Ffiona’s restaurant in Kensington might be the oldest in town to have never been reviewed by a critic. A magistrate-cum-writer from The Spectator used to come in, and once penned a short piece, but his visits were mostly for pleasure. “He would get pie-eyed,” owner Ffiona Reid Owen smiles.
That Ffiona’s has stayed mostly off-radar is odder still when you consider how close it is to Derry Street, home to various national newspapers. Still, the restaurant is not without prestige — it has had a list of haughty regulars and a sturdy celebrity clientele.
They came quietly. “Jerry Springer was a regular. He was lovely. Martine McCutcheon used to come by and Mick Jagger’s daughters are always very good for us. They mention us here and there.” She’s even turned stars away. “We said no to Madonna and Guy Ritchie one night because we were full. Hugh Grant, too — he was standing outside peering through the window. One party offered to give up their table. I said no.”
The restaurant is a Kensington classic
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The diner who never fully left
But most of this happened before social media, before — blessedly — the word “hype” was ever used when discussing the hospitality industry. Today Ffiona’s is an enchanting place but a quieter one. It speaks of its years. The tables are pine, the walls wood-panelled or canvas, and the ceilings are decorated with sheets of music. There is a lot of history: old bank notes, Turkish charms, what looks like a badge from the old US Embassy. Americans have come to Ffiona’s in their droves, much to Reid Owen’s delight. “They tip ludicrously well,” she says. Particularly the important ones. One made her an honorary governor of Alabama.
Reid Owen points out a postcard from the village of Twatt; an “I am calm, now f*** off” poster; grand clocks borrowed (stolen) from an unmentionable palace. There’s even a collage honouring a former broadcaster from Vancouver: “He would visit whenever he was in town, sit in the corner and drink until the early hours. One day I got a letter from his wife after he’d died. He loved this place so much that he wanted half his ashes kept here. So they are — they’re built into this picture, behind all the stuff. It moves me deeply.”
The food at Ffiona’s hasn’t changed much since it opened 33 years ago. Reid Owen is from the Simon Hopkinson school of keeping things simple: unpretentious, no hullabaloo. On the menu today are king prawns, shell off, with chillies, ginger and garlic; duck pâté with toast; a chicken Kyiv. “It’s probably the best in the world,” Reid Owen says.
People would stay until 3am. An accordionist would play. There were gay opera singers.
Ffiona Reid Owen
The cod is cut thick, meat flaky and pearl-white; lamb comes up from Cornwall, is roasted with thyme and paired with a snappy walnut pesto. There’s a “potato menu”, too. Maybe Clare Smyth wasn’t the first to offer one after all. Vegetables are steamed and anointed lovingly with herb butter.
To understand the restaurant requires an understanding of Reid Owen, who never has a day off. She left home young and with dreams. “I was 18 when I left Liverpool. I wanted to find my fortune.” Her parents encouraged accountancy, something a little more stable.
“I didn’t listen. I wanted to be a chef.” She learned the way many of the best chefs and restaurateurs did back then: on the job. And at 19 she got a job in the banqueting kitchen at a five-star hotel in Piccadilly. “I was 19, looking pretty hot in the banqueting department with a bunch of old dears.” Then the head chef offered her a job in the main kitchen. “It was fabulous,” she says. “I was the only woman there for a while. It was hugely sexist. A different time. If you didn’t get a slap on the bum, you’d wonder what was the matter with you. I’m not saying it was right, it’s just how it was.” The brigade numbered seventy men. “Everyone drank on service — those were the good old days.”
After work, they drank more. “We used to go out in Shepherd Market. The crowd was eclectic. I remember this one bloke, Chinese Pat the hotel thief. There were lots of prostitutes and club workers.”
Scallops at Ffiona’s
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Chaos, charm and real chips
Such a lustrous, fortifying life is etched into Ffiona’s and its customers. Reid Owen remembers lunches lasting five hours. Wives would call the restaurant. “‘Ffiona, where is my husband?’ Two bottles of Chablis in, I’d say.”
There is a sustaining, unrelenting chaos to it all. It’s where romance is found. And Reid Owen, ever-charming, is the perfect host, full of stories. “Before opening this place, I ran off and married a gay conman,” she drops in, casually. He ended up stealing all my money. About £45,000.”
She came back stronger and ended up here. “I got drunk and bought this place from a pair of identical German twins. They’d been here 23 years. It looked a bit like a brothel. It was unforgettable, flamboyant. People loved it. I did my best to carry it on in my own way.”
In debt but happy, it wasn’t long before a heady crowd arrived. “People would stay until 3am. An accordionist would play. There were gay opera singers. And I found the bloke who conned me and got the marriage annulled.”
Reid Owen tells me the pandemic nearly finished the restaurant off, but a local business award saved her. She still does things her way. “I find it funny, the conversation around food these days, about sourcing and menus being ‘ingredient-led’. What else are they going to be? I’ve known where all our food comes from since the beginning. We still make our own chips. Not many restaurants do that, you know.” But then, not many restaurants are like this at all.