Roussillon

Nestled in a quiet corner of Pimlico far from the madding crowds of Sloane Square, Roussillon takes its name from the southeastern French commune in the Lubéron. Originally called Marabel’s, it was forced to change its name due to confusion with Marco Pierre White’s restaurant Mirabelle, which opened in the same week in 1997. Holding a Michelin star from 2000 to 2011, resident chef Alexis Gauthier upped sticks with Italian sommelier Roberto Della Pietra to run Gauthier Soho in May 2010. Head chef Shane Hughes has since taken the reins and is continuing the tradition of serving modern French fare made from seasonal British ingredients with a particular focus on vegetables and herbs, which are freshly picked each morning.

Rocking up to the hidden gem, I was wooed by its sherbet lemon façade. Inside, the living room-like interiors are a soothing shade of beige, so soothing in fact, they almost act as a visual lullaby. On my visit, the restaurant is disconcertingly bare on arrival, but soon fills up with smartly dressed, softly spoken locals. Hung on the walls are curious paintings of vegetables, from masculine asparagus spears to the feminine folds of an artichoke. The flora and fauna theme continues on the plant-strewn menu, and even in the loos, which are prettified by sketches of bilberries and wild flowers.

My dining companion and I begin with a chilled glass of Gosset NV, Roussillon’s house Champagne. Crisp and fresh and yet with a biscuit and brioche-laced richness, it makes for a deliciously refreshing drop. To accompany our apéritif, we are offered a colourful trio of nibbles: pickled quails eggs masquerading as giant olives, sweet and sour macadamia nuts, and a childlike bubblegum pink smoked salmon and beetroot mousse. The teriyaki-soaked macadamia nuts are irresistibly moreish, while the light and airy smoked salmon mousse proves a trompe l’oeil trick, its vivid pink colour implying sweetness and yet delivering a surprisingly savoury mouthful. The arrival of the bread basket brings gasps of delight, the croquette-shaped brioche and salted butter proving a particularly pleasing highlight.

An intercourse follows perhaps aiming to show off its veggie credentials – a creamy green pea and asparagus velouté with a hint of white truffle, which arrives warm and slides down my throat easily in a comforting start to proceedings. Bypassing the veggie friendly seven-course “garden” menu, dinner begins in earnest with a langoustine carpaccio prettily displayed around the edge of the plate amid a garden of cherry tomatoes, artichokes and sprigs of green. In the centre lies a disc of clear tomato jelly, and atop, a generous dollop of salty sustainable caviar. Light, fresh and palate cleansing, Roussillon’s vegetarian roots are once again firmly on display.

To follow is a deliciously rich cheese soufflé bobbing amid a cheesy moat. Its piping hot interior oozes liquid cheese, doubling for central heating on this cool night like an oligarch’s cheese on toast. The main event: poussin and foie gras with wild mushrooms, mashed potato and green beans in a Duke of Clarence Madeira sauce is deliriously decadent, the heady Madeira sauce perfectly complementing the succulent little bird and creamy mash, though after less than half I’m defeated, the rich foie gras erring on the sickly side.

Despite feeling stuffed as a pillow, our affable waiter insists we order pudding, promising modest portions. I opt for the lemon tart, while my companion is lured by the sticky toffee pudding. My hunk of tart, which arrives on a black slate with a crème brûlée-like roof, is as large as a pizza slice. Undeterred, I plunge my fork in and am rewarded with intensely zingy lemon curd-like innards enhanced by the glass-like shard of burnt sugar on top. Swimming in a sea of  banana foam, the moist sticky toffee pudding is soothingly sweet.

Roussillon’s wine list is unsurprisingly focused on southern France, with welcome cameos from Turkey and the Lebanon. On our visit, we begin with a glass of creamy Vondeling Chardonnay 2008 from Paarl in South Africa that charms with its rich nose of buttered popcorn and hot buttered toast. To match with our mains, our smiley Hungarian sommelier, who insisted on being called Garry, recommends a home-grown drop: Pannonhalmi Apatsagi Pinot Noir 2009; once made by Benedictine monks. A pretty, feminine Pinot with a bright nose of raspberries, cherries and hints of spice, its smooth, soft and silky palate serves as wonderful proof of the heights Hungarian reds can reach when lovingly encouraged.

Though perfectly pleasant, Roussillon is lacking that all-important sparkle ignited and kept aflame by Gauthier. While the food is consistently good, it’s bereft of the flair and playfulness that once made it great. Roussillon is a grown-up restaurant for grown-up diners. It isn’t trying to be cool or hip, but rather coast along comfortably as a sedate, romantic hideaway for discreet locals. Perhaps Hughes will bring the sleeping beauty back to life?

Roussillon: 16 St. Barnabas Street, London SW1W 8PB; Tel: +44 (0)20 7730 5550; an eight-course tasting menu costs £75.

New in town: Chabrot Bistrot dAmis/QV Bar

With the new year comes new openings – not that London ever needs an excuse to roll a new restaurant/bar/club out. The pace of change in the capital's culinary scene at the moment is exhilarating. So many bars, so little time... I did manage to find the time recently to visit two newbies: Chabrot Bistrot d'Amis and the QV Bar at Quo Vadis in Soho. The former is the brainchild of Yann Chevris, former general manager of L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon.

Chevris has teamed up with Michelin-starred chef Thierry Laborde, formerly of L’Oranger, Le Gavroche and Le Louis XV with Alain Ducasse, and sommelier Philippe Messy – the youngest ever sommelier at a three Michelin-starred restaurant when he worked with Marco Pierre White at the Hyde Park Hotel.

Messy co-founded Sarment – a private sommelier service offered to seventy-five members globally each year, with Gearoid Devany in 2009. The company takes sommeliers from the world’s top restaurants and makes them available to their members. Each member has a dedicated personal sommelier to advice them on all aspects of wine buying, tasting, storage and investment. The joys of owning a platinum Amex...

Back to Chabrot: the 65-cover restaurant is named after a Dordogne ritual popularised during the food shortages of the second world war whereby red wine was poured into a soup bowl after the meal to ensure you got all the nutrients from the soup. The walls are lined with mawkish monochrome scenes of rural France and peasants breaking bread. It has a cosy feel, as if you've been before. And you probably have – Chabrot bares a striking resemblance to an upmarket Café Rouge, from the red walls to the wooden chairs – it's all reassuringly familiar.

The Southern French menu features bone marrow, duck liver pâté with Comté cheese popovers, homemade pasta with Périgord truffles, roasted foie gras with raisins, and Laborde’s signature dish: chicken stuffed with foie gras. On the launch night platters of warm, crunchy calamari kept the crowd pleased, along with charcuterie and cornichons, and mini macaroons. Befitting of a bistro, the wine list is predominantly French, starting at £19.50 a bottle, and includes top names such as Taittinger, Domaine Dujac and Château Montrose. Topping the list is Château Cheval Blanc 1998, at an eye-watering £900 a bottle.

Another new kid on the block is the QV Bar at popular Soho haunt Quo Vadis. Owners Sam and Eddie Hart decided the 'dead space' in the restaurant would be better suited as a bar, so converted the restaurant's entrance area into a laid-back bar serving up seriously good cocktails. On my visit, mixologist Paul Mant fixed me up a a pre-Prohibition era, cotton candy pink, Clover Club – named after a Philadelphia gentleman's club – made with gin, lemon juice and raspberry syrup.

A number of snacks reside on the bar menu, from cod fritters and QV burgers, through deliciously decadent pork scratchings pimped with oodles of apple sauce, to the culinary wonder that is their scotch eggs. Served sliced in half, bright orange gooey yolks to the sky, the breadcrumbs were golden, the meat most, and, for the final flourish, it was finished off with Frazzle-shaped slithers of crispy bacon. I had to wolf mine down, as I was running late for a reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl at the Southbank Centre in honour of the forthcoming film starring actor/writer/model/Columbia student James Franco as the Beat poet. Rushing to make the reading, I ended up leaving my camera behind at the bar. It was worth it.

L'Etranger restaurant review

As AA Gill mentioned in his recent review of Comerç 24 in Barcelona, our approach to food is changing. In keeping with our impatient times, we want our food to be big, bright and breathtaking, attacking our tastebuds with flavour, and menus across the world have been pimped with exotic ingredients to keep up with the trend.

One way to win on the flavour front is to marry food from two different cultures, bringing the best of both worlds to the table. Sushinho on King's Road is doing interesting things with its Brazilian and Japanese menu, but way before the restaurant opened its doors, L'Etranger was in on the act.

The South Kensington stalwart has been serving up French and Japanese, or 'Frapanese' cuisine since 2002. Head chef Jerome Tauvron, whose CV includes stints with Pierre Gagnaire in France, Alain Ducasse in Monaco and Marco Pierre White in London, isn't keen on the term 'fusion' cooking, as while working together, the ingredients remain separate and distinct platefellows.

The minimal lilac and grey interiors seem to echo Albert Camus' economical writing style in the existentialist novel L'Etranger, from which the restaurant gets its name. Boasting over 1,000 bins, L'Etranger has one of the finest wine lists in London and an on-site wine shop. Perhaps in a nod to the novel's protagonist, Meursault, an impressive 40 Meursault's by the bottle are on offer.

I dined at L'Etranger with a chef friend on a Tuesday evening, and the urbane 50-seater was throbbing with life. Arriving early, our table was soon flanked on both sides by enthusiastic Americans. Manager Dorian explained that they rely on their regular customers and that numbers dipped dramatically during the ash cloud crisis, when a chunk of their affluent clientele were left stranded in different pockets of the world.

L (the chef) and I both opted for tasting menus, with L sampling the £59 'Degustation' menu, while I opted for the slightly more decadent £89 'Opulence' menu, both of which were diligently matched with different wines by Timothy, our eager-to-please French sommelier who looked like he was fresh out of wine school.

My scallops tartar with summer black truffles served in its shell was matched with top Rhône producer E. Guigal's Crozes-Hermitage Blanc (£9.50/glass). The pairing worked well, the ceviche-style citrus in the dish mirroring the remarkable freshness of the rich, complex white Rhône. Light yet flavoursome, it was hard to fault, and the perfect beginning to this epicurean adventure. L's tuna tartare was well executed, but the accompanying serving of sevruga caviar was tiny.

As L's menu was a dish smaller than mine, we both shared the rock shrimp and exotic flower tempura with sweet ponzu; a sauce made from soy and lemon. Served in a Japanese bamboo steamer, the green, orange and purple exotic flowers exploded with colour, and when paired with the sauce, flavour. Rock shrimp tempura is my favourite thing on the menu at Nobu, and I didn't think anything could ever come close to matching its magnificence, but this did, the zesty sauce wonderfully counterbalancing the fatty tempura. Our wine match, 2008 Gatekeeper Chardonnay from the Barossa Valley in Australia (£8.50/glass) was the most disappointing of the night. The wine was rich and buttery, while I was hoping for something fresh and zippy to cut through the fat.

Both the fish dishes impressed. I was envious of L's caramelised black cod and sweet miso sauce, L'Etranger's signature dish, but in the end it was my roast Chilean seabass that shone. While the cod was slightly dry, my seabass was expertly cooked and fell off the fork. Tender and slightly sweet, the flavours were elegant and delicate rather than punchy. It was matched with an exciting, grassy wine from Nantes producer Eric Chevalier made from the region's native grape Fie Gris (£40/bottle), whose searing acidity cut through the oily fish, giving it freshness and lift.

On to the main event, which for me was pampered and preened Grade 9 Wagyu beef fillet with black truffle and sauteed wild mushrooms paired with Austrian producer Anita Und Hans Nittnaus Kurzberg Pinot Noir 2005 (£9.50/glass). I asked for it medium rare, and it came deliciously pink. Soft and tender, the meat was almost silky, and packed with juicy flavour, which harmonized with the savoury, leathery Pinot Noir, that took a back seat to the beef, enhancing rather than overpowering its flavour. When combined with the rich foie gras and heady truffle it made for a soft, opulent mouthful of flavour-rich food. I closed my eyes in pure delight to catch every flavour in my mouth. But at £55 a la carte, it should be damn good.

Pudding was an equally exciting affair. After a tofu ice cream palate cleanser and a glass a ice-cold saké, L's caramel tart with macadamia nuts matched with Ramos Pinto 10-year-old Tawny Port stole the limelight from my more modest pear tartin and sesame ice cream, which matched well with a waxy, unctuous Château Septy Monbazillac 2005 (£9/glass).

L'Etranger clearly knows what it's doing. The food is accomplished and stylishly presented, and the service from the predominantly French staff is attentive without being overbearing. The a la carte will give your credit card a workout, but the 3 course set lunch is amazingly good value at £19.50. Marrying French and Japanese food may sound like a strange exercise, and you have to taste it to believe it, but Tauvron's dishes respect the classic tradition, bringing with them an exciting modern twist.