Cyril Lignac’s first restaurant outside France has a new Mayfair room by Lázaro Rosa-Violán, with a robata grill for wagyu and a private salon hidden behind the dining room.
London was the first city outside France where Cyril Lignac opened Bar des Prés, and the restaurant has now moved house. It trades from 41A South Audley Street in Mayfair, under walls lined in silk and textiles embroidered with peacocks. Lignac says he wanted the new room to feel familiar and new at once.
Cyril Lignac’s Franco-Japanese kitchen
Bar des Prés opened officially on South Audley Street on 7 May. Its cooking is French technique with Japanese influence, and the signatures came with it: a crunchy crab and avocado galette with Madras curry, a California roll of Label Rouge salmon with jalapeño and sriracha, sea bass marinated with yuzu and dry miso, and beef gyoza with ginger and soy.
Lignac comes from Aveyron, and his career runs through a series of Paris restaurants, among them Le Chardenoux, which cooks mostly fish. He also wrote the menu at Lucas Carton. With the pastry chef Benoit Couvrand he also founded La Pâtisserie Cyril Lignac, known for its chocolate teddy bears. Bar des Prés also has two addresses in Paris, a room on the 51st floor of ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai, and another in Gustavia on Saint-Barth.
The new menu adds a robata grill, with yakitori-style chicken satay, beef fillet and an A4 Kagoshima wagyu rib-eye. Wagyu runs further through the list, in a crispy maki topped with wagyu tartare and the Bar des Prés wagyu smash burger, a permanent dish in London after its success in Dubai. Chilean sea bass now comes with wild garlic pesto and a Thai broth.
Desserts run to a red berry and mango pavlova, a vanilla mille-feuille with pecan praline, and profiteroles with chocolate sauce. The house cocktail, the Tokyo Garden, mixes Tanqueray No. Ten gin with shiso, sake, lychee and yuzu, and the wine list is French.
Rooms by Lázaro Rosa-Violán
Lázaro Rosa-Violán’s studio set marble and polished wood against the peacock textiles and silk-toned walls, in deep reds and blues under sculptural lights. Further in, the main room gives way to smaller dining areas.
Behind the restaurant is The Salon, the private dining room, which takes up to 30 across three tables or 22 at one. A party there can have canapés from Lignac’s signatures or sit down to the à la carte.
Open every day from 12:00, until 00:30 from Monday to Saturday and 00:00 on Sunday; closed from 15:00 to 18:00 Monday to Thursday.
Bar des Prés, 41A South Audley Street, Mayfair, London W1K 2PS.
Discover more at bardespres.com