It’s the omelet. It’s simply too good-looking. We’re only talking about fluffed, folded-over eggs saturated with color and filled with delicately sautéed spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms, but in the world of eggs, this is a Fabergé.
And it’s only one of the reasons why Maison François is now the most reliable restaurant in central London. Its thirtysomething chef and proprietor, François O’Neill, composes his restaurant as one would assemble a dish at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Start with a crowd-pleasing, French-leaning menu. Layer in handsome interiors, rooted in midcentury-modern design. Finish with a welcoming, highly competent staff, stylishly dressed in dark denim jeans, crisp, white button-ups, and starched aprons.
“There were two things I wanted to achieve,” says O’Neill, tucked away in a walnut banquette as the pleasant hum of a Wednesday breakfast service vibrates around him. “A busy room, but with good acoustics.” He was much more ambitious than that, but fine—the cork-lined ceilings mean that there’s no reason to shout (thank you!), and between the vibe-seeking Londoners, the art-world heavyweights, and the second-to-none french fries, there’s always something, or someone, to talk about.
Even though O’Neill’s name is on the door, very few of his regulars know who he is, and that is because instead of swanning around the dining room, he pretends to be a low-ranking member of the kitchen staff. “My job is basically a glorified runner now,” he says. Most of the time he’s delivering dishes, ensuring that his attention is equally divided between front- and back-of-house. “I did my stint in suits for a long time,” he says. “I feel much more comfortable where I am.”
O’Neill inherited the hospitality gene from his Irish father, Hugh, Lord Rathcavan, who brought Parisian-style dining to London in the 80s with Brasserie St. Quentin, on Brompton Road. His French mother, Sylvie O’Neill, took the family to spend summers in Bordeaux and Arcachon. “Food was at the hub of a lot of our family time,” says O’Neill. “There was a slight obsession around restaurants.”
There’s always something, or someone, to talk about.
After what he describes as a “slightly checkered school history, educationally,” he started working in his father’s kitchens. “For the next five years, I was washing veg,” he says, eventually rising to the rank of grill chef, working his magic on fish, meat, and sauces. “I was being around people I wouldn’t necessarily have met in other walks of life, and I embraced it,” he says.
In 2008, he opened Brompton Bar & Grill, his first solo enterprise, at the former St. Quentin’s site in Knightsbridge. Although he’d had plenty of experience in the kitchen, he was still learning the intricacies of running a business and managing a team. “It’s not how I recommend people go into restaurants,” he admits. “It’s like driving a car at 100 miles an hour, and trying to change a tire while you’re going.” After six years, it closed, and as O’Neill pondered his next act, he met financier and fellow restaurateur Juan Santa Cruz, who was plotting what would become Casa Cruz, his members’ club in Notting Hill. (There is now a satellite location on New York’s Upper East Side.) O’Neill ran the dining operations, and together they opened three restaurants in as many years. “It was a good journey, but it was time to go and do my own thing—an all-day brasserie,” he says. “It was in my bones to do that.”
After an exhaustive search for the right location, Maison François opened on Duke Street in the autumn of 2020, after the first pandemic lockdown. Its neighbors—Turnbull & Asser, Budd shirtmaker, and Fortnum & Mason—are London institutions, and Maison François is a palate cleanser, making everything old seem new again. Between the meal service and the festivities hosted at Frank’s, the subterranean wine bar, “the lights never go out,” says O’Neill.
But O’Neill isn’t satisfied. In October, the restaurant did a pop-up at Frieze London, in Regent’s Park, and on November 16, O’Neill will welcome chefs from all over Europe to enter their best pâté en croûte in the Croûte Off 2023 competition. (He’ll supply the cornichons.)
Next up: another restaurant in central London, which will open at some point in 2024. “Our sibling is currently baking in the oven,” he says. Let’s hope it will be as irresistible as his roast chicken.
Ashley Baker is a Deputy Editor at AIR MAIL and a co-host of the Morning Meeting podcast