This week, a friend of mine and I shared a real treat, eating at Langan’s Brasserie, just across from Green Park station, on the Stratton Street side.

Langan’s, founded in 1976, closed during the pandemic, although it was not a victim of it. It had been taken into administration, as it had been failing since 2019. New owners quickly bought it and undertook an extensive refit.

Even if the 1970s celebrities of stage and screen might no longer visit because of death or old age, the brasserie continues with its classics and traditions.

Dinner

Having finished a late afternoon wine tasting early, we arrived at the Restaurant a good 45 minutes early, well before dinner service would normally start in many places.

However, that was no problem for the accommodating staff. The gentleman at the reception desk warmly welcomed us and took my coat.

Two groups were still finishing their late lunches, and he showed us to our table, also helpfully indicating the loo for the disabled just off to one side. My friend greatly appreciated the gesture.

Menus quickly followed. Our ageing waiter was either Spanish or Italian and of the old school: friendly, yet professional.

The atmosphere on the ground floor dining room is pleasant in its green and white decor. Particularly striking are the three large, green glass chandeliers adorning the ceiling. Dark green curtains separate the dining area from the rooms for private parties.

Each table has napery, complete with linen napkins. There is no stainless steel cutlery here, only silver. Even the sauce pots that accompany some of the dishes are silver.

The all-day menu has a special section to indicate Langan’s Classics: Bangers & Mash (£26), the Spinach Soufflé (£15) and the Fish Pie (£33).

The wide-ranging Raw Bar section has dishes that serve as starters or main courses. The main course in this category is the Plateau de Fruits de Mer for two (£87). Langan’s are big on Obsiblue prawns, which, although farmed in New Caledonia, are still considered a luxury treat. The prawns are blue in their natural state but, when cooked, are pink, just as every other prawn.

Most of the main courses come with potato and/or other garnish which means that there is no need to order a side of vegetables: money saved.

The grill section largely focuses on beef but also has a fish of the day on offer. Those dishes would require a side of potato or vegetables.

For starters, my friend ordered the Shellfish Cocktail (£19.50), which comes with Obsiblue prawns and a lobster claw. Not knowing how filling it would be, I opted for the aforementioned Spinach Soufflé, which takes 20 minutes to prepare.

The 20 minutes passed by quickly. The French sommelier took our order for Rully Blanc – Les Villeranges – Domaine Faiveley (2020, £76). He came back with the wine (complete list here), poured it and chatted with us for several minutes about French and Italian wines. My friend is very knowledgeable, and the two compared notes on their respective favourites.

After the sommelier left, we only had time to sip a bit of the Rully and sample some homemade sourdough before our starters appeared.

My friend’s classic Shellfish Cocktail did not disappoint. It was done in the classic British 1970s way with the slightly sweet Marie Rose sauce and shredded lettuce. He finished it with a spoon.

The Spinach Soufflé exceeded my already high expectations. It came with a small silver pot of hollandaise sauce with a touch of anchovy blended in for a smooth, almost herby flavour. The soufflé was perfect in its construction: a beautiful, flat rise and piping hot. I have never tasted anything like it: rich, unctuous and comforting. Despite its price, it is ample enough to serve as a main course, which I will remember for a return visit.

Our waiter came by to ask how everything was, which is not something normally done in British restaurants. We sent our compliments and finished eating.

We did not have long to wait for our main courses, either. Granted, it was only around 6:30 or so, but everything went like clockwork.

My friend had the Chicken Kyiv (£29), which came with a silky potato puree, Savoy cabbage relish, pancetta and peas. He said it tasted just the way the classic Kiev did back in the ’70s. The sauce was expertly encased in the middle and did not leak or get absorbed into the meat. His only wish was for more garlic in the butter sauce, but he is rather big on garlic.

I had the Golden Beer-Battered Fish & Chips which was a bargain at £24, accompanied by homemade tartare sauce and mushy peas, both in small silver pots. The waiter asked if I needed any additional sauce. Knowing my love of tartare sauce, I asked for extra. He duly returned with a small silver bowl of it. I’m not sure what they put into it. It was very light on cornichons and had no capers, but it did have horseradish and a strong vinegar, along with some dill and possibly tarragon. It was fabulous. My friend enjoyed dipping his bread into it.

The unidentified fish — probably hake — was perfectly fried, wonderfully moist on the inside and crispy on the outside until the very last bite. The portion of piping hot chips was massive, much more than I could eat: the soufflé effect.

Our sommelier was judicious in refilling our wine glasses throughout. We were still left with a glass apiece after we finished our main courses.

Then came time for dessert. Classics are there — Rum Baba (£12), Baked Vanilla Cheesecake (£12), Langan’s Mess (£12), Crème Brûlée (£11.50) and a British and French Cheese Platter (£16.50) — along with a more recent offering, Four Chocolates Fondant (£12.50). Homemade ice creams are also available — Bourbon Vanilla, Bolivian Dark Chocolate, Vietnamese Coffee, Strawberries & Cream — at £3.80 a scoop, accompanied with a choice of Greek yoghurt, tropical tutti frutti, Coconut Malibu or raspberry and yuzu sauce. Liquid Puddings — cocktails — are also available.

Wine suggestions come with each of the desserts. Feeling rather replete, I opted for a glass of Sauternes Cuvée Céline – Clos Le Comte 2015, 75ml ( £9), which was the perfect end to an outstanding meal.

My friend chose the Rum Baba, which was made the authentic way: a yeast cake, with plenty of holes to absorb the generous sousing of Plantation Stiggins’ 1824 Pineapple Rum. It came with a thin layer of pineapple compote on the bottom, which he said was surplus to requirements. I had a bite of the baba, and the rum sang through it. Definitely one to consider for a future visit.

The bill came to £236.

By the time we left, more people were coming in, among them a large private party which went through the green curtain. The noise level grew louder, therefore, book at a quieter time for more conversation.

On our way out, one of the waitresses was with a lady at reception. They suggested more dishes to try when we return: the aforementioned Langan’s Fish Pie as well as the Roasted South Coast Cod (£36), which comes with Obsiblue prawns, bouillabaisse and red pepper rouille. They also suggested the Crème Brûlée.

Everyone and everything was top notch. We were treated as future friends rather than complete strangers.

We shall be back!

History

Tripadvisor has a brief history of Langan’s, named after the original co-owner Peter Langan, who has since gone to his eternal rest (emphases mine):

November 2021 saw the hotly anticipated reopening of Langan’s Brasserie. With acclaimed duo, Graziano Arricale and James Hitchen at the helm, their mission is to bring all of the elegance and eccentricity of the original Brasserie – opened in 1976 as a joint venture between actor Michael Caine and the legendary restaurateur Peter Langan – back to the forefront of London culture. Reimagined for a new generation by Peter Mikic (Vogue once called the London-based interior designer a “master of metamorphosis”) each of the three floors will have its own distinct visual identity. Upon entering, guests are instantly be immersed in a sense of occasion …

You can see more photos on the restaurant’s Facebook page.

Although Langan’s interior might not look exactly the same, The Telegraph‘s restaurant critic, the incomparable William Sitwell, reminded us of its great past just before it reopened late in October 2021. His article comes complete with vintage photographs:

It was London’s most famous restaurant. Indeed, in the late 1970s, many regarded it as the capital’s only restaurant. At least, the only one worth going to, worth eating in and, above all, worth being seen in. For two decades from 1976, Langan’s Brasserie on Mayfair’s Stratton Street bestrode London’s social scene.

It was a haven for film stars, rock stars, aristocrats and the beautiful people of the day; and those who dined there were more than happy for everyone to know about it.

Now, 45 years after it was founded, and on the eve of its reopening with new owners, the man who obliged the stars’ desire to have their presence well and truly documented in newspaper gossip pages is reflecting on those heady days and – more specifically – nights.

In the kitchen of his London home in North Kensington, society photographer Richard Young – regarded as the original paparazzo – is almost melancholy at the memory. ‘Those days are truly gone,’ he tells me. Yet adorning the walls of his kitchen, hallway, staircase and on almost every space of wall, in fact, are many of those memories in stark black and white.

Framed photographs attest to Young’s role in the story of one of Britain’s great celebrity hotspots; shots of everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Sean Connery, many of which were captured on the pavement outside Langan’s, and also, in delightfully unguarded moments, indoors.

‘Langan’s became the main port of call for any major star who was visiting the capital,’ says Young, now aged 74 and still plying his trade as a photographer of the famous. ‘In those days there were only two restaurants worth going to – Langan’s and San Lorenzo. But San Lorenzo wasn’t as profitable for me [because fewer stars dined there] – and the Food wasn’t as good.’

The restaurant was the brainchild of actor Michael Caine and Irishman Peter Langan, a former chef. Caine had dined at Odin’s in Marylebone, where Langan was cooking, loved his seafood salads and crème brûlée, had become friendly with him and suggested they open a place together. Langan had bonhomie in spades; Caine could supply the guests.

I went to Odin’s in the 1990s with my better half. The food was excellent there, too.

Sitwell continues:

Caine’s idea had been to create an iconic restaurant, like his beloved La Coupole brasserie in Paris. ‘It was a shame there was nowhere in London like that,’ he said. Having dined often with Langan, he decided, in 1975, that they should just fill the vacuum themselves. ‘Peter, let’s create the most fabulous restaurant in London,’ he said one night. 

Langan found the location, where a restaurant had previously stood:

He focused on design and décor while Caine financed the project. The room had the comfort and sophistication of the smart drawing room of a grand London house, the walls adorned with artworks by the likes of David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. The great and the good felt at home.

Soon after, they would hire the chef Richard Shepherd, a man with impeccable credentials and latterly of the city’s renowned Capital Hotel – together the three of them created a restaurant that had the magic touch; a combination of food, atmosphere and guests that other restaurateurs could only dream of.

Now, Richard Young has brought together a collection of all the photographs he took at the restaurant over the best part of two decades.

His book encapsulates an era of glamour that existed long before social media; a time when celebrities didn’t have to worry about fellow diners taking covert pictures of them with a smartphone (and so were able to really let their hair down) and when gossip lovers pored over the pages of Nigel Dempster’s Daily Mail column or William Hickey in The Express.

Young provided a steady daily supply of pictures of celebrities for the latter, having stalked Langan’s the night before.

‘Every morning I would bring in three or four rolls of film that I had taken on my Leica M4,’ he says. ‘They couldn’t believe how I’d got pictures of everyone from Francis Bacon to John Travolta. They loved it and I never told them quite how I did it.’

In fact, Young was on the inside, literally, of Langan’s. At the time a fledgling photographer, he was hired by David Bailey and Patrick Lichfield, founders of celebrity magazine Ritz, to cover the capital’s social scene, and he would join meetings held on an almost daily basis at Langan’s …

‘I went to Langan’s nearly every night. I’d sit at the bar and watch who was coming in. It was triple-A-list celebs and it was fantastic. I could take pictures of them at the front as they left and even sometimes at the tables, usually with their permission. Sometimes without…’

Caine recalls the sight of Young arriving on his precious motorbike. ‘He would turn up on his Harley-Davidson and hang outside, capturing all the big names,’ he writes in Young’s book. ‘Eventually, he became a part of the Langan’s family.

He would hang by the bar and then run outside to capture the likes of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro or Mick Jagger as they were leaving, and then come back in and finish his orange juice.’

Langan’s became Young’s second home:

‘From Princess Grace of Monaco to Frank Sinatra to Catherine Deneuve to Roger Moore, they all went there and it proved a very lucrative time for me,’ Young recalls. ‘To be honest, at the time I didn’t see the inside of my own home very much.’

The food was an essential part of the Langan’s experience:

With Shepherd in the kitchen, Langan’s wasn’t just a place to be seen – the food itself was a major draw. His dishes were mainly old-school French brasserie in style and, as a glance at an old menu reveals, there were a hell of a lot of them.

His handwritten bill of fare, featuring a drawing by David Hockney of the three proprietors – with Caine in the middle, besuited and holding a cigar – featured some 30 hors d’oeuvres, 20 plats du jour, six specialities du jour, 14 legumes and salades, 25 desserts, seven fromages and a concise list of wines and champagnes, all written in French on a single page.

There were snails, avocado with vinaigrette, Dover sole, roast duck, profiteroles and créme brûlée. It was a menu to appease the well-heeled and well-travelled and excite the palates of fashionable Londoners.

However, it became apparent that Langan had a personal problem:

From Caine’s perspective, Shepherd was there not only to run the kitchen efficiently but also, in Caine’s frequent absences, to keep a close eye on Langan. ‘The pressure was enormous,’ recalls Shepherd now, ‘juggling the kitchen, the staff, running the business – and Peter himself.’

For Langan needed to be kept under close observation; indeed, he frequently required a supporting arm as well, to stop him from toppling over. Peter Langan was in his mid-30s when Caine met him. From a rural background in County Clare, he had come to London in the 1960s and quickly established himself as both an effective restaurateur and bon viveur.

He became known as the life and soul of the party. Guests wanted to drink with him and, as his reputation as a hellraiser grew, they expected to see him worse for wear. As Young explains, in the early years he didn’t wish to disappoint.

‘But a lot of it was showbiz,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t drunk nearly as often as people thought. But they expected to see him on all fours, under the tables and biting ladies’ ankles – so that’s what he did.’

Eventually:

Often, Langan wouldn’t make it home at all and would be found asleep on the floor or just slumped in a chair at the back of the restaurant by the cleaning ladies in the morning. Fed up with his antics one night, Shepherd told the staff to put Langan’s chair and table outside on the pavement, to keep him out of trouble.

‘Sadly, Peter unravelled over the years,’ said Caine. In 1988, at the age of 47, he set fire to his house and a few days later died of his injuries. ‘He was a very sensitive soul,’ his widow Susan said, ‘and somewhat misunderstood.’

Back to the celebrities. Mick Jagger once celebrated his birthday at Langan’s:

Young famously captured Mick Jagger blowing the candles out at a table upstairs while celebrating his birthday in 1982.

‘I could hear people singing Happy Birthday in the Venetian Room upstairs one night,’ recalls Young. ‘A barman told me it was Jagger’s birthday. I’ve never run up a set of stairs faster. But I got the picture, bang, bang, bang and the photograph went everywhere. And I was surprised Mick didn’t tell me off.’

Prince Andrew showed up, too. At that time, he was a youthful veteran of the Falklands War.

Young continued photographing:

Night after night. He shot Dudley Moore taking over the piano; he flirted with Elton John, who obliged by flicking a V-sign at him; he saw Marie Helvin running down the street barefoot, clasping her high heels; he recorded Prince Andrew’s frequent dates in the restaurant; and he photographed quieter times as Caine, Shepherd and Langan sat upstairs, talking business.

By the 1990s, the London restaurant scene was changing:

… with a fleet of new British culinary stars emerging in the capital, such as Marco Pierre White, and other dining rooms attracting attention, like Sir Terence Conran’s Bibendum in South Kensington and Rowley Leigh’s Kensington Place in Notting Hill, Langan’s star was waning. Celebrities found new places to be seen at.

Young moved with the times:

Richard Young’s Harley-Davidson was more likely to be spotted a few hundred yards away, behind the Ritz, outside Le Caprice.

Sitwell says:

On my last visit to Langan’s for lunch, some five years ago, the food was still good, but the place was much quieter – with not a fashionista in sight.

Langan’s closed in 2019, a year before the pandemic. However, it was resurrected during lockdown with the refit by new owners Graziano Arricale and James Hitchen:

still as a French brasserie, but with swanky additions, such as a raw seafood bar and beef tartare prepared at the table.

It will be reimagined with a rather grander aesthetic, too, yet the new owners will be hoping to rekindle that original heady mix of A-list guests.

As Arricale, a former operations director for high-end hospitality boss Richard Caring, puts it, ‘We look forward to creating a real hub for the locals of Mayfair, along with those from the worlds of fashion, art, film and music, to help us bring Langan’s back to its rightful place at the centre of Mayfair.’

An Evening Standard article from October 2021, complete with photos, told us more about the new owners and reminisced about the old Langan’s:

Now it is to be reanimated by school friends and business partners, Graziano Arricale — formerly of Birley Clubs, who count celeb haunts Annabel’s and Harry’s Bar among their roster — and James Hitchen, who made his name as the CEO of one of Manchester’s most popular restaurant groups, East Coast Concepts.

This most storied of London restaurants, then, is in experienced hands. The pair have kept the bones of the old Langan’s — the grand brasserie-style food and showpiece dining room — but given it a facelift, expanding the offering. There will be a basement private dining room, a raw seafood bar, and an invitation-only upstairs bar, all of which has been overseen by interior designer Peter Mikic, with a profusion of Italian marble.

The question for the pair, though, is can they distil that same magic which saw Langan’s, which was co-founded by Michael Caine, become the restaurant of the Seventies and Eighties? The names were endless: Mick Jagger, Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali. Joan Collins said it was “like a private club, where one could see many of one’s friends. I loved the food and the atmosphere, even if you did have to fight through the paparazzi on the front pavement”.

Peter Langan got on the wrong side of Princess Margaret, by then divorced:

He once invited himself to Princess Margaret’s table while she was dining with her young lover Roddy Llewellyn, flinging his jacket onto the back of her chair and then scrambling onto the table while mumbling incoherently. She never returned.

He also barred certain A-listers of the time:

He once barred Rudolf Nureyev “for being himself”. He failed to recognise Brando, saying: “The only thing I knew about him was that he was even fatter than me.” And with Orson Welles, he kept things even simpler: “I think you’re a stupid fat f***.”

One famous couple from the past who did appear at Langan’s reopening on October 28, 2021, were Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster. The Mail‘s Richard Eden reported:

Rod Stewart along with his rock ’n’ roll friends were regulars at Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair back in the day — so you can imagine how delighted I was to see the 76-year-old star sailing into an emotional reunion with a long-lost pal at the reopening on Thursday night.

He and his glamorous wife Penny Lancaster, 50, ran into their old friend Jo Wood — ex-wife of Rolling Stones’ Ronnie, Sir Rod’s bandmate in the 1970s rock group Faces.

I wish the new owners well.

Initially, critics panned the new Langan’s for overpriced food and snooty staff, but Arricale and Hitchen took the criticism on board and changed things.

On November 18, 2021, The Times‘s Marina O’Loughlin, an eminent food critic, slammed both the food and the staff — as well as the new dress code, a first for the establishment, requesting that men wear jackets. Her article has a great photo of half of the main floor dining room.

Three weeks later, the aforementioned William Sitwell poled up, writing an equally sharp critique for The Telegraph. His complaints mirrored O’Loughlin’s.

Fortunately, the owners held onto the new dress code and properly addressed the food, the prices and the snootiness. A number of the dishes mentioned in those reviews have been dropped, with prices for many others dramatically reduced.

Sitwell, incensed that he had been asked about his reservation by the doorman, wrote:

… if you now arrive at this expensively refurbished gaff, as it works feverishly to reclaim past glories, and are greeted with a ‘Good evening’ from the chap at the door, you know who to thank.

Thank you, Mr Sitwell.

The doorman was courteous and helpful to another couple who wondered if they could get a table without a reservation. They duly did.

On that basis, Langan’s and its owners deserve to succeed. They’ve listened, and they’ve made necessary changes.

My friend and I had a memorable dinner, one that will go down in our personal annals of great food memories. You won’t be disappointed, either.