Pied à Terre – home of permanently great service
Retailers can learn lots about delivering great personal service from the hospitality industry – here’s a personal tale…
When walking down Charlotte Street with my daughter heading for a dinner booking a bright shirt came into view and then a smiling face that I immediately recognised as David Moore sat outside his restaurant Pied à Terre on a sunny Saturday evening.
The phenomenon of restaurants having a proprietor who is front-of-house, the face of the venue, and is visible at as many services as is humanly possible seems to be something that is fading out.
Such characters are the types who, like David on that Saturday evening, rather randomly suggest I return with my daughter to the restaurant for a meal under the loose banner of ‘Fathers & Daughters Dine’ in exchange for me penning a few words for the Pied Blog.
Needless to say, I agreed. Getting here took a few years and over this period as the London dining scene changed irrevocably there has been one constant at the finer end of the market and that has been Pied à Terre. I’ve visited it a number of times during its 33-year history and it has been at the top-end of storied restaurants over this period having won a Michelin star way back in 1993.
It has held onto this accolade ever since, making it the longest-standing Michelin-starred restaurant in London. The undoubted secret of its success and longevity has been an unwillingness to stand still and it is David who has had the appetite for constantly changing the model.
This progressive mindset has proved attractive to an array of chefs who have flourished in David’s Charlotte Street basement kitchen and helped burnish its reputation. And helped it retain its star.
My first visits were business lunches shortly after original chef Richard Neat had left the stoves. David took him away from Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir in Oxfordshire where they both worked. David decided in his mid-20s to create his own place after serving a six-year apprenticeship with the Frenchman and Neat helped him achieve star status.
The chef cooking me those memorable early meals was Tom Aikens who replaced Neat and took Pied à Terre forward and gained a second star in 1999. There was, however, one meal cooked by Neat that I experienced. And it stands out as one of my most memorable ever dinners.
He’d returned to Pied a Terre in 2016 for a one-week residency to celebrate the restaurant’s 25th anniversary. There were two menus – of at least 20 courses – with wines to match and each table of two inevitably took one of each. David recalls that the work involved almost killed him. But we customers loved it.
Back to Aiken who was ultimately replaced by Shane Osborn who once invited me to spend a service in the kitchen. I had called him as I was writing a piece for Restaurant magazine about small kitchens. Osborn suggested I spend a lunchtime service in the basement and I’d really get to see how small it was. He was right. Wherever I stood I was invariably in the way of one of the brigade.
Other talented chefs have since moved up the ranks and into the head chef position – from Marcus Eaves to Andy McFadden, Asimakis Chaniotis and currently Phil Kearsey who joined in May 2024 with an impressive CV. They have all kept the star shining while David has continued to determine the road ahead and remain the face, charm and character of the place that is something arguably more delicate and fickle than any Michelin standard food.
With David’s invitation my daughter and I visited the busy Pied à Terre dining room during a bright Saturday lunchtime service for our ‘Fathers & Daughters Dine’ occasion. There are a variety of lunch tasting menu options with wine flights as well as an a la carte.
The appeal of Pied à Terre for my daughter is its strong focus on plant-based dishes that David and Chaniotis placed prominently on the restaurant’s agenda. There are various plant-based tasting menus and also non-alcoholic flights that she also selected while I am a sucker for wine flights.
Pied à Terre has a great reputation for its wines and has benefited over the years from astute purchases that have proven to be terrific assets to an independent restaurant dealing with things like cash flow and pandemics. Equally, art works that have adorned the dining room’s walls have also proven beneficial to the business in more ways than just being aesthetically pleasing.
Taking me through the extensive and varied wine flight was head sommelier Ciarán Bagchus and his very capable and friendly colleague. Glasses of Viognier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir along with less obvious grape varieties complemented the myriad dishes we were served.
Among the many highlights across the two menus were some relatively simple aspects such as the roscoff onion butter served with an exemplary small loaf, the Sicilian pistachio that accompanied the Norfolk quail (it should be served with every croissant by law), and the artichoke hazlenut cream that surrounded the Jerusalem artichoke and black truffle.
Then there were powerful and visually impactful dishes such as the Highland venison saddle that looked like it should be hung on the wall as a piece of art. The flavour hit here was the haunch that sat atop an onion ring.
The striking elements of the meal across both menus was the liberal sprinkling of sweet ingredients within the savoury dishes. We are talking Mayan chocolate, English pears, Piedmont hazelnuts, and the British heirloom tomatoes – which were a sweet hit tempered by the Bloody Mary Granita.
The sweet hits across the various desserts included the delicate strawberry soufflé, Italian green fig brulee and peanut butter rice crispy that accompanied other petit fours to round off a memorable meal for father and daughter.
Even though it was not the plan to partake in the longer of the tasting menus David’s hospitality gene made it difficult to not jump in feet first and fully partake in the occasion. That’s the generosity of spirit that is found at Pied à Terre and is what we all want a big dollop of when dining out. He makes sure the restaurant is smart but also removes all the starch that can all too often kill fine dining for many people.
Much food for thought for all retailers out there…
Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider