The French Laundry, the three-Michelin-starred California restaurant, is opening in London for ten days this autumn.
Chef Thomas Keller (pictured) and 14 members of his staff will re-create the Yountville, Napa restaurant on the fourth floor of Harrods with Keller running the pop-up as chef for the duration of the tenure.
Keller was named America’s Best Chef by Time magazine and was made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur this year, by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
As well as the French Laundry, Keller has various restaurants in Yountville, Las Vegas, New York and Beverly Hills: Per Se, Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery and Ad Hoc.
This will be the group’s first European venture, although Keller has said that if he opened another restaurant it would not be in the US.
‘If I did another fine dining restaurant it would be in another country, which more or less scares the hell out of me anyway,’ he told website eater.com.
The group said it had no plans to go from temporary to permanent format, as they did in 2007 with their California-based restaurant Ad Hoc, which started went permanent in 2007.
The tasting menu of nine set courses will include French Laundry classics such as the caviar-based Oysters and Pearls, as well as special courses thought up exclusively for the UK.
These might include hamachi in puffs of smoke, salted popcorn ice cream, fried oysters, mustard frills or boudin of grilled rabbit.
When asked if British ‘classic’ fish and chips would be on the menu, Gerald San Jose, a spokesperson for Restaurant Keller Group, was emphatic. ‘No,’ he told Decanter.com.
The French Laundry will open for lunch and dinner from 1 October to 10 October 2011.
Written by Tessa Ditner
