Telephone: 020-7901 9999
Address: 1 Wilbraham Place, London SW1
Rating: 17/20
Open: Tues-Sat, 12 noon-3.30pm; 5.30-11pm.
Some restaurant outfits seem incapable of bad taste. The Smithfield empire of the Club Gascon duo Pascal Aussignac and Vincent Labeyrie is epitomised by visual refinement and culinary sophistication, from Club Gascon itself to Cellar Gascon next door, and Comptoir Gascon across the way. Now they have opened Le Cercle in far-off Chelsea.
The menu, too, has migrated, away from their Gascon homeland to embrace the whole of France. But in every other respect this is a very Club Gascon operation. It may be a basement dining room, but it reeks of restraint and chic. And the food is irreproachable. The menu is divided into Végétal, Marin, Fermier, Terroirs, Plaisirs, Fromagerie and Gourmandises. It is true that portions are tiny, but they're perfectly formed, so you can have as many or as few as you like - it's a kind of French tapas or meze.
On my first visit, I managed six dishes on my own without feeling grossed out. When I went with Superplonk, we divvied up 11 between us, of which the cheapest was £3.75 (tête de veau with sauce ravigote) and the most expensive £5.75 (joue de cochon braisée). Both were impeccable: the tête de veau came in very thin slices, and was splendidly, lip-stickingly gooey; the joue de cochon was sweet and softly fibrous.
The general style is to take the classics of French regional cooking and to transform them through the magic of high-class cooking and refined presentation. One advantage of the miniature treatment is that hefty, hearty, full-square dishes such as tête de veau, andouillette and veal onglet with shallot sauce, which can be somewhat oversubstantial for the modern tum, are made lighter, more accessible and less oppressive on the digestive system without losing the impact of flavour or texture.
This kitchen wizardry worked splendidly on what was described as "light aniseed crab parmentier". It came in a martini glass, looking like one of those layered cocktail monstrosities. The man at the next table saw my dubiety and leaned over. "It's a kind of crab shepherd's pie," he said. And so it was, frothy on top and deeply crabby underneath.
There wasn't a duff dish in the lot. I remember with particular pleasure a taut, crisp chunk of John Dory with a sharp sauce of Noilly Prat and citrus fruits; a mellow, mini artichaut barigoule; stinking andouillette; rich and dainty veal sweetbreads with morels; top-dog cheeses; and a rather school-dinner pain perdu with vanilla ice cream. And not one more than £6.
One of the advantages of eating with an expert such as Mr Gluck is that you get to drink some outstanding stuff at less than outrageous prices - well, sometimes. In this case, we had a bottle of Cahors at £23.50, which was as full of the warm south as you could wish for on a less than cheery English summer's day.
The format of the dishes may seem a novelty in the contemporary restaurant scene, but they remind me of Ménage à Trois, Anthony Worrall Thompson's bijou classic of the 1980s - a definitive concept of the time, gourmet glam rock in dinky miniature, and just as successful, until managerial deficiencies caused it to move rapidly from Beauchamp Place to Cary Street. Perhaps Le Cercle is its modern incarnation.
I would go at lunchtime. While I can see the attraction of the place for dinner - suave, sexy, seductive - so do a lot of other people, which can lead to table turning and somewhat abrupt service, or so I hear. I know that restaurateurs have to make a return on their investment, but there should be no place for that kind of high-handed nonsense. Still, that was not my experience, so I can only mark Le Cercle accordingly.
