What better aspiration could there be for a restaurateur than to own a buzzing dining room in the area of their birth, especially somewhere as desirable as the Brompton Road?
Not only has Francois O'Neill achieved that with his Brompton Bar and Grill, he just so happened to have had his Christening party in the basement of the place when it was part-owned by his father, Hugh.
Back then it was called the Brasserie St Quentin, in homage to its other owner, the renowned restaurant critic Quentin Crowe, and it was known as one of the best French restaurants in the Capital.
It left the family in the 1990s, but in 2008 O'Neill junior took over and set about repositioning the menu along the lines of an old English dining room, with the emphasis very much on meat, in particular roasts and grills.
While the sleek leather banquettes and long zinc bar running along the side of the dining room are very 2012 London, the quirky Parisian prints and oh-so-cocksure (slightly snooty) French manager ensure it remains somewhat true to its Gallic heritage, while a sniff of an aristocratic air is also retained through both the clientele and the ambience (upstairs, at least - the downstairs 'Absinthe Bar' had been hired out by a raucous group of ladies wearing little clothing and men in what may well have been circa 1994 Ben Sherman shirts).
A suited-and-booted waiter led us to a window table next to a concerned looking woman, sitting alone and knocking back cocktails at an alarming rate, Her date never did arrive.
My father, fresh from the dentist's chair, had his heart very firmly set on steak, a pleasure denied to him for some years by his failing teeth. With that in mind, I decided it the done thing to share in the joy of his newly fully functioning mouth and we went 50-50 on an 800g Porterhouse, or T-bone, steak, priced at a whopping £29.50 per person.
With the sheer size of the beast to follow, I settled on a light starter of dressed Dorset crab with lemon sourdough bread, which I can never resist. It was an absolute joy and the shell was overflowing with the freshest crab meat.
Father went for a special, an oxtail ravioli, which was silky, rich in stock and very tender, not at all stringy.
The porterhouse came on a wooden board and, like its price, was big. The meat was absolutely fantastic though - rare, tender and chargrilled to perfection. Most of the flesh came ready-sliced, but there was still enough left on the bone to satisfy our neanderthal urges and we polished off every last morsel.
Fries and sauces come with the dish to justify the price a little further and we ordered a side of creamed spinach to further test the elasticity of our arteries.
A bottle of house red at £16 was very agreeable indeed.
We settled on the half-espresso/half-ice cream pudding of affogato, which was an invigorating and refreshing finish to a mammoth and quite delicious meal.
It is clear this Knightsbridge institution is in very good hands.
Brompton Bar and Grill
243 Brompton Road
SW3 2EP
0207 589 8005
