Little red Buvette: New York meets Paris in Covent Garden

The French call all-day dining service continu – a tradition of places with something for everyone, at any time: coffees and patisserie at breakfast; brunch that slides into afternoon tea; and apéro that moves through dinner and ends with finish-the-bottle-and-maybe-order-another chats. New York is good at it too, and there’s nowhere more charming than chef Jody William’s West Village contemporary classic Buvette.

Now, Buvette has come to London… again. It’s a second chance for Williams, who opened an outpost in Notting Hill in 2021, then closed it two years later. This time, she’s found a site in Neal’s Yard, a pedestrianised sanctuary tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden. “It’s full of history, with great neighbours,” Williams explains. “I’ve always thought this would be an awesome place [to be].”

Taking its cue from the original in New York, the room includes a long bar that runs down the restaurant. It’s the hub of Buvette, where pastries are piled up and coffees are made, where staff choose bottles of wine, mix drinks and survey the room. Food-wise, the focus is French, but Williams is keen to get stuck in to the best UK produce: asparagus, strawberries, “some beautiful green figs we have. You got great cheese and dairy here.”

She’s looking forward to seeing how Buvette moves with people’s needs. “We’re not a restaurant, we’re a gastrothèque,” Williams explains. A bar with food. “There are all these wonderful moments throughout the day when you can pick up a menu and choose something. It can be a little, it can be a lot.”