BORD’ EAUX includes:
- A 160 cover brasserie
- A bar
- Le p’tit café – boulangerie, pâtisserie and café
- The tasting room – private dining room
- An outdoor terrace – to open in Summer 08
The kitchen, led by chef-patron Ollie Couillaud, offers a large but focussed range of regional dishes from simple soups and salads to typical specialties like Plateau de Fruits de Mer, Duck Confit with Pommes Sarladaise, Entrecôte grillée Bordelaise and Andouillette Pommes Frites.
Ollie was born and raised in Poitiers, the former seat of the Dukes of Aquitaine and a region famed for its excellent food produce and simple, gutsy flavours. He has been in London for over fifteen years and worked his way up in some of the city’s well-known kitchens including La Trompette, The Square, Chez Bruce and more recently launched Tom’s Kitchen.
Describing the BORD’ EAUX style as “La cuisine du terroir with a bit of panache”, Ollie is passionate about traditional cooking using ingredients sourced from small farmers and producers of France and UK. For example, he is using his grandmother’s own recipe for Broyés du Poitou (a biscuit typical of his home town) to serve with speciality coffees from the celebrated French house of Hediard.
To complement the menu, an extensive wine list has been compiled to reflect the wide range of flavours and styles produced in Aquitaine and the South West of France. Many of the wine labels listed have past or current connections with British and Irish families that have either founded or owned them. For example, BORD’ EAUX own label wines: a crisp white, an elegant red and a plumy rosé are made by Château du Seuil in the Graves area, a 19th century estate now re-energised by a Welsh family.
The bar will serve regional drink specialties such as Pineau des Charentes and Pousse-Rapière as well as a large selection of wines by the glass from upscale Margaux to obscure local grapes varieties, which can be discovered with sampling plates of regional food.
The tasting room and its adjacent walk-in wine cellar can be booked by up to ten guests to explore the gastronomy of Aquitaine from a convivial breakfast to a more elaborate dinner celebration.
Le p’tit café will offer a range of freshly baked breads, pastries and coffee to-go as well as some of the restaurant’ s dishes and other regional specialties such as Foie Gras des Landes and Caviar d’Aquitaine. In addition, a gift selection from the gourmet Hediard range and the celebrated wine-based Spa “Les Sources de Caudalie” will be available, some for the first time in London. The retail selection also includes BORD’EAUX label wines and Champagne, as well as a music compilation CD by the studio behind the acclaimed “Hotel Costes” series.