Claude Bosi at Bibendum

Claude Bosi at Bibendum Review at-a-glance

Awards: Two Michelin Stars

+A historic dining room that is worth visiting irrespective of the food. The matching Michelin themed tableware doesn’t hurt either.

+Bold flavors that strike a good balance between creativity and comfort.

-Expensive by London standards (less so if you compare to another major city like Paris).

-Pacing was excruciatingly slow and did not pick up even when requested.

Rating: 91/100

Verdict: Claude Bosi at Bibendum is housed in a building that was formerly the Michelin company’s UK headquarters and has one of the most expensive tasting menus in London. Earning Michelin stars was a requirement to make this endeavor worthwhile. Bosi did just that, earning the same two stars he had at Hibiscus (his former restaurant) shortly after opening in the Michelin House. Based on my visit, the two stars were not just a perfunctory award based on the chef’s reputation and address. The cooking more than lived up to a two-star standard (even if the speed it came out of the kitchen did not).

For Bosi, the question is not really if it should have two stars but if it should have a third. If I apply the UK Michelin guide’s wonky standards where the Ritz only has one star, maybe. However, what about if I apply the more exacting standards of say the German Michelin guide (which demoted its only weak spot, Gästehaus Klaus Erfort, in 2021)? I would say no. My visit to Claude Bosi had a brilliant dining room and very good cooking that just missed greatness.

Price I Paid: £165

Date Visited: September 2020

Value: 11/20 (in context of London, higher if you compare to other major cities like Paris)

Claude Bosi Background

The food at Bibendum is hard to place. His cooking at Hibiscus was known for bold flavors and unusual combinations. I got the bold flavors at Bibendum but unusual flavor pairings were mostly absent - perhaps his cooking style has changed since the Hibiscus days? Chef Bosi’s Lyonaisse roots could be seen in many of the dishes (particularly with the amuse-bouches) which helped impart some of the Chef’s personality on the food. Products were mostly local from the UK rather than flown in from across the world. Most of all, Chef Bosi’s cooking was precise. I can quibble with some of the flavor combinations. I can’t dispute the cooking.

Unfortunately, that fine cooking came out of the kitchen alarmingly slow. So slow I can not disconnect my view of the food with how long it took to arrive at my table. I requested a few times for them to speed up the pacing and, while they were quite apologetic, it did not help much until the back half of the meal. The first three courses were spaced out between 25-30 mins apart (including after the request to increase the pace) and the entire meal clocked in at nearly 4 hours even though I was eating solo. That is too long. This is the problem with reviewing a restaurant after only one visit. The pacing was likely an aberration - the chef was filming for a news story when I visited and this may have slowed the kitchen down. The pacing will likely be fine when you visit. But when I visited it wasn’t and I can’t help but factoring that into my score.

At least the lengthy meal took place in one of the finest dining rooms I have been to. There are more luxurious dining rooms and ones with better views but it is hard to compete with the history here. Stained glass windows featured Bibendum (the Michelin man) and the room was bathed in natural light before the sunset. The restaurant even pays homage to the building through its tableware, many of which featured Bibendum in one way or another including some sterling silver salt and pepper shakers. The room is great and I highly recommend visiting for lunch - for some reason they elect to barely light the dining room at dinner which distracts from its natural beauty.

A 6-course tasting menu will set you back £165. The three-course menu is not much cheaper at £115 with supplements for dishes that feature premium ingredients like caviar and truffle. Wine mark-ups were equally steep with the tasting menu wine pairing costing almost as much as the food at £135. Visting Bibendum is not a cheap experience by any means but when you are shooting to be among the best restaurants in the city you expect customers to pay for it.

What I ate at Claude Bosi

First up came an “olive tree” which had an olive that was stuffed with ratatouille and basil on a spoon below it. This tasted fine but the concept of presenting amuses with a “tree” is quite tired at this point. The other bites were better and included an onion tart with bacon and thyme, a crackling made of chicken cartilage, and a very nice bowl of artichoke and foie. Each of these were lovely, the tart having fine texture, the foie a deep rich flavor, and the cracklings (the worst of the three by process of elimination) brought an interesting texture due to using cartilage.

After the initial set of nibbles, the kitchen brought out the Bibendum Egg and I was skeptical - these egg dishes are quite played out these days and the flavors are always similar. My skepticism was unwarranted as Bosi’s egg, featuring sweet corn, coconut, and lamb powder, was an entirely new taste experience. The depth of flavor in the sweet corn was remarkable and the coconut, a flavor I typically hate, was very well judged. Rounding out the dish was an intense meaty flavor from the lamb powder.

I started off with one of Bosi’s classic dishes - duck jelly, onion, smoked sturgeon, and Daurenki caviar. This was a powerhouse of a dish that made it clear why it was a signature dish from the first spoonful. The duck jelly had an incredibly complex flavor and smooth mouthfeel while also helping lift up the caviar. The various strong ingredients worked in complete harmony. Besides the taste, the precise plating was a real treat to look at.

The next dish was cornish crab and a 36mo Parmesan foam that was topped with fennel and apple jelly. The flavors of this were hard to dispute. The crab was very well-sourced with pleasing sweetness and a good pair with the umami-laden parmesan foam. That said, this was a decent portion and quite rich. In theory, the richness should have been balanced out by apple jelly but there just was not enough of it to get the job done. By the end, this became cloying and a bit of a chore to eat. A good dish that just needed the proportions tweaked to make it great.

It takes a confident chef to serve mashed potatoes as a course in a tasting menu. I guess Bosi is confident because that is exactly what he did with the next dish of mashed potatoes, brûléed chicken powder, roe, and raspberry vinegar. The textures in this dish were a wonder, the smooth suds playing very well with the satisfying crunch from the torched chicken powder (which also added a great meaty flavor). Much like the cornish crab, this was a very rich dish (I do not want to know how much butter was involved). However, where the crab lacked balance, this was a triumph - the raspberry vinegar nestled at the bottom provided the perfect foil for the rich potatoes.

Chef Bosi kept it local for the seafood course, showing off brill from Cornwall and pairing it with wild mushrooms, coconut and shellfish sauce. I will always take a piece of turbot over brill but the fish was well treated and had great flavor with its sweet, firm flesh. This was the second time the kitchen incorporated coconut into a dish (the first being the egg appetizer) and again it was used to great effect - somehow I felt like it made the entire dish feel lighter.

I transitioned into the meat with veal sweetbreads paired with nashi pear and satay sauce. There were lots of surprising flavors here - when the chef is from Lyon I expect sweetbreads but I certainly don’t expect them to be coated in a satay sauce and cooked in lemongrass. The sweetbreads themselves were textbook, a crispy exterior from the hard sear and then silky on the inside. That said, the dish lacked refinement to my palate. The satay sauce tasted like satay sauce, nothing more and nothing less. It went well with the sweetbread but felt out of place and was the dominant flavor in the dish.

While the tasting menu was designed to be a surprise, the kitchen kindly listened to my request to have the main course be another one of Bosi’s signature dishes - rabbit, langoustine, and french tarragon. Rabbit can be devilishly tricky to cook (it dries out easily) but the kitchen managed to do it well, getting nice caramelization on the exterior while keeping the meat incredibly moist while contributing its mild gamey flavor to the dish. This flawless meat melded impeccably with the langoustines and rich sauce. Not quite as strong as the caviar dish but clearly a signature for a reason.

They served the pre-dessert of shaved ice, chartreuse, melon, and olive oil in the kitchen with Chef Bosi himself shaving the ice and plating it up. I really enjoyed this, the chartreuse was nicely restrained and the melon and olive oil of outstanding quality. While this was a simple dish, it was done extremely well. By comparison, this was much better than a pre-dessert at GRRH a few days earlier which used sauternes on shaved ice and was actually painful to eat.

Dessert was cep, banana, and peanuts. Using cep in a dessert is a bold move but was done with great finesse, the mushroom being just present enough that you know it is there without being too strong. As the only dessert, I did find the overall presentation and size of the dish to leave me somewhat wanting. Thankfully, it was followed up by some very good mignardises to satisfy the sweet tooth.