Mon Plaisir: nominative determinism falls rather flat
My return to Covent Garden's oldest French restaurant
In London for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, I took the opportunity, as usual, to try a few restaurants. I have happy news of Morchella, Chez Bruce and Josephine Bouchon, all of which more anon. But I also decided to indulge in a little nostalgia and revisited a restaurant in which I had eaten only once, back in 1990.
Mon Plaisir on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden opened in 1943 and by the time I got there was in the hands of only the second owner, the former head waiter. It’s now on to its third owner – not bad for over 80 years.
My first visit was before I had reached the dizzy heights of restaurant critic in The Sunday Tribune, where I succeeded the formidable Helen Lucy Burke in 1994. I was working for an advertising agency at the time (and writing on wine for the Sunday Business Post) and was sent to London on a kind of intelligence gathering operation looking into the global agency that was on the brink of buying ours. The expenses were good, so I didn’t stint at Mon Plaisir. There were snails, definitely, and I think an early sighting of the now ubiquitous confit duck leg. There may even have been Sauternes.
For me, then living in Dublin, it was almost like being in Paris. The food was good, the service charming, the atmosphere intensely Gallic. I think there was even a whiff of wafting blue Gitanes smoke (this being long before the smoking ban).
On my return, little seemed to have changed. The posters on the walls had acquired a further patina of age, the menu still features all the old reliables, the tables may have been very slightly rearranged. I was given one in the window.
The wine list urges one to have a kir royale and I didn’t hesitate. But, I thought, why not eschew the usual cassis or mure and have a violette. In the days when Charbonnel et Walker on Bond Street produced excellent chocolates (oh, what a fall there’s been!) I was in thrall to their violet creams, a luxury to which I had been introduced, at a very tender age, by my grand-aunt. (By way of digression, the best chocolates in London, by far, are by William Curley.
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Anyway, I had a flute of nicely cool Loire sparkler with a good dash of crème de violette. Delicious but at £16.50, so it bloody well should be.
I kicked off with a half dozen snails (£10), the best way I know of eating garlic butter. They were good: plump, juicy, earthy, almost mushroomy. Bog standard baguette (a stingey £2 extra!) was employed to clean up the escargot plate.
Then on to a rib-eye steak (£28.50), cooked medium-rare (I like other cuts rare-rare but rib-eye needs a little more cooking), with Béarnaise and frites. It was cooked as required, rather lacking in flavour by my usual standards (I am spoiled for excellent beef at home) but no great hardship. The chips – okay, frites– tended towards the flaccid and there are few disappointments like a chip that looks crisp but isn’t. They weren’t. And the Béarnaise was over-eggy, under-tarragony and, to complete the unholy trinity, simply not sharp enough.
A modest café gourmand (£9.50) featured a soggy passionfruit macaron, a passable mint-chocolate combination and a tiny lemon meringue that was heading rapidly towards soggy bottom syndrome (SBS).
I headed to one of the outside tables for the coffee and a little Green Charteuse in order to watch the world go by on a sunny day and to rest my legs after traipsing around Chelsea for much of the morning.
Has Mon Plaisir changed? Or have I? Since 1990, I suspect we both have. Would I go back? In a city with so many wonderful restaurants of all kinds, definitely not. But that’s not to say that it’s particularly bad. There are many much worse places in this part of town.
My meal, including a 250ml carafe of decent Côtes du Rhône came to £111.66, including service of £12.41. I know London is expensive but this was poor value for money. Mon Plaisir has a certain period charm; if it did things properly – made sure the chips are crisp, for example, the desserts fresh, the bread included in the overall price - it would be worth the money. Just.
So who eats there these days? It seems, from my lunchtime observations, that most of them are regulars. This doesn’t seem to be a tourist trap although two Japanese visitors, a couple, were sharing every dish but no conversation, preferring the company of their phones.
Perhaps it might be interesting to compare a few dishes at the newish exceptionally smart and very fashionable Josephine Bouchon in Fulham: Soufflé au Saint-Felicien, to start, is £9.50, Canard aux Olives to follow is £26, and bread is not charged for separately. I know where my next French meal in London will be…
Mon Plaisir
21 Monmouth Street
London WC2 9OD
Monplaisir.co.uk
Phone: 0207 836 7243