64 Goodge Street: French Classics for People Who Hate Minimalism

If you’re tired of restaurants that serve you a single pea on a giant white plate and call it “art,” then 64 Goodge Street in London is your sanctuary. This is “French-accented” cooking that actually wants you to leave full. It’s sophisticated, it’s wood-paneled, and it’s about as far from a “science lab” kitchen as you can get. It’s the kind of place where you can imagine a 1950s spy closing a deal over a bottle of Burgundy.

The interior of 64 Goodge Street looks like a very expensive library where the books have been replaced by wine bottles. It’s intimate, cozy, and smells faintly of things being sautéed in an amount of butter that would make a cardiologist faint. It’s the perfect spot for a date where you want to look like you have excellent taste, or a business lunch where you want to convince someone that you’re much more stable than you actually are.

The menu here is a love letter to French technique. We’re talking about squab pigeon, snails (they love snails in Goodge Street too, but without the porridge), and sauces so rich they should probably have their own tax bracket. The chef isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel; he’s just trying to make the wheel taste incredible. It’s “Old School” in the best way possible—where the skill is in the flavor, not in how many tiny dots of gel they can fit on the plate.

The wine list here is basically a siren song for your credit card. It’s heavily French, obviously, and it’s curated with the kind of precision usually reserved for diamond auctions. You can find something “reasonable,” or you can find something that costs more than your monthly rent. Either way, the sommelier will describe it with such poetic flair that you’ll feel like a philosopher just by holding the glass.

Let’s open the floor: Are we witnessing the death of “fusion” and the return of “tradition”?

After years of “Kimchi-infused Tacos” and “Miso Chocolate,” are people finally craving the simplicity of a perfectly cooked French https://theoldmillwroxham.com/ steak? Do you prefer a menu that surprises you with weird combinations, or a menu that does the classics better than anyone else?