Chez Kristof, 111 Hammersmith Grove, London W6 (020 8741 1177).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £70
Have you ever been fortunate enough to watch the artisan charcutiers of Hammersmith at work? Have you taken the time to visit the happy, free-range, organically reared pigs and cows that roam and snuffle about Shepherd's Bush Green? Have you wandered through the gnarled olive groves that cluster about the BBC's television centre on Wood Lane, where herds of retired newsreaders work each year to bring in the harvest? No?
Me neither.
The truth is that central west London is pitifully short on agricultural landscape. Big red buses? Lots of 'em. Pizza joints? By the dozen. But small holdings, of the sort that underpin the sentimental French notion of the 'terroir' - literally the land - and the cooking that springs from it as naturally as the apple from the tree, are not among the Unique Selling Points of Hammersmith.
Perhaps this is why Chez Kristof fails to deliver. It's a terroir restaurant without a terroir. It has a menu drawing its inspiration from a notion rather than a reality. However committed chefs are to their ingredients, if they work in a conurbation, nothing is ever going to be that local. But Chez Kristof's menu is so particular, so folksy and butch, that it needs heart to work and its heart is exactly what it seems to have mislaid. How careless.
This is a huge disappointment.
I admitted recently that, increasingly, it is the simple virtues of French bistro cooking that excite me; that, for all my gastronomic thrill-seeking - look out for my adventures with a sea urchin sabayon, coming to this column next week - if you offer me steak and chips, well-executed, I will purr at you like a cat that's got the cream. The menu at Chez Kristof promises all that and more. There's boudin noir with apples and rillettes de porc to start. There's saucisse de Toulouse and pot au feu and steak tartare to follow. There's celeriac rémoulade and petit pois à la française. Pricing - £5 for starters, £12 for main courses, plus a bargain three-course lunch for £15 - is very keen for this part of London. They also do good wines by the half-carafe. What's not to like?
Far too much. The best thing we tried was my main course, daube of ox cheek, the meat having surrendered in the long heat of the oven to sweet fibrous strands that could be carved with a spoon. I also liked the anchoiade - a crush of olives, garlic and anchovies - at the start of the meal, with some crisp, buttery shards of toasted baguette.
Everything else missed the mark. Cabbage and ham soup is obviously a paysanne dish, but it shouldn't taste cheap. This had few grace notes (until a dollop of the anchoiade was added). A main-course plate of charcuterie arrived stiff and fridge-cold. The main event in a dish of veal kidneys with mustard sauce were served tough and lukewarm. A sabayon of berries lacked body, and the three sorbets of uncertain provenance turned up fused together in a frozen glass where, clearly, they had first been introduced to each other hours - days? weeks? - before.
The room is all flash urban bistro: lots of white walls, white tablecloths and shining glassware, and the service was generally attentive until the end of the meal, when all five waiters crowded behind the bar with their backs to the room so we couldn't get anybody's attention.
Is Chez Kristof a lost cause? Absolutely not. The fundamentals are in place. All it has to do now is work out how to deliver them.
