Bibendum Oyster Bar

Bibendum Oyster Bar

As the newly installed resident of South Kensington’s iconic Michelin building, celebrated French chef Claude Bosi launches Claude Bosi at Bibendum with a ground-floor seafood and oyster bar and first-floor restaurant which is ‘unashamedly fine dining’, with the chef's signature contemporary and light-hearted flair.

Claude Bosi at Bibendum

http://www.bibendum.co.uk

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Claude Bosi at Bibendum

Bibendum Oyster Bar - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens

Oh dear - this has been such a great place ... "Oh dear - this has been such a great place over the years.

Coinciding with Bosi taking over the restaurant upstairs there has been a change go management of the Oyster Bar.

On the day I went there they were not allowing eating in the wonderful bar area itself confining people to the area outside for reasons unknown.

The dressed crab salad which has been on the menu for over 30 years is now reduced to a partly filled shell of white crab meat with a poisonous over salted sauce - I felt conned for £17.50.

I am not going back after 30 years as a ccustomer."

Bibendum Restaurant and Oyster Bar, London

Review analysis
food   staff  

Bibendum opened in August 1987, thanks to the diverse talents of designer/restaurateur Sir Terence Conran, the late publisher and philanthropist Paul Hamlyn, and chef Simon Hopkinson, now a cookery writer.

As we climbed the stairs to the dining room, they recalled that 20 years ago Bibendum had the distinction of being, along with the River Café, one of the few London restaurants where dinner for two cost more than £100.

The menu, executed by Matthew Harris, Bibendum’s third head chef after his elder brother Henry (now at nearby Racine) and Hopkinson, continues to tread an enticing path between comfort food, French classics and those dishes that I always look to order in a restaurant because they are beyond my amateur capabilities.

If I were a regular, I am sure I would order the foie gras terrine with Armagnac jelly; persuade a friend to share the roast chicken with tarragon; or take on the fillet steak au poivre, the dish that many years ago convinced Conran to hire Hopkinson.

As I was saying good night to Lily, the cashier who has been at Bibendum for 23 years, the rest of the party, looking back across the dining room, agreed how inviting it still appears.

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