Rupert Dobbin / 30 June 2025 / Categories: Food & Drink, Restaurants

La Cage Imaginaire family run French bistro in Hampstead

Tucked away off flask walk NW3

It’s a truly delightful and intimate family-run restaurant serving traditional French cuisines offering a quiet grown up

setting perfect for business meets or a romantic tete a tete.

It’s not young or hip, the interiors are tired but the food is bloody delicious. And not expensive. If you are used to dining in France it is typically French, the waitress might have a dirty apron but you’ll be greeted with a knowing smile and it’s frequented by loyal locals who appreciate good food and wine.

It’s a small bistro of old, the kind popular in the 1970s, probably only about 12 tables so you’ll need a reservation. It’s way off the main high st tucked away down a side road you’d never stumble across unless you already knew about this little gem of a restaurant.

Some things are 5 star like the whiter than white table linens and crisp white folded dinner napkins, the wine list is extensive, and the customers posh but the light shades are dusty,

The flowers imitation and the carpet has seen better days. It’s an experience much more so than the over branded interior designed more modern establishments you might find on Hampstead High St.

My girlfriend and I like sitting in the back, enjoying homemade french onion soup, followed by entrecôte steak, moules mariniere, (with cooking liquid so tasty you mop it up with endless bread in a basket) escargot, and the best skinny French fries: you’ve ever tasted. Want Frogs legs or a boozy boeuf bourguignon no problem. Think stopping in a small French town and sitting down to enjoy a plat du jour you cannot pronounce.

All washed down with a bottle of house red. You’d expect it to come in a carafe, it doesn’t, it’s a very drinkable Claret at twenty one pounds, but if you fancy a bottle of Dom Perignon they’ll oblige you for £425. It just that kind of place, stylish but not flash.

Definitely a place to try if you like authentic simple French cuisine.

Great for lunch too. They have a couple of tables outside on the street where you can watch the world do by.

Flask Walk is a busy cut through from Hampstead high st for the residents of the big houses that surround this neighbourhood hangout that’s been there for twenty years.

As places close as fast as they open in London these days this is one of those gems you’ll want to keep returning to. It has it’s own personality and charm.