Langan’s Brasserie announces its presence with a long, pink neon line of Langanses, tootling prettily along its façade, which is opposite Marks & Spencer on Green Park. (The apostrophes, by the way, are mine; signage can be illiterate.) So this is a restaurant with Alzheimer’s, a restaurant that has forgotten its own name.
Could it be hungover? Langan’s was opened in 1976 by Michael Caine, Richard Shepherd and Peter Langan; two thirds of the triumvirate were newsworthy. Langan was the sort of alcoholic who is mistaken for a raconteur: he told Orson Welles he was fat. (He was fat. Do we care about the feelings of Orson’s fat ghost?) His alcoholism became a destination in its own right, because people are cruel. Langan’s was, for 15 minutes in about 1981, the centre of the earth.
And now? Other fashionable brasseries have opened — principally the wonderful trio of Zédel, the Delaunay, and the Wolseley, which is closed for renovations but still retains its cadaverous doorman, who is grimly admitting tins of paint; Novikov, a screaming exhibitionist which is also an Italian/Asian restaurant, is bigger. So what of Langan’s, still hanging on to the fringes of Mayfair?
It is soft at the edges — a rectangular cavern, warm but faintly yellowing. It feels dramatic, a destination restaurant in some circles, still got it; before the food arrives. There is a chaotic cloakroom and elderly waiters in black, always reassuring — but look closer: carpets are fraying; corners are dusty; the bathrooms are over-bright, like an explosion; the art, once so talked about, is not the best. Langan’s art collection, including a terrifying Hockney of Langan himself, staring at the painter with agonised eyes, groping for his glass, was sold in 2012.
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