There is something terribly appropriate about a restaurant being situated next to a brothel. Both businesses are about indulgences of the flesh. Both are about the satisfying of base, instinctive desires. And the service provided by restaurants can be just as depraved, just as obscene as anything meted out at the top of a narrow, red-lit staircase - although only if the chef uses enough butter and cream. Le Pigalle's location certainly feels right. It sits amid the night-time shadows of Berwick Street in London's Soho, tucked away from the neon-crusted main drag. People only come here because they mean to.
There is nothing grand about it. The dining room is painted a light shade of umber, as if a few decades' worth of nicotine now cling to the walls, although it only opened last October. It might look tatty were it not for the fresh flowers. Instead, it manages to look lived in. There is nothing on the menu you will not have come across before. It's full of soupe de poissons and escargots, steak frites, cassoulet and choucroute. But here's the thing. It is all really good. It tastes the way you always hope this kind of French country cooking will taste but never does. And it will cost you £30 a head, including a great, sturdy bottle of wine. In the bizarre world of London restaurant pricing, it's almost a steal.
The star of the cabaret at Le Pigalle is François, the one and only waiter, who will natter on at you in French or English or a mixture of both and who will swiftly make like your new best friend. I told him that I had come across references to Le Pigalle on www.egullet.com, a foodie website, and he immediately brought my wife and me a glass of kir on the house. Any friend of egullet's, apparently. (Don't go trying it on now the review is out; I suspect he'll wise up pretty quickly.)
I started with a plate of escargots in garlic and herb butter because, in the four or so years I've been doing this job, I have not once eaten them, despite having long adored them. It may be that I simply like any dish that allows me the pornographic pleasure of soaking my bread in molten butter. This version gave me more than enough opportunity for that. The lovely fat snails came without their shells, in a dimpled tray filled with a melting garlickyness. Bliss.
Pat's hot goat's cheese salad brought a generous portion of the rich cheese en croute, heated to just the right side of melting, atop a salad lifted by the addition of lightly pickled cauliflower.
When we came to ordering the main course, François said: 'Vous avez choisi? Cassoulet? Petit salé?' And he was spot on. These were two dishes from the specials and they were exactly what we had chosen. The petit salé brought an earthenware bowl filled with dark, nutty and slightly soupy lentils dotted with huge chunks of tender salt pork and sausage, both garlic and otherwise. It was intensely savoury and dense, one of those dishes that manages to make a direct and unavoidable link between the deep earth that nourished the ingredients, and the demands of appetite.
To my mind, the cassoulet was even better. Alongside the pork and sausages were pieces of duck confit, crisp and breadcrumbed on top, fibrous and loose from the bone below. Occasionally in cassoulet, the long cooking can render the haricot beans a sloppy mess, but not here. Each individual bean retained its integrity and bite.
Alongside these grand dishes we drank a bottle of St Emilion from a short list that starts at £10 a bottle and never goes higher than £20.95. On the list, each bottle lists in brackets the country of origin. You will swiftly notice that each set of parentheses contains the word 'French'. Well, what did you expect? There is a pudding menu of usual suspects from which I intended to order the cheese, but after those main courses I simply couldn't. François and Le Pigalle had satisfied my needs.
And so to bed.
