Hélène Darroze at The Connaught
Classic French Cuisine at a Historic Landmark in London, UK
Hélène Darroze is a fourth-generation chef from Mont-de-Marsan in the Landes region of southwestern France, where her family ran a restaurant in nearby Villeneuve-de-Marsan dating back to her great-grandfather around 1895. She studied business at BEM Management School in Bordeaux, graduating in 1990, and her first role in a professional kitchen was not actually in a kitchen at all. She started in the office at Alain Ducasse's Le Louis XV in Monaco before Ducasse encouraged her to cross over to the brigade, where she was one of very few women. She later returned home to run the family restaurant and maintain its Michelin star, but financial difficulties forced it to close, and in 1999 she opened her own eponymous restaurant in Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It earned one star in 2001 and two in 2003.
The Connaught project came in 2008, part of a major refurbishment of the historic Mayfair hotel. The restaurant took over the former grill room previously run by Angela Hartnett under Gordon Ramsay Holdings. Darroze was initially apprehensive but won over by the space and the owners. Stars followed quickly: the first in 2009, the second in 2011, and the third in 2021. She now oversees three restaurants across two countries (the three-starred Connaught, two-starred Marsan par Hélène Darroze in Paris, and one-starred Hélène Darroze à Villa La Coste in Provence) for a total of six Michelin stars. Her cooking draws deeply from her Landes heritage (foie gras, family-produced Armagnac, Espelette pepper) while folding in global influences from her travels. Day-to-day kitchen leadership at The Connaught falls to Executive Chef Marco Zampese, an Italian from the Veneto who joined around 2018 and executes Darroze's vision with his own technical precision.
This was my second visit. I remembered the whimsical board game menu from the first time, where you could remove pieces from the board and what remained would be the key dishes in your meal. That detail had stuck with me. The restaurant has since undergone a full renovation, and the board game concept was retired along with the old décor. The room is now all pinks and pastels, with indirect lighting and a colour palette that reminded me of the pink room at Sketch. The waiters wore pastel blue suits; the waitresses, dark red dresses. It looked beautiful, though something of the playfulness had gone.
The meal began with a welcome drink: duck consommé served in a misshapen ceramic mug, finished with juniper and pine oil. Herbaceous and surprisingly complex for something that arrived before I'd even looked at the menu.
Three canapés followed. A pumpkin tartlet with daikon. Goat cheese sandwiched between leek leaf crackers with a rose and horseradish jelly on top. And a small doughnut filled with duck meat, warm and rich. All three were well-executed, compact little previews of what was to come.
The tasting menu ran seven courses with several supplement options. I went with the caviar and, naturally, the signature Armagnac Darroze, but skipped the black truffle seasonal supplement.
The caviar course arrived as a generous scoop over thin slices of raw, crunchy cauliflower with crushed Piedmont hazelnuts, gold leaf, and a sorrel foam sitting in a sea urchin custard. I found out later it was the first night they had served this particular dish, which made it all the more impressive for how confidently it landed.
Next, a beetroot dish with smoked crème fraîche, trout and pike roe, and barbecued kombu. The first hit was pure salinity before giving way to the creaminess of the fraîche and the fresh sweetness of the beetroot underneath.
The bread course brought a homemade rye sourdough with two kinds of French butter: a simple salted version and a peppery Espelette butter. The sourdough would reappear later in the meal in a way I didn’t expect.
Scallop came next, with a green onion and coriander sauce and a carrot mousse studded with herbs on the side. The scallop itself was fall-apart tender, though I found it slightly overseasoned.
Then a surprise: an off-menu course of grilled ox tongue, topped with pickled turnip slices and served in a chimichurri turnip purée. Beefy, substantial, and one of my highlights of the night. The kind of dish that lands with real confidence.
The barbecue turbot followed, with confit potatoes, tiny thin potato crisps carrying small scoops of caviar, and an oyster and caviar sauce. Rich, with a slight bitterness from the sauce that played well against the perfectly cooked fish.
The main was pigeon breast encrusted with toasted grains, alongside savoy cabbage in a pigeon jus. A confit pigeon leg arrived as accompaniment with a touch of quince on the side.
Before dessert, I was given a tour of the refreshed restaurant, including the private Armagnac room featuring bottles from the Darroze family collection.
Downstairs, I had a brief chat with the chef and discovered that, for a more intimate experience, there is a table set right inside the kitchen itself, less formal, more interactive, with the chef and the brigade working around you. Worth knowing for a future visit.
Returning to my seat, a palate cleanser arrived: bread ice cream made from leftover rye sourdough, with muscat jam and crispy toasted croutons also made from the rye. A clever full-circle moment with the earlier bread course, and the flavour worked.
Given a choice of apéritifs, I spotted a Sauternes on the list. Whenever I see a Sauternes, I know I’m ordering one.
The pre-dessert, however, was the one real miss of the night. A rhubarb and rice dish that was also brand new to the menu. Grainy, hard, and unpleasant in texture, closer to eating gravel than anything that belonged on a tasting menu.
The signature Armagnac Darroze more than made up for it. Three decades of vintages from the Darroze family collection were offered to choose from, and a small pitcher of the chosen Armagnac was poured over a green apple glazed baba and left to soak in, served alongside a green apple sorbet with diced kiwi and a touch of Chantilly cream. Divine.
A collection of petit fours followed, but by that point the jet lag had caught up with me. I asked for them to be boxed up and took them back to the hotel, where they made for an excellent breakfast the next morning.
The renovation has changed the feel of the restaurant, and the loss of the board game menu took away some of the fun I remembered from my first visit. But setting that aside, this was a confident, well-paced meal. Apart from the unfortunate pre-dessert, every course showed real thought and execution. Worth returning for a third visit.
Total damage 452 GBP/1 person.