Galvin, 66 Baker Street, London W1 (020 7935 4007).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
Earlier this summer the French super-chef Alain Senderens announced that, after holding three Michelin stars for 28 years, he was handing them back and reopening his Paris restaurant as a much simpler brasserie de luxe. This initiated a bout of soul-searching in France over the future of gastronomy: were prices at the top end too high? Did people still want to eat quails' gonads in citrus foam? Was this the end of civilisation as we know it? The usual stuff then, because the French are always questioning the future of high-end gastronomy, even though the three-star liners sail on regardless.
That said, Senderens's move to the brasserie de luxe - taken to mean simple food, done really well, at reasonable prices - is clearly part of a trend. Across France young chefs with Michelin pedigree have been striking out on their own, but instead of setting up great cathedrals dedicated to the truffle, have opted either for the Senderens style brasserie or the bistro de luxe (like the brasserie, only smaller.) In this country the idea, while hardly popular, is also not exactly new. It is arguable that Bibendum, which first opened in the late-Eighties, is a brasserie de luxe. Recently at Bibendum I ate snails in garlic butter and a perfect veal chop, and if that isn't brasserie food I don't know what is. It was certainly luxe. A couple of years ago Henry Harris opened Racine in Knightsbridge, making a virtue of rabbit in mustard sauce and perfect confit.
Now comes Galvin, a joint effort between Chris Galvin, who had a star at the Orrery and was then executive chef at the Wolseley, and his brother Jeff, who had a star at L'Escargot. This, they say, is a bistro de luxe, and after eating there I won't argue. Curiously the room - dark slate floors, conker brown wood panelling - reminds me most of an American eating house. But the menu clearly bows the head towards the other side of the channel, much as cardinals do to the pope. There is among the starters a terrine of pork and foie gras, coarsely made and served at room temperature. There is an autumn soup of pumpkins and girolles, and a lasagne of crab, in which the white meat has been set within a warm seafood mousse. There is a pithivier of shredded pigeon with glazed chestnuts. The cooking is so confident and robust that the name of the dish on the menu makes adjectives redundant.
The same applies with the mains, but I like my adjectives. A large veal daube was deep and dark and unctuous. A parmentier of oxtail with black pudding came in the reverse formation to that served at Chez Bruce, the silky mash beneath a ripe cake of shredded meat. You get the idea. Puddings included a perfectly executed creme brulee, to which nothing had been added. No raspberries. No pistachio nuts. No caramelised anchovies or beetroot jelly, to be witty. Just light creme and burnt sugar. That pudding says it all really, as do the prices: starters at around £6, mains around double that, with only a steak reaching the dizzy heights of £16.50; hardly a soup kitchen, but also not extortionate for this kind of cooking and service on Baker Street.
I'd love to see a cassoulet on the menu, which Chris's kitchen did so well at the Wolseley. Perhaps, too, a pot au feu or bouillabaisse and maybe in portions to share. Now I'm fantasising about the food I want to eat there. And that has to be a mark of a pleasing restaurant.
