Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, whenever my father, Quentin Crewe, a travel writer, returned from his adventures, he would arrive in Knightsbridge, call up any of his five children who were in London – and sometimes a brace of ex-wives – and say, “I’m back. Are you free for lunch? I’ll meet you there at one.” “There” was always the Brasserie St. Quentin, which had been set up in a fashionable spot opposite the Brompton Oratory, near Harrods, by my father and my cousin, Hugh O’Neill, in 1980.
It was London’s first proper French brasserie, with banquettes, a long bar, pale pink mirrors, huge menus illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark before she became a famous children’s book artist, French waiters serving snails, pommes frites and crème brûl?es – and Londoners seemed to love it. I remember eating the authentic baguettes, relishing the scallops, pancetta salads and passionfruit sorbets, and squirming and giggling as Pop made me try his pig’s trotters or lamb’s brains.
It was lucky I was self-employed, because I was summoned to more lunches there than any boss would have tolerated. It became a spot that epitomised for me the sunny side of my relationship with my father and family. That it has been taken over by Hughie’s son, Francois O’Neill, and was reopened as the Brompton Bar and Grill last December, is very gratifying. “My christening party was here,” says Francois, “and now it’s my baby.”
When it still belonged to his father, my siblings would always sit at the same table in the window. Pop – who ate there for free, but, says Hughie, “didn’t abuse the privilege” – would either be already waiting with his signature Campari and orange juice in hand, or would arrive late with a couple of strong young men who would hoick him out of his wheelchair and through the awkward double doors. Once, following a long sojourn in Kampala, he appeared with his most recently acquired carers, two young Ugandan princes.
He would recommend dishes and hold forth about his latest escapades. Once, back from crossing the Sahara, he told us about how he had been blown up by a landmine in Mali, and had “flown into the air with the happy ease of a shuttlecock, and come down and sprained a dreary muscle”. The lunches were occasions for anecdotes, gossip and drama. During one, my half-brother and sister, then aged 11 and 12, were allowed to go off to Harrods toy department by themselves. It turned out to be the day of the car bomb, and they went missing for several horrendous hours, eventually to return in time for dinner.
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Another time, when I was in my early twenties and depressed, with my father at our usual table – sun streaming in, just the two of us – Pop complimented me for the first time in my life. He said I was young and beautiful and clever; that he was old, single, broke and a cripple. “I have everything to be depressed about and you have everything to be cheerful about. Yet I have never known depression my whole life, because I believe the purpose of life is to struggle.” It pulled me up short; a pivotal moment, and absolutely fitting that it should have occurred in a place that meant so much.
The brasserie had many regular customers, some of whom came in every day and loved it as much as I did. Even on its opening night, it was full of the great and the good. Everything went swimmingly – until a chef cut off his finger and was helped up the stairs in full view of the diners and bundled into an ambulance. Nobody seemed to notice and the show went on, but it was not an auspicious start. It soon became apparent that the business was, in Hughie’s words, “an unmitigated financial disaster”. Though full of the “right” customers, it was losing money hand over fist.
Although he had been a restaurant critic, my father’s stake in the business was mainly in name, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to run a restaurant. Pop’s contribution was more his association with the place. And he used to make totally impractical suggestions, not least for the menu. Elderflower sorbet was one.
“In those days, the chef had never heard of elderflower,” says Hughie. “Q told him the hedgerows were full of it. The idea of Charles Plumex [now a Michelin-starred chef] going off and picking it! It was hard to do exotic food in the basement kitchen. And there was your dad suggesting lobster souffl?s. You couldn’t get any souffl?s to the table in time.”
Eventually, the place did, amazingly, begin to make money, and after only eight years the Savoy Group bought it. It had a memorable heyday with regular customers including Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. Princess Margaret once asked if she could see the kitchens. There were great parties in the basement. Pop had his book launches there. At one of them, all five of his children by three wives appeared, and two of those ex-wives.
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But the place lost its way. Pop still took us there between his trips, but customers thinned and vitality dimmed. Hughie bought it back in 2002, but by August last year, after 30 years, St. Quentin had become, as Fay Maschler witheringly pronounced, “staid”. Although my father had died in 1998, Hughie struggled on with it alone as long as he could. When, last summer, the economic crisis delivered its death knell, he had, at last, to close down.
Now, his enterprising 24-year-old son, Francois, has raised the money to buy it and remodel it after his own fashion. It is less of an “occasion” restaurant than it was. It’s far more accessible and relaxed; more modern, less fussily cluttered. Of course, the food in those days was not as it is now. Today, it is modern British/European: scrambled duck eggs with mushrooms and wild garlic; fish stew; rhubarb crumble and ginger custard.
Yet just being on the premises reminds me of St. Quentin at its height and so many meals with my dad. Restaurateur Peter Langan used to go in after a heavy night out and order a kilo of Grand Marnier ice cream for breakfast. One night, my father was having dinner with an attractive woman when Langan rolled in.
“You’re a right f****er,” he shouted at Pop. “Wining and dining a woman, and no doubt afterwards you’re going to wheel her off in your wheelchair to f*** her, you f***er.” To which Pop, with his usual cool, replied, “Well, if I did have a chance, I certainly don’t now.”
The Brompton Bar and Grill, 243 Brompton Road, London SW3 (020-7589 8005)