74 Duke

74 Duke opened on the Mayfair street it’s named after in spring 2025, from BVC Hospitality, the team behind Supernova and NAC, going for a fairly specific mood: a Parisian corner brasserie transplanted a few hundred metres from Bond Street station. Honey leather banquettes, ivory paintwork and staff in proper uniform do a lot of the work before the food even arrives, and it’s open long hours, midday through to late most nights, which suits both a working lunch and a later dinner.

The menu leans into that brief with rigatoni in a creamy morel sauce, a citrus dressed tuna tartare and fries that come out properly golden and crisp. Burgers and prawns get singled out by regulars as the things worth ordering twice, and the wine list stays sensibly French rather than trying to cover every region at once. Nothing on the menu is trying to surprise anyone; it’s comfort food dressed in a sharp uniform.

It’s a good looking room that photographs well, which has clearly done some of the marketing for it. Outdoor seating on Duke Street gets snapped up quickly in warmer months, and at lunch it fills with a Mayfair crowd having the kind of meeting that looks like lunch, briefcases and laptops half open under the table. Evenings shift the mood slightly, though the crowd doesn’t change all that much.

Service is where opinions split. Some visits are attentive and unhurried, others rushed and a bit inflexible about substitutions, and portion sizes on a couple of dishes read as small for what’s charged. It isn’t reinventing brasserie cooking, and more than one reviewer has called it charming without being especially memorable, a fair enough summary for a room built more for atmosphere than culinary ambition.

Go for a relaxed dinner or a client lunch rather than a special occasion, and 74 Duke does the job it sets out to do reasonably well, even if it doesn’t leave you rushing to rebook. Bond Street station is close enough to make it an easy stop before or after a shopping trip down Oxford Street.