Trailblazing Chef Will Temporarily Close Two-Michelin-Starred Restaurant for ‘New Chapter’

Hélène Darroze will close her two-Michelin-starred London restaurant at The Connaught Hotel in Mayfair for two months from 14 July. The French chef’s restaurant will reopen in September, with a refurbished main dining room, new chef’s table, menu, and, more esoterically, an armagnac room.

Hélène Darroze at the Connaught opened in 2009, with the refurbishment coinciding with the restaurant’s 10th anniversary; it earned a Michelin star six months after opening, with the second following in 2011. The menu, which treads a line between a la carte and tasting by offering diners five or seven courses from a list of thirteen that makes no explicit concession to ‘starters’ or ‘mains,’ is one of the more interesting in the city’s established ‘fine dining’ restaurants. The new menu upon reopening promises “a larger focus on British producers and suppliers,” which may be as much of a logistical streamline as an evolution in cuisine.

Darroze’s Paris restaurant also holds two Michelin stars; she shares dining at The Connaught with Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurant, though Darroze’s is the headline act.

More soon.