Les 2 Garçons

I've been wanting to go here for a while and managed to plan ahead and get a reservation. The food is very French and very very delicious! We went on a rainy evening and ordered the French onion soup which was deliciously cheesy and had tons of flavor in the broth. The bread was toasted really well and retained that texture that you want in a French onion soup till the last bite! For our mains, my husband ordered the duck with lentils and I had the fish. The fish was phenomenal! Incredibly light but complex flavor. I chose to get Dauphinois potatoes on the side. That was perhaps not the best idea. It seemed to be lacking a little bit salt and just didn't really go well with the fish. Entirely my fault! The duck itself was a tad on the dry side but it ate very well with all the rest of the items on the plate. The lentils were absolutely perfectly cooked and very delicious! Both mains were very generously sized. The star of the night was the pear tart Tatin. You get an entire tart!! It is super flaky, perfectly caramelized and not overly sweet.

Les 2 Garcons has been much lauded by the critics and talked about by friends, so we set off by tube and bus to leafy Crouch End (with wonderful views of Ally Pally as you come over the crest of Crouch End Hill) with high hopes indeed. And, from the moment we saw the jaunty red awning and Central Casting red and white checked tableclothed bistro table outside, we just knew we were in for a treat. And, disappoint… it did NOT. The wonderfully upbeat welcome from co-owners JC (front of house) and Rob (chef) was joyful and so we decided to splash out, French style, starting with a delicious cassis kir royale. A perfectly balanced endive, blue cheese, beet and candied walnut salad for me, perfectly cooked asparagus with the lightest, most delicious hollandaise for him were our best choices for starters (although we did manage also to squeeze in a supremely delicious onion tarte with goat’s cheese scattered on top). We then had steak frites, but this wasn’t any old steak frites. The steak was brilliantly caramelised on the outside – crusty if you will – and perfectly rare on the inside. Oh, what a joy. A shared rhum baba rounded off the evening – which was light and fluffy and soused in rum, as all good babas should be – with a theatrical flame to “pipe it in” to the table. A reasonably priced and eminently quaffable bottle of Languedoc accompanied us through dinner and we shared a glass of house red at the end, just to ensure that it was as good as we thought it would be – I can confirm, it was. And we were accompanied throughout by the dulcet tones of Jacques Dutronc and Serge Gainsbourg – belting out chanson after chanson – a pure delight it was too. There was a very jolly vibe in Les 2 Garcons and we will definitely be making regular pilgrimages to this utterly brilliant neighbourhood restaurant again (and again and again).

Amazing restaurant. Incredible service, food and drink. I have been to many fine dining restaurants - and this is not a fine dining restaurant - but I would choose this over them every day of the week. Very reasonably priced for the quality, and the wine list is the same; the cheapest wine was just over £30 and it extended into fine wines too. All round, couldn’t recommend more.

Charming service, great food & lovely interior. We were treated like kings when we came one weekday evening to this new local French restaurant. Really well cooked, with a great wine list with plenty of options by the glass. The two gentlemen have got off to a great start, judging by the fish dishes we had. Definitely keen to return to try the duck, based on the dish I saw going past me.

An amazing find! A little bit hidden away but so worth it. We went on looking for a taste of French cuisine and not only were we not disappointed, but we were wowed. The menu is small, but very well thought out, the service and ambience were impeccable (we had special dietary needs too, which were very well catered for). There is no one thing on the menu that I can recommend as everything we had was absolutely fantastic. À bientôt les deux garçons. On va revenons plutôt et souvent (hope my French is ok)