182 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1 (020 7713 0107). Meal for two (excluding duck), including wine and service: £120
One afternoon in the late 1960s the star French chef Michel Guérard received a breathless phone call from the equally revered Pierre Troisgros over in the Roanne gastro palace that carried his family's name. Troisgros told Guérard that he'd done something amazing: he'd plated a dish in the kitchen. It was a small gesture but a huge moment. Until then, convention demanded that cooked ingredients be taken out of the kitchen on silver platters and plated in the dining room. Troigros's change, quickly adopted by others, shifted the balance of power from the lofty faffing waiters back to the kitchen.
We gained an awful lot that day – most importantly a focus on the food over silly service. But we also lost something: the polish and gleam of true gastro theatre, of classical cooking as spectator sport. After that the best we could hope for was a festering roast on a carving trolley, or an outbreak of crêpes suzette.
Thank the gods of greed, then, for Otto's, an old-school French restaurant opened 18 months ago on the Gray's Inn Road by Otto Albert Tepasse, an equally old-school maître d'. It's handsome rather than pretty. The blue upholstered chairs do not quite go with the red banquettes. The Brigitte Bardot photos clash slightly with the Warhol cushion covers, which sit oddly next to classical Greek sculptures. And yet, for all that, it feels like a room in which very good things can happen.
Unless you're a duck. Otto's has mostly gained attention for its hulking silver duck press, originally fashioned for a luxe hotel in Provence in the 1920s, which takes pride of place in the dining room. For £120 for two – ordered in advance – Otto's will roast you a whole duck, sourced from the same farm that supplies La Tour d'Argent in Paris, the originator of this dish. It is served in two parts, legs first, followed by slices of rare breast, under a stupidly rich sauce made from the juices of the bird, extracted by crushing it in the press: those juices, the liver, cognac, other stuff, a side order of defibrillator. I will just have to find a friend and save up.
Instead I ordered the steak tartare. There is a lot to adore about this place, but I truly fell in love when the waiter appeared with a tray laden with at least nine bowls and bottles; it looked like mise en place for a whole service. He cracked the egg to separate out the yolk, to mix with the olive oil and Dijon which he spun up into a mayonnaise. There were chopped shallots and cornichons and capers and parsley. There was Tabasco – I had asked for it piquant – and Worcestershire sauce and a few other things besides, the whole lot worked in a wooden bowl.
The puck of artery-red raw meat was served with a hot rosti and was simply the best steak tartare I have ever tried. There was the kick of Dijon and Tabasco, the sweet-soft of beef fillet, the crunch and salt of cornichon and caper. I accept that some of this love is transference from the business of watching it made. So what? I like to watch.
The rest of the menu is a deftly modernised classicism: light, silken pasta encloses blushingly pert and fresh langoustine one side of the raviolo and fresh spinach the other, all under a killer seafood bisque; a spring pea soup for £5.95 is all the sweet lightly starchy things you want from a pea. A dish of rabbit brings boned loin and a little of the bunny's offal, shards of crisped pancetta, Jersey royals and a sprightly mustard sauce. There is a perfect crème brûlée to finish, because there must be, and a more complex plate of meringue and pistachio cream and fresh strawberries.
The wine list is of the kind written by a man who wants you to share his enthusiasms. It's full of big sexy names priced according to cost plus a fixed margin, so it's also full of big sexy bargains. Have I sold it to you? Do you want to go? No? Then clearly you have no soul.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
