, Executive Chef, Arturo Granato works closely with chef patrons Chris and Jeff Galvin to ensure that the recognisable French classics on the menu live up to expectations, along with devising and fine tuning innovative dishes that honour classical technique whilst incorporating international ingredients you would have been very unlikely to have found on the menu of a French restaurant when Chris and Jeff were starting out.
The maitre’d was extremely helpful in guiding me through the gluten free options, while the sommelier assisted with excellent alcohol free wine pairings, to follow the delicious ‘Elixir’ mocktail prepared by the bar. My starter of Orkney scallop ballotine, partnered with gambero rosso, guanciale and a fresh kimchi dressing is illustrative of the restaurant’s contemporary French style; an elegant opener designed to awaken the palate and showcasing an impressively deft judgement which meant that the sour kimchi married with the delicate sweetness of scallop and red prawn without dominating the more subtle shellfish. A main course of Rhug Estate venison with juniper, celeriac, blackberry and bitter radicchio proved a celebration of an English estate in winter; a perfectly prepared loin offering gamey richness, alleviated by the sweet and sour blackberry, earthy roasted celeriac puree and a fabulous jus.
As you might expect from a French restaurant, the gluten free dessert options weren’t plentiful, yet one taste of the nougatine semifreddo with cranberry, matcha and pistachio made me grateful for an exciting and unexpected finale: one which I would almost certainly have overlooked for the signature rum baba in my giddy, gluten-and-booze fuelled days! Galvin La Chapelle’s vibrant take on French cuisine, concentrating on a purity of flavours which delights the palate, does so without unduly raising cholesterol. Respectful of ingredients and clients alike, just as a British department store uses the catchphrase ‘never knowingly undersold’ to promote consumer confidence, Galvin La Chapelle isn’t about gratuitously using butter or cream, as did the chefs the brothers first trained under. And if this doesn’t justify summoning the impressive cheese trolley I don’t know what does. Well, it is Christmas!
Galvin La Chapelle, 35 Spital Square, London E1 6DY. For more information and reservations please visit the website.
Photos by Patricia Niven.
