Folie
Opened in Soho in 2019, Folie draws inspiration from the Côte d’Azur. The opulent restaurant on Golden Square serves up southern French-influenced dishes to discerning diners.
Below is an extract from Douglas Blyde’s review, written before lockdown:
Diagonal to Bob Bob Ricard on the Soho-Mayfair confluence that is Golden Square, and encompassing a former Gregg’s and part of a Pizza Express, Folie came to life to capture the glamour of the French Riviera. The first solo project from Guillaume Depoix, formerly operations manager of Boundary, Shoreditch and GM of Casa Cruz opened the same week as his child was born.
Depoix’s vision for the workably retro, brassy, carefully lit brasserie with curved corners and particularly good acoustics (helping keep the conversation alive alongside nighttime sets by the Parisien DJ) is realised by Studio KO, whose work includes Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech and London’s Chiltern Firehouse. Only the slightly cruise ship pattern carpet lets the otherwise immensely considered scheme down.
Harry Ballman, who is the holder of two degrees on normative democracy and legislative aspects of the EU and a fledgeling wine writer, admits to being surprised by “how bling the project turned out to be.” The couth chap comes from Wilton’s to take up his first head sommelier role and clearly relishes forming the identity of a wine list which has fast doubled in size from an initial brief of 100 bins. Mirroring the clientele, 75% of bins are French, with a specialisation on Provence, the Riviera and the Mediterranean including Bandol, Cassis and Corsica and “Bordeaux and Burgundy seldom found in London”, he notes, with the balance being a celebration of the “best of the rest” says Ballman, including Assyrtiko from the increasingly listed T-Oinos. Ballman mentions he originally wrote (using the usefully slim, custom Folie font) the producer first on his list, “which didn’t work in Soho,” he notes, hence listings now open with emboldened regions.
