There is an immaculate brasserie called 74 Duke at 74 Duke Street, Mayfair: this is postcode etymology. Duke Street runs from Selfridges to what used to be the American embassy in Grosvenor Square but is now (I assume) a paranoid hotel: the Chancery Rosewood, which has kept the monstrous eagle on the roof. If Duke Street was ever interesting – I like to imagine Mrs Dalloway having a panic attack in the road – it isn’t now. It sells the eternal detritus of the British rich – watches, capes, meat – who I suspect are into crypto these days. It is all a feint anyway: fake London for fake people, and life is at the edges now.
A brasserie for the undead, then, and what to say? It’s very nice, but the last restaurant I reviewed near here was Mister Nice, which wasn’t nice at all. Rather, it was one of those places that should sell cocaine but can’t for legal reasons, even if it is named after an Oxford-educated drug dealer’s childhood delusions. It was all monochrome and burgers and why-aren’t-we-in-St-Tropez-and-off-our-faces? I took Lynn Barber and she sulked. I would have called Mister Nice ‘Where’s The Airport?’; amazingly, it is still in business.
74 Duke, which emerged from a hoarding promising biodiversity – in Mayfair! – is different. I think it is for people who work or at least pretend to, and tourists on a break from buying the handbags of lunacy. It is on the corner of a handsome red Victorian block, and the developer was dependent on windows, which are as startlingly clean as Switzerland. I don’t care for Switzerland – any landlocked country makes me nervous, especially a clean one – but it has the best grand hotels. In the 20th century they were filled with toppled monarchs, and they might be again.
A brasserie for the Swiss undead, then, with refugees from Selfridges. I close my eyes and remember, above all, the whiteness of it. I have said here before that we don’t have a convincing aesthetic for these times, which are like fog. When it comes – and it will – I think it will be Christian revival battles Soviet revival: Pugin vs Trotsky, and that will be exciting. (My money is on the bishops always.) Until then, the mild art deco brasserie goes on because the Wolseley’s reach is long. Here is another, fallen off the speculation tree. I look at my notes, and I recall: it isn’t white. At least some of it is gold.
The food is French enough to call itself French, but not French enough to be French
The food is French, sort of. French enough to call itself French, but not French enough to be French, because it is not fierce, and it stinks less than it should. Cuisine has gone the way of cities: London, Paris, Oxford. Don’t frighten the tourists with reality, and if you want interesting food, just go to Hounslow. The first French restaurant I reviewed was Maxim’s, Paris, which is frightening: a cabaret which everyone has left due to fear. That would never happen now, because fear is more unfashionable than it should be.
We eat Caesar salad (add proteins, says the menu horribly, offering chicken, prawn or salmon, a gym café); goat’s cheese salad with mixed greens and a classic vinaigrette; tuna tartare with avocado; superb French bread (it would be madness if it were not superb); a cheesecake topped with yoghurt ice cream, pretty as a frock; a rice pudding with salted caramel sauce. There is nothing to startle or enchant here – just a poise so monumental it is only a nothingness.
74 Duke, 74 Duke Street, London W1K 6JZ; tel: 0203 772 7722.
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