Gauthier Soho: Fanciest Vegan Place in London That Maybe Didn’t Want Us There

For my big birthday this year, we went to the fanciest place in town that’s 100% vegan: Gauthier Soho. We once went yeeears ago, before it Chef Alexis went fully vegan and opened up a whole mess of vegan restaurants. Back then, Gauthier Soho was an omni fancy French restaurant doing the very impressive 4-5 hour tasting menu thing, but for some reason they had a vegan option – so rare and amazing! How would it compare now that the whole place was vegan? Would it be as impressive, as delicious? Would we again walk away thinking it deserved Michelin stars? Would they welcome us with open arms? Ha I’m funny!

I made a booking months ago and put in the notes that it was a big birthday celebration. I also noted that we’d be using vouchers — over Christmas, they ran a campaign where if you bought £x to the Gauthier restaurant empire, you’d receive double that amount in vouchers. I meant that’s giving money away, and if they didn’t turn me off completely at this dinner (read on!) I’d be setting a calendar to do that again and tell all my friends too. So we spent £100 on vouchers, received £200, and we earmarked that windfall for this fancy dinner. So smart!

We arrived at 7:28 for our 7:30 seating – the Grande Diner tasting menu starts its first seating at 7:30pm or I would have booked earlier. (Not that I’m such an early-bird-special lover all the time, but tasting menus go soooo long and I am a sleepy baby.) We rang the doorbell – they have to let you in and make sure you are worthy! – and the man who answered said they were running a little behind setting up after the previous (non-Grande) seating so, can we just wait outside. (Not very MStar, noted.) I asked if I could use the bathroom and he said oh of course. So that was nice! Or was that a faux pas? We were seated in the small charming dining room (maybe 8 tables of 2!) in…the worst table in the place. I mean, it was empty, and they put us at the worst table. It was in a corner with a bit of wall jutting out so it was like a dark cage. Since you can’t put baby in the corner, Z took the worse seat and was like, ‘this feels weird.’ Another couple came in and was seated, and the same guy, let’s call him Chad, that’s not his name but let’s call him that, was like ‘oh let’s move you to a better table, let’s put you by the window.’ And he moved them. Since no one else was there yet, I asked ‘oh could we please move as well!’ and he said no. He said the tables are assigned, the remaining window table had been requested (fair), and he moved that other couple because they have been here before, so vip treatment. I mean…we’d been there before too Chad. But okay. No big deal. I guess saying it’s a special occasion doesn’t go far in this restaurant because probably everyone is celebrating a special occasion coming here.

At this point, since all we could see from our cage was empty tables that we couldn’t move to, we noticed that a few had red envelopes on them. We wondered what they were for! What a mystery. When another table was seated by us, we watched them open their envelope. It was a ‘thank you for sharing your special celebration with us’ card from the chef, from Gauthier himself. Maybe it’s for anniversaries and not birthdays, we said to ourselves.

Chad had by now given us our menus, though were was no ordering since we were all here for the Grande Diner tasting menu. He seemed to be sharing waiter duties with a low-talker who we will call Patty because that was not her name. Patty liked to tell us about our dishes in a voice that only the ghosts of Victorian London could hear. And then she liked to take our empty dishes away without asking us if we enjoyed it or literally anything at all. We”ll get there. So we may not have had to order food, but we hadn’t yet gotten water, and no one had yet asked if we wanted the wine pairings. I noticed by 7:45 that although only 3 of the 8 tables had been yet filled, they hadn’t come over to us again to ask anything. It took way too long at this kind of restaurant for us to say, hey, we want to give you more money for wine pairings (Z) and the nonalcoholic pairings (me), why don’t you want to take our money? Seems service might be a running issue at Gauthier outposts.

Finally there was food! They brought out the canapes first, three little bites to start your experience. On the menu the canapes were listed as ‘lemon and fennel/ citrus pearls/ fennel flower/ wild garlic arancino’. This translated to: a light little lemony sourdough cracker with lemony pearls, kind of like less chewy boba? That was good but I’m glad I ate first because it was the least anything of the three. Next was an arancini ball that was so so good and had me channeling Jon Lovitz saying “Like it? I could eat 100 of ’em.” But a fun surprise was that the arancini was resting on a bed of crunchy roasted buckwheat – yes just for the presentation, but it was cooked and roasted buckwheat rules! So even though this was the fanciest place ever I ate some of this delicious decoration. I mean look at all that buckwheat that would have gone to waste; I’m not allowed to have a few kernels?

Last was a nice little creamy lemony fennel soup, simple and light. This soup itself would make a decent summer dinner all on its own, but we aren’t here to be reasonable tonight.

The drinks pairing for this, which was also meant to cover the next course, was one of my absolute faves – a cucumber, green apple, and lovage juice. Yep, totally simple, totally classic green juice, one that I would order 100x at a juice bar. Excellent job!

Even though we are super polite people and we were friendly and smiling, we noticed that Chad was kind of being antagonistic to us. I have no idea what we did because we hadn’t done anything yet except ask super nicely if it was possible to move tables. So like, what gives? Is it because I was eating the buckwheat decoration? Is it because I drank all my green juice without saving any for the next course like I was told to? (I mean guys if you want me to savor green juice across two whole courses you’re gonna have to give me more than one ounce of it.) We really didn’t know what happened, but the waitstaff started being quite cold to us.

Next was the best course if I’m allowed to be super basic because it was big ole’ hunk of bread. Their spectacular brioche feuilletee, to be precise, which means lots of buttery layers of goodness. We each got our own giant brioche bun and it was warm and buttery and composed of a million flaky layers and holy god this was spectacular. I don’t know if I’ve had brioche in 20 years of being vegan but if I had it definitely wasn’t as good as this masterpiece. It came with a giant bowl filled with a little moon-shaped cream that was a cross between feta and butter. (It’s called feta on the menu but it wasn’t as sharp as feta should be, and its role was as butter). The fetter came with crispy oily lovage on top (no one loves the word lovage like these people).

The bread was so good – if I could eat 100 of the arancini, I could eat 200 of these rolls. It was incredibly messy and oily, and we were like ‘if this place had a Michelin star they’d bring us wipes and clean the crumbs off the table. ‘ (We whispered it super quietly to each other -this is not why they hated us!) Well, it may have taken a little longer than it should have, but they did indeed bring us towels and wipe the crumbs! A point in the plus column! But when they did so, and took our plates away, they literally said NOTHING to us. It’s super weird. They were making conversation with every other table and asking them how they enjoyed each dish – and with us it’s like their faces fell and their mouths zipped shut. And some of the other people were jerks!

But another point in the plus column – I had misbehaved and finished my tiny little green juice back in canape town, and Chad brought me some more. Wow. What a guy. Did he say anything while he refilled my glass? No. Did he register than I said oh thank you so much? no.

Next course: vaucluse green asparagus with sorrel, celery cream, confit tomato, and mustard semi-freddo.

Now I don’t know what vaucluse means but I know semi-freddo is a sort of ice cream/mousse concoction. And this menu said we were getting MUSTARD ice cream. I was very excited to find out if this was going to be revolting or amazing. And guess which it was? AMAZING! It totally worked for a pungent savory frozen delight to be alongside the (rather disappointingly not-strongly-flavored) asparagus, a few radishes, the celery cream (dig it), and the confit tomato, which means a super soft very cooked tomato. We did wish the asparagus was a little brighter and crisper but otherwise that mustard ice cream made this a great dish.

The braised purple artichoke was next, with black olive cultured butter, kalamata crumble, verjus dressing, leeks, and white bean salad. Hooray for beans! I don’t know if you can tell but that artichoke shaped little decoration on the top? that’s the kalamata crumble! It was made of olives! and you smashed it with your fork and ate it! I love playing with food. Is this why they hated me?

The mousse under this dish was delicious, and I was thrilled to have some white beans. I don’t know what’s going on, but every store has been out of white beans for MONTHS in this country! You can find some old cans at random Taj stores but Tescos across London only have chickpeas. Man alive. Overall this was a really good dish.

My drink for this course was super interesting: a dirty olive tonic, with green olive, dill, black peppercorn and tonic water. It was like a dirty martini or gin and tonic (what’s the difference!) and I liked how different it was. It was one pickle short of a pickle party. The texture was thicker than expected, and that sounds gross, but I liked it. It was probably from the olive juice.

We noticed two things at this stage: 1, even though we were served first initially (since we got there before everyone else!), we were no longer the first table served at each course – in fact they may have been coming to us last (even though they saw that we were finished first). 2, and I guess related, but it felt wayyyyyyy slowerrrrr that it should have. Now we are no stranger to the tasting menu experience – remember the one we went to in Bilbao where we were there till like 2am?? But that was paced perfectly. This felt just way too slow.

When it finally came, the next dish was another that I wished there was more of! It was so good. Here you see the wild greens dumpling, like two tortellini filled with wild rocket, nettle, dill, pickled shimeji mushrooms, and in a clear consomme with peas. I do love peas. I expected a mild flavor but the filling was BURSTING with dill. It tasted like Russia! This was so delicious and just two baby tortellini! Sometimes tasting menus are sad!

My drink with my baby pasta was a dandelion spritz – it was ginger juice, bitter orange, and essentially dandelion kombucha. LOVES IT. It was the first time I had ginger anything without that sharp ginger bite. Super smooth, not sweet, earthy but pleasant. It was an interesting pairing with the tortellini and its dill flavoring.

The white asparagus dish, up next, might have been better than the green asparagus, and that threw us for a loop because we are firmly green and not white spargel people. But this white had more asparagussy flavor which is so confusing. Served with caramelized chicory, toasted almonds, sherry ajo blanco, seaweed pesto (yess) and Alexis’s housemade kelp caviar, this was another winner. We loved the chicory so much that I made some a few nights later (was not as good). But the caviar is the real winner, the chef’s incredible impressive vegan creation that if I didn’t know better (I don’t! I can’t remember having caviar that wasn’t the cheap pink stuff on run of the mill sushi!) I would have thought it was the real thing.

My drink was a lovely iced juniper brew with nori (weird! but cool!) and pomegranate. It reminded me of the amazing bottled iced teas Ikea used to sell in the cafe after checkout. It was Ikea birch iced tea with strips of seaweed inside. We miss them sooo much, they were amazing. I know you might not think comparing the fanciest French restaurant to Ikea is a good thing, but it’s high praise that this reminded me of that.

One of the times I went to the bathroom the Coupling theme song was playing so that was fun.

Somehow we were falling even farther behind the other tables despite starting first, eating the fastest (I know it’s a problem but it doesn’t change the fact!), and being the most polite. And we kept hearing the waiters ask other tables their thoughts and being all friendly and we got radio silence. Looking back, I’m more curious than I am upset. I need to know what the deal was.

The last of the main savory dishes was their classic potato dauphinois, with creamed morels, spring greens, cepes jus, and wild garlic focaccia. MORE BREAD!! And just as good! What a birthday. I loved the mushroomy mousse filling the morel, so fantastic and deep. The spinach was a little long and I felt like I was damaging the tableware by having to cut it so hard, but I always love a green vegetable. The wild garlic sourdough man, break me off a piece o that. The dauphinois itself was pretty good, with the sauce overtop so rich and umami as the kids say.

My drink this go round was my favorite – cold chard tisane. It was ceylon black tea infused with red chard. It tasted like it was straight up blended with chard but it still had a pure watery liquid texture so that wasn’t it, but the flavor was CHARD. I LOVE CHARD. I feel like this was made for me and not many others would like it because again it was TEA that tasted like CHARD! and we know they didn’t make it just for me because they HATED me and were SO RUDE to me. BUT I LOVE THIS CHARD TEA! And for the first time I actually needed the caffeine of black tea, because we were well past the three hour mark by this stage.

That marked the end of the main dinner dishes, which was good because we were very very full. They’d been pretty good about water refills too (is that why they hated us? because we asked for tap water? listen people, I cannot order bottled water at a restaurant, maybe the first bottle fine but I go through like 7 liter-sized carafe refills, it would have cost more than rent). To mark the end of the savories and the beginning of dessert, they brought us little blue cheese tartlettes with French onion, pecan crumble, and white balsamic.

It took a little while to come out; I was like guys please bring me my tartlette. Just kidding I would never had said anything like that; they already hated me so who knows what would have happened if I dared speak up. These were small but powerful! Though she be but little she is fierce! But the best is that that ‘white balsamic’ in the ingredients was like JELLIED white balsamic goo! Such a fun surprise! And alongside the sharp cheese flavor, the jellified balsamic wasn’t too sharp so it was a nice combo.

My last drink was the one that Z thought sounded the best of my pairings, and good because it was my least favorite! Here you go! It was a thick black cherry shandy, a rich dark ale mixed with black cherry and citrus (though I didn’t get the citrus). Whereas the chard tea was so unbelievably infused with the flavor but was still a clear thin liquid, this had the texture of something blended, like thick and not homogenous. And it was an ale, which is not my thing.

DESSERT TIME! I was very hopeful for these since they were taking the space of birthday cake. First up was the rhubarb & custard. This was such a great dish! It featured poached elderflower rhubarb under a slab of crunchy meringue (fun fact: when we came here years ago, before it was all vegan, Alexis used aquafaba in the vegan meringue; that was the first time I saw aquafaba in the wild), tapioca pearls (more boba!), ginger, and a great custard. The sharp little tang from the rhubarb with the sweet crispy meringue and that creamy cream cream, so good!

At this point, past 11pm, I was squirming in my seat like come on guys, one more dish and then I can go to bed! Let’s do this!

Last one was the beet and cherry cake. Now I usually make my own birthday cake every year, and it’s usually chocolate and peanut butter. Cherry flavoring, sure I can get behind that, but BEETS? in my BIRTHDAY CAKE?

Yeah this was amazing!!!

This surprise of a treat had cherry ice cream and mousse surrounded by Carvel-ice-cream-cake-style chocolate gravel, all under beet chocolate cake. This shit worked! So many different flavors and textures all complementing each other. Not bad for a birthday cake in the end, not bad at all.

So, when the waiter brought this dessert out, as you can see one of the plates said Happy Birthday! Chad, holding the dishes, said to us ‘it’s someone’s birthday?’ and I said ‘yes! oh wow thank you!’ and he said ‘happy birthday’ as he dropped the plates down with the enthusiasm of a patient getting a root canal, and walked away. Z turned to me and said ‘did you run over his dog or something?’

It was honestly super weird and concerning how rude they were to us and how little they were interacting with us, especially compared to everyone else. They just take our empties and turn without a single word, no questions about our time, whereas they were having full-on jovial conversations with every other table. Super concerning!

And it was about now when we realized he was saying happy birthday to a person at the next table as well – one of the tables with the red envelope containing the card from Alexis thanking them for choosing to celebrate here. So, yeah, they were celebrating a birthday, just like us, but they got a card and we didn’t. Did the system flag my name or something like at the airport if you have the same name as a terrorist?

So, an interesting experience all-in-all. The food was pretty delicious, the drinks were very creative, and I had two awesome desserts. But the service was such a strange mystery. I’m pretty self-aware and can tell when I may be rubbing someone the wrong way – in fact I usually assume that I’m annoying and people don’t like me – but even with that baseline, I still don’t understand the treatment. I told a friend ‘maybe it’s because they googled me and saw I’m a dirty z word’ and she said ‘maybe they are snobs and it’s because you paid with the vouchers.’ That would be insane since, you know, they sold them. But none of the crazy excuses we dreamed up really would be enough to explain this. So f-ing weird.

Fortunately it ended on a positive note, getting one last thing right. Z had gotten an email thanking him for his patronage (I guess from buying the vouchers?) and it said ‘next time you are dining with us, get a celebration cake on us.’ So Z called and was like, ‘yeah, do that!!’ And the waitress we’re calling Patty actually brought it out!!! It was a beautiful little fancy chocolate cake, looking straight out of a patisserie, and she was actually really nice about it. And wisely, as she showed us the cake, she said ‘do you want to enjoy this now, or shall I wrap it for you to take home?’ Obviously at the end of this tasting menu we were super duper full, so the offer to take it home was perfection. (We had it over the next few nights, and it was very closet to Studio Gauthier’s Louis XV cake, just bigger. Yeah, as in the best restaurant dessert maybe ever. So that was nice!) And the best part was they only had ENORMOUS bakery boxes, so this tiny little cake went in a box that I could have fit in. A nice ending to a mixed bag night!

True to tasting menu form, when we paid the bill we got even more treats: pate de fruits (fweee) with aleppo pepper (like putting tajin on fruit in Mexico!) and lovely handmade chocolates with peppermint, like super fancy After 8s. AMAZING. Man these last 10 minutes of the 5 hour night were great!

So can I recommend Gauthier Soho? I feel so conflicted. When we went before it was vegan, the experience was incredible. Now, yeah the food is lovely, but faaaaaaahk I did not enjoy the treatment, especially on my birthday. It’s not even that I wanted to feel special, although I course I did, but I just didn’t want to be actively treated like shit! IF YOU SEE THIS PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I DID.

Gauthier, Soho, London, England, United Kingdom
Water speed: Not bad at all! Although sometimes when Chad saw me refilling my own glass, from the carafe on our table, he seemed super mad. Is that why, Chad? Was I supposed to make you pour my water every 4 minutes?
Service: Truly no need to say anymore, right?
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are dark and boudoir-y, but in the time since our last visit they’ve gotten a little run down (the stall doors look like they’ve seen some shit). The sink area has a lot of towels which I liked, and then there’s a separate little antechamber for just vanity work.
Food: Mostly great!
Bonus: Enjoy treatment so confusing and upsetting that you will think about it every night for years to come!