Returning to what makes us happy: Brasserie Zedel reviewed

Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased and I was allowed to visit London. It is, for me — and everyone is different in their yearnings — everything a restaurant should be: very beautiful; well run (by Corbin & King of the Wolseley and the Delaunay); not insultingly priced; and, as it is windowless, pleasingly unreal: an enchanted basement, if you will — a depository for dreams.

I arrive early on the first night, walking through silent London, resisting the urge to lie down in the road. This used to be the Regent Palace Hotel, the grand hotel of Soho. The restaurant was its dining room: Edwardiana at its most gilded and absurd. It is pinks and golds, columns and rails, but it works. It summons its dreamscape, as if it has practised for it since the lights went out. It is La Coupole in Paris but more delicate, imaginative and tender. La Coupole is Paris’s greatest brasserie, but it is still offensively brown and brusque, and the paintings are terrible. If you can tolerate so much pink, there can’t be a prettier restaurant than this. I find it comforting — Zédel is a work of art by itself — but I always find food comforting. Paid-for dining is returning to what made you happy once; or what you thought would make you happy. Pandemic magnifies this tendency: to look back in hunger.

At the door I place my face in front of a machine that takes my temperature. This feels normal now, or at least not so weird that I would not do it. People are adaptable, and I would do far more to eat out than this. After three more Domino’s pizzas I would probably offer to sever my hand and tear out my eyes.