41 Conduit Street, London W1 (020 7078 9577). Meal for two, including wine and service: £120
Extraordinary news. A French brasserie has opened in London and it's run by yer actual Frenchman, rather than, say, some bloke from Nuneaton who learned everything he knows about la cuisine française from a Reader's Digest pull-out circa 1987. Eric Chavot is the genuine article. He kisses ladies' hands like it's not an absurd thing to do. He rolls his eyes and babbles in an accent so thick it piles up in drifts around the chair legs.
Mind you, Chavot has been doing this in the capital for years. I've long fantasised that it's a put-on job. Behind the kitchen door he probably speaks like Ray Winstone in a bad east London gangland thriller. "Awright then, let's be 'avin' that farkin' gigot and don't be givin' me none of your lip…" A quick shake-out of the shoulders, then it's back into the dining room to make like Maurice Chevalier's louche younger brother – the one they don't talk about any more after he did that thing with the thing.
For a long time Chavot was a shiny-cloche cook. He had Michelin stars. His food turned up in dining rooms with carpets so thick small children could go missing in the pile. Brasserie Chavot, in a space belonging to the Westbury Hotel, is a different proposition. It has a lovely art nouveau-style tiled floor and banquettes, and waiters who don't look hurt when you tell them you'll pour your own wine, thank you. The only problem is the tables. They are so long my companion and I considered texting our conversation to each other. I was desperate to turn ours around so it was wide rather than long. We talked to Chavot about this. (We talked to him about a lot of things; eventually I had to nod at the kitchen and ask him whether he recalled where it was.) He said that if we turned the tables around, there wouldn't be enough space between them. I ignored him, channelled my inner Michael Winner, and turned it anyway. It worked just fine.
Enough. The point here is the food, which is the sort of brilliant faux paysanne stuff you get when you put a culinary aristocrat in the kitchen. Just as we always knew, when I was a kid, that it was the girls from the most expensive public schools who were the filthiest, so it takes a cook schooled in the ways of luxe to slum it with style.
Most of the starters, it should be said, are a victory of shopping: oysters, charcuterie, salads and so on. Only two or three require any cooking. Why should Chavot push himself? But what cooking! Deep-fried soft-shell crabs are greaseless and salty and come with a saffron-heavy aïoli, likeyou've got your hands on the best chewy bits of a fish soup. Snails bourguignon, alongside tiny veal meatballs in a thick, pungent tomato and garlic sauce, beneath a potato purée whipped to within an inch of its life is the onesie of food. It's not pretty to look at, but by God is it lovely to bury yourself in.
Main courses are a pop parade of classical French food. The description of the daube even references Grandma. All I can say is that Chavot's grandma must have done time in some bloody serious kitchens: the sauce is so sticky and shiny you could use it to tan up the cast of The Only Way is Essex. The beef is at that glorious point of almost total collapse. It's a masterclass in the dish. The serving of choucroute almost makes me laugh. Traditionally it's a huge pile of cheap sauerkraut with a few ripe piggy pits. Here it's a huge pile of ripe piggy bits with a little sauerkraut. I prefer it this way round.
Dessert is not quite as successful. A peanut and praline croustillant is a grown-up Snickers bar, a gag I've seen before. A Mont Blanc, which should be a crisp, chewy meringue, dolloped with chestnut purée, chocolate and cream is here a mess in a bowl with a few meringue lumps, the sweet version of the snails dish. I should have gone for the rum baba or the crème brûlée. It's the kind of place that serves both of those.
You probably get the idea by now. Eric Chavot is back. Best to bring your own defibrillator.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
