A name like Cigalon floats across your desk enough times, you start to pay attention.
Cigalon was the kind of place people talk about, a hot tip to be traded and a reputation to match. A stranger skirting the edges of all the circles I moved in – quiet, insistent, well-dressed. A restaurant, yes. French. But there was something else. I needed to know who was behind it. So I did what anyone in my line of work would do when curiosity knocks and hunger gnaws: I made a booking.
With a Provençal menu, I was expecting quality ingredients, simply prepared. But I needed backup, just in case. I arranged a meeting with a contact – let’s call him C. Knows people. Eats well. Has connections and enough brains to know when his goose is cooked. We met early and scoped the place out from the outside.
Between the old legal chambers of Chancery Lane and the wood-panelled corridors of the Inns of Court, it wasn’t flashy, but it wasn’t trying to be. There’s a dark and seductive bar downstairs known as Baranis, specialising in pastis and pétanque, if you have the balls to play. But we weren’t here for games.
When we entered Cigalon, the place was brighter than expected – glass ceiling, double-height room, jazz playing smooth and low like it had nowhere else to be. Booths in green velvet curled around tables like parentheses, catching fragments of conversation. Light wood fittings with bamboo cladding the walls and plants as tall as an alibi. A jazz soundtrack slinked through the air, while paintings of jazz musicians hung along the walls, caught mid-gesture in colour and noise. Gina Southgate, apparently. She paints live at gigs, and her canvases were still vibrating, all brass and brushstrokes. I liked them.
Karen was our server. Friendly, confident, sharp as the cheddar in a ploughman’s lunch. When I slid in a few questions about the art she knew it was a wise move to spill. Cigalon exhibit and sell a new artist’s work every three months and this one was just installed. Gina was in the clear. I knew better than to push for information about who was really behind Cigalon. With several chefs busy behind him, Head Chef Julien Carlon was in full view at the pass, and the moment had already delivered more than it owed me.
Sourdough, fougasse, and an olive tapenade that spread like butter arrived, with a bottle of 2022 Domaine de Triennes Les Auréliens Chardonnay. The wine was creamy, nutty, and tasted like someone very calm had a lot of fun making it under the warm French sun. As far as summer wines for French food go, this one was a winner.
For the first course, C took the Niçoise salad: light, sharp, classic. Olives, tuna and an egg as hardboiled as this review. Nothing suspicious, except for the fact that he didn’t offer me a bite. I flagged that for later.
I ordered the squid ink risotto with cuttlefish. The cuttlefish was soft in the rich sauce and the rice cooked to perfection, perfectly portioned for a light first course. Good enough that I used the last of the bread to mop up the sauce. It looked harmless, until I discovered the perfect set of inky fingerprints on the white tablecloth. A clue, perhaps, or just a sign of my enthusiastic gluttony.
Conversation flowed like the wine and the mains arrived just as C was about to squeal. He knew it and I knew it. That information would be mine before we left the room. Might as well enjoy our dinner.
My seared trout with crispy skin, intensely flavoured heirloom tomatoes, and enough salty capers to hit the spot. The samphire alongside was buttered and still had a bite. C had the hake with fregola and asparagus, in a sauce smooth enough to smuggle information through customs. The asparagus still had bite. Very respectable, especially served with roast potatoes and garlic, with an extra side of broccoli.
We ordered cheese and dessert to share but, when it arrived, we hesitated. I was pretty sure I could trust him, but I’ve been in the business long enough to know that cheese can get you into trouble. Maybe somebody’ll take your nose. But he’s a pro. Stayed on his side of the plate and I stayed on mine. The cheeses themselves, Saint-Nectaire, Saint-Marcellin, and a third whose name didn’t stick, were wonderfully intense. The kind of cheeses that don’t blink when you ask them direct questions.
But it was the chocolate moelleux that broke the standoff. Dark as a locked room and just as mysterious. The kind of soft decadence of velvet. And on the side, in the centre of a cool mound of crème fraiche, sat a pool of sour cherry molasses, thick, red, and tempting. I picked up my spoon.
C shifted in his seat. I didn’t need to look up – I could feel it. The meal had built like a slow-burn investigation, each course more delicious, each flavour more precise, until the whole thing felt less like dinner and more like someone tightening a net. And now here it was: the soft centre of the moelleux, defenceless.
One spoonful closer, and C leaned in. The kind of lean that says, alright, here’s what you don’t know.
Cigalon wasn’t a one-off. It was part of the Gascon Connection, a tight-knit ring of restaurants founded by Michelin-starred chef Pascal Aussignac and his business partner Vincent Labeyrie. Flagship restaurant Club Gascon opened in 1998. That name landed like a dropped fork in a quiet room. Suddenly, the finesse made sense, the quiet confidence, the dishes that knew how to stand their ground.
Club Gascon’s been holding a Michelin star for over twenty years. And Cigalon? Just another piece in the puzzle, hiding in plain sight on Chancery Lane.
I glanced toward the kitchen. Chef Julien Carlon. He’d been with them for many years. No wonder everything on the plate had something to say. I should’ve seen it sooner. But some truths don’t show up on the bill; they hide between courses, waiting for the right mouthful to loosen the tongue.
We didn’t stay for coffee. Too much talk makes a good story unravel. When we left, the tablecloth still bore the ink. The cherry molasses had vanished, but I had my suspicions. The food was excellent. The company? Captivating. The case? Closed.
But if you’re looking for a restaurant that doesn’t miss a beat, Cigalon will be very much open. The menu will be new. The paintings will have changed. They’ll give this restaurant a new identity. But the fingerprints will still be there. Precise, elegant, unmistakably Gascon. You just have to know where to look.
Cigalon
115 Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1PP
United Kingdom
