The French House on Dean Street has been the meeting place of London's bohemian intelligentsia since the 1930s. Brendan Behan, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Dylan Thomas all drank here — Thomas famously left the manuscript of Under Milk Wood on the bar and had to be telephoned to come back for it. The Free French under de Gaulle used it as a base during the war.
The pub serves wine and spirits but no draught beer — only half-pints of bottled lager, a house rule that separates the serious from the casual. The upstairs dining room serves honest French-ish food. No music, no fruit machines, conversation only. One of the last survivors of Soho's pre-gentrification character.