Bouchon Racine French Bistro Above a Farringdon Pub

Most people searching french bistro near me in the City expect a terrace and a long menu. Bouchon Racine is the opposite: a single first-floor room above the Three Compasses pub at 66 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BP, a few steps from Farringdon station. It has 45 covers, a chalkboard of Lyonnais and Parisian dishes, and since June 2026 it has carried the title of National Restaurant of the Year, after topping the National Restaurant Awards list. Getting a table is now the hardest part of the evening.

The name will mean something to anyone who ate in Knightsbridge in the 2000s. Henry Harris ran the original Racine there, a cult French restaurant that closed about seven years before this one opened. In November 2022 he came back with Dave Strauss, formerly of Goodman and Rockfish, taking over the Three Compasses, a building that has been a pub for around 300 years. Downstairs stays a pub; upstairs, with its own entrance, became a bouchon in the Lyon sense: a small, unfussy room built around meat, offal and wine.

Recognition came quickly. The restaurant won Opening of the Year at the 2023 National Restaurant Awards, collected two AA rosettes in 2025, and is a member of the Association Authentiques Bouchons Lyonnais, the body that certifies traditional bouchons in Lyon itself. The 2026 number one spot, announced on 9 June, turned a neighbourhood favourite into a booking scramble. Time Out went back to review it again in October 2026, which tells you how closely London is watching the room.

The partners describe the place simply as a pub and bouchon, inspired by the bouchons of Lyon and the bistros of Paris. That split explains the menu. Lyon supplies the offal, the pork and the sauces built on mustard and cream; Paris supplies the steak, the snails and the crème caramel. Neither half is reinvented, and that restraint is exactly what the award judges and regular diners keep praising.

Climb the stairs and you are in one compact room with cream walls, crisp white tablecloths, old French posters and shelves lined with empty wine bottles. It feels more like a Lyon dining room than a London restaurant, and it suits a long lunch. Tables are close together, and the largest booking the restaurant takes is six people, so this is a place for couples and small groups rather than a birthday party.

The pub downstairs is useful if you arrive early. It is open Monday to Wednesday from 12pm to 11pm and Thursday to Saturday from 12pm to 12am, so you can wait over a pint of something cold and head upstairs when your table is called. It also makes a good fallback if friends join late and cannot squeeze onto your booking.

The menu is written on a chalkboard and changes often; the current version is posted on the restaurant's Instagram, while the sample board on the website gives a good sense of the prices. Snails à la Bourguignonne come by the six at £16.50, and Bayonne ham with celeriac remoulade is £12.00. Steak tartare is offered as a starter at £10.00 or a main at £20.00, so you can treat it as a light first course or a full plate.

Mains lean into the dishes few London kitchens bother with. Rabbit with mustard sauce and smoked bacon is £23.00, and tête de veau with sauce ravigote is £21.00, a dish most London menus dropped long ago. A grilled veal chop with Roquefort butter is £36.00, and a côte de boeuf for two with Béarnaise is £95.00. End with crème caramel at £6.00, and pay £3.00 more to add an Armagnac prune on the side.

Reservations go through OpenTable and open 30 days in advance, so set a reminder for the morning a month before the date you want. Lunch slots are worth trying if dinners are gone, and a party of two will always fit into more gaps than a group of six. For anything unusual, the restaurant asks you to phone between 9am and 11am, which is when someone is free to answer rather than cooking.

Bouchon Racine opens Tuesday to Saturday, with lunch from 12pm to 3pm and dinner from 6pm to 10pm. It is closed on Sunday and Monday, which catches out visitors who plan a long weekend around it. If the online system is full, keep checking OpenTable in the days before your date, and keep the downstairs pub as your plan B.

Turn left out of the door and walk up to St John's Gate on St John's Lane, built in 1504 by Prior Thomas Docwra as the entrance to Clerkenwell Priory. Today it houses the Museum of the Order of St John, and the stone gatehouse is one of the few pieces of Tudor London still standing in the area. It takes about five minutes and is a fine way to settle a heavy lunch.

In the other direction, past Smithfield's meat market buildings, is St Bartholomew the Great on Cloth Fair, founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I who is often described as the king's jester. The Norman nave is dark, huge and quiet, and the half-timbered gatehouse that leads into it from West Smithfield is easy to walk past without noticing. Between the two you have a short loop through 900 years of Clerkenwell and Smithfield.

Bouchon Racine, 66 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BP. Station: Farringdon (Elizabeth line, Thameslink, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines). Lunch Tuesday to Saturday 12pm to 3pm; dinner Tuesday to Saturday 6pm to 10pm. Bookings through OpenTable, up to 30 days ahead, maximum six guests per table.

If this is your first visit, order the snails, share the tartare, and choose whichever offal dish is on the board, because that is what Harris cooks best. Leave room for the crème caramel, and save the côte de boeuf for a second visit with someone who shares your appetite.