Plenty of life in Cafe Boheme

When I first arrived in London and was living in a shoe box in Chiswick, I escaped constantly to the theatre, although I could barely afford it. I loved those visits; a sign I was ‘arriving’ – a budding member of the liberal intelligentsia, freed from the artistic wasteland of the North. But the opera was scary: full of discordant tunes, foreign languages and old people.

Over the years – and thanks to the kindness of friends with spare tickets for Covent Garden – I’ve grown to love it. And while I doubt I’ll ever sit through The Ring – or understand anything by Glazunov – I now count myself a devotee of the great operatic composers.

Next week I have three operatic excursions in six days: Verdi at the Royal Opera House, Mozart in Syon Park and then Tchaikovsky at Glyndebourne. I would once have compared this fate to root canal surgery, but not any more.

While pondering how to prepare myself for this orgy of song, I decided to go back to basics. One of the earliest operas I fell in love with was La Bohème (that tale of earthy, shabby passion would bring a tear to a glass eye). And because Paris couldn’t be reached by lunchtime, I headed for Soho, to find my own Bohemia.

Café Boheme and Bar Boheme have colonised a whole pavement on one side of Old Compton Street and I wondered if this was an inexorable march. Café Boheme is a newly refurbished faux Parisian restaurant beneath Soho House that is open to any old punter. The staff welcome you like old friends (which of course would never happen in Paris), and the day I visited, it was gloriously sunny and the outside tables were packed with diners.

Inside, the décor is pure film-set French – it has a metal-embossed bar with high, plush leather stools. There’s dark wood everywhere and shiny, squashy banquettes. In fact it’s a very masculine setting, which was rather appropriate, since I had taken an ex-soldier with me. ‘Soldiers like their food,’ he told me, jutting out his formidable jaw, and I prayed that we weren’t going to be presented with fiddly little messes of dishes. Boheme was packed with a true brasserie crowd, every age and style of person, all just seeming to want to enjoy each other’s company, relax and eat lovely food. In fact, it reminded me of my favourite brasseries in New York, which proves yet again quite how awesomely global the fabric of London can be and how so many London restaurateurs know how to get the feel of their places so very right.

The all-day menu is predictable – but that is what you’d expect with brasserie cooking. We started with prawns (the laborious peeling of them always takes the edge off my appetite, which I like) and a plate of oysters. Unusually, these both tasted as though they’d had some kind of recent relationship with the sea.

For his main course, the soldier chose brochette of veal kidneys with Turbigo sauce. These were served reclining on an opulent bed of creamy mash – you could just imagine them wailing a plaintive final aria before being gobbled up. My lapin à la moutarde was deliciously rustic. I get fed up eating rabbit that looks and tastes like lacklustre chicken. Happily, the portions were soldier-sized.

The crème brûlée was faultless, though the chocolate mousse was so rich someone will have to slap a tax on it. There’s a compact yet comprehensive wine list that we indulged in, starting with Saumur Brut Rosé, which tasted like summer in a glass, moving on to a bottle of Gigondas. The soldier speaks Arabic, and as the bottle drained, there was an increasingly impressive banter with our Algerian waiter.

Blinking, we stepped outside into the bright sunshine, half expecting to hear a distant accordion playing while we inhaled the thick fog of Gauloises cigarettes, but instead we were confronted by the sight of a man lying on a car, being held down by police. Soho has always been risky as well as risqué. Just like the opera, all life is here.

Café Bohème
13-17 Old Compton Street, W1V 5JQ