We ate in a Michelin star restaurant the night it won – the vibe was electric
We dined at Pavyllon the night it became a Michelin star restaurant- the air of celebration was joyous to be around, says Adam Bloodworth
“We’re going to the club after service,” said Baptiste Beaumard, sommelier at London’s Pavyllon restaurant. All-night dancing isn’t traditional end-of-day fare for the primly dressed staff at posh Hyde Park establishments, but if you can’t loosen the tie after winning a Michelin star then when can you?
The Michelin Guide awarded eleven London restaurants with their first ever stars this week. Anonymous reviewers chomp their way through thousands of dishes, so Beaumard’s excitement was justified. “Of course, we’re celebrating,” he said. Bordeaux in hand, you felt he was doing everything in his power not to rip the cork out and pour the whole lot down his throat rather than pouring careful measures into diners’ glasses.
It’s worth reminding that the Michelin Guide’s annual splashing about of shiny things doesn’t make everyone want to get on the Jager bombs. It is often called elitist, with none of this year’s cohort being from east London, where creativity has flourished over the last decade. “A restaurant opening in Mayfair is going to be backed by someone with a load of cash,” Michelin starred Tom Brown of Hackney Wick restaurant Cornerstone told City A.M. “With the climate as it is, smaller restaurants are finding it hard to maintain that kind of level, and even to open in the first place.”
On the other hand, at Pavyllon it may have been more surprising if they hadn’t won a star. It is the first London outpost of French cook Yannick Alléno, and to put his success into context, if the chef dangled all his Michelin-delivered celestial bodies from his chef’s whites, he’d be hard to look directly at: with 16 stars, he is one of the most decorated chefs in the world. It’s hardly a surprise that his swanky Park Lane outing has been awarded.
Anyway, that’s no slight on the food: Pavyllon is a very hard word to say, but an incredibly easy place to have dinner. The restaurant that opened last summer brings a fuss-free approach to French cooking, modernising old techniques to serve the classics but in a way that makes them look like they’re dressed for fashion week rather than about to give you coronary heart disease.
Dishes are still reassuringly gut-busting: we went for the Immersive Mayfair menu, which offers four courses for £85 without wine. A starter of scallop carpaccio and smoked pike roe in a crispy tartlet was handsomely compact, the brittle pastry concealing secrets; sharp, moreish roe and fresh, silky scallop in a wash of brown butter emulsion. The chef wants you to eat it with your hands, which makes a fun mess, and then over comes the waiter with a hilariously ornate hand wiping cloth carefully presented on bone china. The dish reminded me of a savoury version of a Reese’s Pieces: just as intense, just as much fun.
A steamed comté cheese souffle was another thoroughly modern reworking of the French love for putting barrel-loads of cow product into just about everything. It worked fabulously with what Beaumard described as a “sexy Bordeaux” with “sexy tannin,” which hands down is the best description of wine I have ever heard. Maybe he was thinking ahead to his big night out on the tiles once we’d all cleared off.
For mains, more retro French cooking dressed in Gen Z clothes: a beef fillet seared beautifully with a black pepper crust, the meat in a stupendously rich beef jus so sticky I had to wipe my mouth with my napkin after every bite, trying to be discreet about the embarrassing task of de-jusing my face, licking my lips behind the napkin like an ecstatic dog. Running through the jus? Whipped cream, of course, the dish topped with the cooling balance of confit pears. They’ll be divisive atop a meat fillet, and anyone who thinks they’re a bad idea is wrong.
Beaumard began saying something excitedly about a glass of Madeira to go with the “roasted vanilla cloud” dessert, but he was just the tip of the iceberg: over the course of the evening various waiting staff found ways to tell us they’d just won the star without us asking, which was utterly adorable. They all beamed with big, bright smiles and it was a joy to be around. Anyway, back to the Madeira: the ‘cloud’ had vanilla cream atop a foamy hazelnut mousse and sturdier chocolate at the bottom to give the airy dish some backbone.
I had been sitting at the countertop, where it would have been very (very) easy to while away the majority of the run time of all three Lord of the Rings epics while watching head chef Benjamin Ferra Y Castell oscillate between offering his staff stern words and then relaxing his shoulders with a smile when there was downtime, which wasn’t very often. You’d do just as well in the ‘under the sea’ themed main restaurant, (our description not theirs) where light hues of marine blue furnish the decor and seats, the towering floor-to-ceiling windows adding depth to the space.
If you thought about it long enough, you could be in some underwater Ariel-themed wonderland where they serve very good scallop carpaccio. Come to think about it, Pavyllon’s food is so transportative you could be just about anywhere, really. But I was very glad I was here.
Pavyllon serves lunch and dinner seven days a week and you can book online