Bibendum, London

When Terence Conran opened Bibendum in 1987—in a landmark building that was originally the Michelin company’s U.K. headquarters—the restaurant seemed to embody Gallic bourgeois luxury, at least as imagined through English eyes. Now newly reopened by Claude Bosi (whose Hibiscus earned two stars from the French tire manufacturer’s eponymous food guide), Bibendum still tends toward the decidedly posh but with, as The Observer puts it, “a profound understanding of the simple virtues.”

IN THE ROOM: The royal blue light, streaming in through stained-glass windows that match the plush carpet, is part of the reason the airy space, according to The Observer, “feels like a room where only good things happen.”

ON THE TABLE: Bosi is no slave to French classicism, and although the cooking at Bibendum is less innovative than it was at Hibiscus, its flavors are gutsy. The “immaculately fried curlicues of chicken skin with mayo into which the very essence of roast chicken seems to have been distilled” sends the Evening

Standard into “raptures,” and the wild garlic velouté is “a bowl of sublime beauty and flavor.” For the Sunday Times’s critic, a “rich and barnyardy” but “delightfully refined” tripe and cuttlefish gratin is “quite the most exciting restaurant dish” he has eaten all year.

IN BRIEF: Bosi has not merely revived a classic but elevated it so that, as The

Telegraph puts it, there’s “an air of the sacred to one of London’s most legendary restaurant spaces.”