La Petite Maison’s first café brings a croque monsieur with veal ham and Comté, and a wine list from the south of France, to a Regency house on Hyde Park Corner.
La Petite Maison opened in 2007 in a triangular dining room with a zinc bar, in a mews behind Claridge’s. Nineteen years later, Nicolas Budzynski, chief executive of LPM Restaurants, has brought the group’s first café to The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner. Its tables are laid with coral plates, beside a banquette covered in a painted print of blue, green and red shapes.
La Petite Maison’s first café
Le Café LPM opened in September as a residency the hotel says will run for a year. It is the first standalone café brand from La Petite Maison, and a permanent Le Café LPM is due to follow in Dubai. Budzynski chose London for the group’s own history. “London holds a special place in our story as the city where La Petite Maison first began in 2007,” he says, “making it the ideal setting to unveil this new chapter of the brand.”
He describes the café as a fresher, more community-driven take on Riviera life than the restaurants, with a more intimate neighbourhood feel inside a luxury hotel. The Lanesborough places it where life by the waves of the French Riviera meets life under the café awning in Belgravia. The plates are meant to be simple, light and shared.
The building is older than any LPM address. James Lane, second Viscount Lanesborough, built Lanesborough House on open land in 1719, and from 1733 it held St George’s Hospital. William Wilkins, the architect of the National Gallery, gave it the Greek revival front it still turns to the park in 1825. It opened as a hotel on New Year’s Eve 1991.
An all-day Riviera menu
Lunch keeps to the dishes a Riviera café would serve. There is a burrata tartine with tomatoes and basil, and a croque monsieur on sourdough with veal ham, Comté and honey butter. The hotel calls the croque its signature, so it is the dish to order at lunch. The Caesar salad comes plain, with chicken or with lobster.
Light bites run all day, among them tapenade, crispy squid with saffron aioli and tuna carpaccio. In the evening the menu adds French onion soup, duck confit with lentils, herb-crusted cod with hollandaise, and steak frites made with wagyu bavette and a bone marrow sauce. Grilled prawns with herb butter and a veal milanese stay on all day.
The group says pastry is at the centre of the café, with signature creations that change through the year with London’s cultural calendar. The signature cake is the Soleil de Menton, a hazelnut praline sponge with mascarpone mousse and lemon curd. Crème caramel and Noir Couture, of dark chocolate, hazelnut and feuilletine, sit beside it.
Wine from the south of France
The wine list stays mostly on the coast the café borrows from. The rosé comes from Figuière, Château Léoube and Domaines Ott, and the rarities include Château Simone’s 2014 Palette and Domaine de Trévallon’s 2016 from the Alpilles. Ornellaia’s 2022 Bianco, from Bolgheri, is the most expensive white.
Three of the cocktails are built on produce: a tomato and olive oil sour with Ketel One, an artichoke sour with bourbon, honey and egg white, and a fig leaf negroni. The café also takes private hire for up to 50 guests.
Open daily from 12:00 to 22:00, with the dinner menu from 17:00 and last orders 30 minutes before closing. Starters £18 to £24; main dishes £25 to £55; desserts £15; cocktails £19.
Le Café LPM, The Lanesborough, Hyde Park Corner, London SW1X 7TA.
Discover more at lecafelpm.com