Brasserie Constance, London SW6: ‘A souped-up corporate box with meticulous food’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Brasserie Constance is everything you’d expect of an Adam Byatt restaurant: fine produce, cooked with aplomb. Then something curious happened ...

Over a lunch at Brasserie Constance in Fulham, west London, eating my main course claypot chicken with barley while surrounded by smiling diners at other tables, I got a glimpse of how it must feel to be Kim Jong-un. My journey to Fulham Pier had been odd enough, but now I was in my Great Dictator era.

Actually, maybe I should wind back a little. Even finding Brasserie Constance had been a bit of an issue, not least because this new “neighbourhood restaurant” from the well-loved chef Adam Byatt is not quite what’s advertised. Constance, the website says, is on the banks of the Thames, “where the river’s beauty is on full display”. It is a restaurant named in tribute to the mid-20th-century florist, potter and cook Constance Spry, a doyenne of domestic bliss who is the inspiration for this classy brasserie where coronation chicken paté en croute, potted duck with damson and Devon split with mead and greengages are on offer. So far, so dreamy.