Classics Revisited: La Poule au Pot, where the perfect bourgeois menu is as decadent as ever
If any proof were needed of Mae West’s belief that too much of a good thing can be wonderful, then the two courses of foie gras I ate at La Poule au Pot is it. Oof! It turns out that alcohol isn’t the only thing that can induce the head-spinning, palm-sweating sensation of a hangover.
Then again, when faced with the sort of perfect bourgeois French menu that these days is more of an endangered species than an Emmanuel Macron supporter, who couldn’t be forgiven for indulging like it was their last supper?
Le coq au vin, la lapin à la moutarde, le carré d’agneau, le boeuf bourguignon – the classics are all here on a menu so dreamily familiar it barely needs any translation. That foie gras comes as a terrine moulded from chunky nuggets of liver in skin tones of the softest pink, edged by a border of buttercup-yellow fat.
There’s Sauternes jelly and brioche on the side, but when the foie’s deliriously rich taste and silky texture flood the synapses with pure joy, why dilute the pleasure?
You could alternatively order foie gras pan-fried as a starter, or do as I did and have it as a topping for magret de canard, the lobes crisped up with sticky pan juices but still meltingly soft within, the duck breast below shaded the perfect medium rare.
Your jaded digestive system might not thank you the next morning but, in the words of another endlessly quotable hedonist, Mick Jagger, anything worth doing is worth over-doing.
Elsewhere, there is a wodge of cheese-topped bread slowly sinking into a soupe à la oignon with a flavour so concentrated it tastes like the essential essence of onion. Or there’s la poule au pot itself, a one-pot wonder of chicken thigh, potatoes, courgettes and carrots served, like much of the cooking, in the sort of Provencal earthenware that was absolutely à la mode when this place opened in 1962.
None of this is the sort of food that a skilled home cook couldn’t reproduce in their own kitchen. But what you can’t reproduce is the atmosphere created by 60 years of bric-a-brac covering every available surface of a higgledy-piggledy dining room illuminated by candlelight.
The idiosyncratic interiors are meant to evoke rural France, although the cumulative effect is like stumbling into a provincial antique shop in England, albeit one staffed by an ever-changing cast of handsome French waiters.
This is one of those rare restaurants that is as lovely in winter as it is in summer, when properly set tables spill out onto Orange Square under a flapping tricolor and you expect the peace to be broken by the thwack of boules hitting the flagstones.
Henry IV of France famously said that “I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” The joy of La Poule au Pot is that it serves up the sort of riches that will make anyone feel like a king every day of the week.
Who to take: the person you intend to kiss under the mistletoe
What to order: Magret de canard with foie gras if your conscience allows, or with lime sauce otherwise
La Poule au Pot, 231 Ebury Street, London, SW1W 8UT; pouleaupot.co.uk
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