THE TASTER
When Terence Conran opened Bibendum in 1987—in a landmark building that was originally the Michelin company’s U.K. headquarters—the restaurant seemed to embody Gallic bourgeois luxury, at least as imagined through English eyes. Now newly reopened by Claude Bosi (whose Hibiscus earned two stars from the French tire manufacturer’s eponymous food guide), Bibendum still tends toward the decidedly posh but with, as The Observer puts it, “a profound understanding of the simple virtues.”