Franc

An excellent local restaurant that makes you feel like you've walked into a bistro in the backstreets of Lyon. Welcoming staff a menu du jour that makes you feel like youre in the kitchen of an old french chef who has welcomed you home. A fresh glass of Viogner or a bold Bordeaux awaits with the dish of the day cooked to perfection in a kitchen smaller than yours at home. A true gem.

Fresh locally sourced ingredients turned into the most sublime classic French cooking by Dave. Wonderfully helpful staff both at lunch and the evenings. Polly and Dave make a great duo and make dining there a great experience.

Amazing food and warm hospitality… a true neighbourhood restaurant that makes you feel like you’ve popped round a friends for dinner and they happen to be an excellent French chef that has carefully curated a menu de jour of all your favourite dishes from holiday!

If I was to imagine the perfect local bistro, I would arrive at something very close to Franc. Family-run, it has the atmosphere of someone’s front room but at the same time feels convivial and celebratory and serves some of the most decadent and pleasurable French food this side of the channel. It’s a riposte to all the blandly commercial new restaurants, whether chains or would-be chains, that plague so much of the UK at the moment.

Four of us had lunch. The food was delicious beginning with smoked herring with creme fraiche and horseradish and continuing with a fillet of pollock with blood orange for me and roast chicken and artichokes for others. Absolutely fabulous and incidentally great chips too. Pudding was a chocolate marquise for some, cheese for me, the latter slightly disappointing but overall fabulous lunch. Seating is a little cosy but would thoroughly recommend a visit.