Le Cassoulet,
18 Selsdon Road,
Croydon (020 8633 1818)
Meal for two including wine and service, £90
Le Cassoulet is not a great reason to visit Croydon, but it's not a bad reason for staying in Croydon if you already happen to be there. This is not (quite) as sniffy and bitchy a comment as it sounds. Obviously it is a bit sniffy and bitchy, but it's Croydon we're talking about here, people. I know it has lots of things to recommend it. I just can't quite recall what any of them are. It's on the way to the south London branch of Ikea. Saddam Hussein never lived there. It isn't Dorking. Nothing against Dorking. The word just makes me laugh. It sounds like a particularly filthy verb, as in 'I like to go Dorking'.
I'm being grossly patronising towards the place and its people, but Croydon has never been famed for its restaurant culture. Nobody has ever muttered the word Croydon in the same sentence as, say, Lyon or San Sebastian. (Apart from to shout: 'Compared to Lyon, Croydon is a right old pile of ...')
All of which is what makes Le Cassoulet so very important, or as important as anything gets in a restaurant column. Because until every Croydon and Dorking in this country, every Nuneaton, Diss and Telford has a restaurant of this quality on its high street, all the talk about food revolutions and booming restaurant cultures will be just so much blather and media hype.
Le Cassoulet is exactly what we need - or almost exactly, because it is not without its faults, in this case the decor. It is all floral wallpaper and sconces, and arch, mannered high-back chairs, stripy banquettes and fiddly lighting. It feels like a corporate take on good taste. It's not offensive, just deadening, a little like the canned music. Thankfully the service is not corporate. It is engaged and friendly, and nobody wears a name badge.
In any case, what matters here will be on your plate. Le Cassoulet is the second restaurant from Malcolm John, whose first, Le Vacherin in Chiswick, has prospered amid tough competition. Clearly Mr John is not interested in the bright lights and high rents of the big city, which is reflected in the pricing. He wants to bring his take on gutsy French provincial cooking to the burbs, and hoorah for that: £90 for two is nobody's version of cheap, but it is good value for an accomplished local restaurant.
Part of the appeal lies in the unfussy presentation. While there is a certain amount of self-conscious theatre - individual casseroles of stews to be spooned into bowls, cuts of meat carved tableside - there is very little overadornment. Beignet of creamy, soft sweetbreads with sauce gribiche brought just that, a generous portion of baa-lamb glands greaselessly battered alongside a ramekin of the creamy, punchy sauce for dipping, the one a foil to the other. Likewise, an exceptionally good potted ham hock, spiced with caraway and fresh green herbs, came in a little Kilner jar, with just some toast and gherkins for company. Anything in a Kilner jar makes me smile. Clearly the kitchen has confidence in what it is sending out.
Main courses display the same take-it-or-leave-it approach. Naturally, given the name of the restaurant, I had to order the cassoulet, which arrived in its own dinky cast-iron pot. It was a fine garlicky specimen, thick with chunks of duck confit, various types of sausage and pieces of pork belly cooked until they could be broken with a spoon. It did lack a crunchy crust, suggesting one huge stew had been cooked then decanted into the pot for a quick flash in the oven. The crust adds a change of pace. On the upside it meant the beans hadn't collapsed to mush. The other main, a stew of long-braised beef cheeks with an impeccable dark and sticky sauce Bourguignon complete with lardons and button mushrooms, was lick-the-plate-clean good.
At the end a chocolate fondant with amaretto ice cream gushed its mud-dark way across the plate and into a woman's heart, and a soft if firm poached meringue, amid a pond of cool custard - a classic ile flottante - soothed the cassoulet-battered soul of this man. We drank wines by the glass from a serviceable if unremarkable list, didn't get a flicker when we asked for tap water, and finished with fresh mint tea.
A destination restaurant? Not quite. But then not every place needs to be. A fine ornament for the lucky people of Croydon? Most certainly.
