Cassette Covent Garden opens with a French menu

Cassette, a new French bistro from the team behind Levan, opens in Covent Garden on 23 September with a menu built around classical technique and a soundtrack of Parisian bistro clichés turned up loud.

The restaurant sits at 42 Maiden Lane, inside a Grade II-listed building that once housed a stained-glass window factory dating from the 1630s. Co-owner Mark Gurney, who opened Levan and Bar Levan in Peckham, says the idea started with "lazy weekends drinking gentian spritz and playing pétanque" and visits to Parisian haunts Bistrot des Tournelles and Le Verre Volé.

Head chef Essa Fakhry, previously of Note in Dublin and Planque, runs the kitchen. His opening menu leans on raw and cured plates before it gets near the fire: raw beef croustades with Comté, pickled mussels with panisse and aioli, and raw scallop with cucumber and basil.

Cassette swaps Levan's fast grill for a bistro that wants you to sit down and stay a while.

Mains include sea trout with fennel and sauce au petit-lait, and a coq au vin jaune pie built around a whole chicken leg that stands up through the crust. A rotating blackboard adds heavier specials from the pass, among them grilled sweetbread Grenobloise and a stuffed pig's trotter à la Koffmann.

A slower register than Levan

Levan built its name on quick, communal plates and an open grill. Cassette runs at a different pace: a full dining room, a separate wine room for private bookings, and a menu that asks diners to sit through courses rather than graze. For Fakhry, it marks a shift from Planque's counter service to a kitchen built around composed plates.

Nudge members get first access to the room, with previews on 19, 21 and 22 September offering 50% off food before the full opening.

Covent Garden keeps adding French addresses

The opening lands in a Covent Garden that has leaned harder into French and European cooking this year — not far from where KID Soho opened with Sertaç Dirik's Anatolian menu, or where Grant Achatz brought Alinea to London for three nights this month. Cassette's spot inside a former glass factory gives it a quieter corner than Long Acre or the piazza.

Whether London diners take to a full French bistro menu at Covent Garden prices will show once the previews end and the blackboard starts changing weekly.