One Leicester Street: an oasis of calm off Leicester Square

It would be unfortunate if One Leicester Street became known as the restaurant that used to be St John’s Hotel. Not least because the chef Tom Harris, who used to front the kitchen there but has stayed on to run his own show, has put his own individual stamp on the food.

St John’s robust, hearty staples have been replaced by a lighter Nordic-influenced menu but one that doesn’t skimp on flavour. That said - I remember having the first dish we tried - some puffed up Quaver-like pieces of pigskin with a delicious sharp, salty cod's roe dip - in the St John days.

We cruised our way through a series of small plates including some a lovely dish of crab with home-made (I would guess) rye crackers smothered with a creamy purée of the brown meat, topped prettily with white meat, dill and purslane (below), pig’s cheek ham and fennel, grilled leek and hazelnut purée and pheasant’s egg (yum) and smoked herring and beetroot (which I found a bit oily). Oh - and a perfect fresh lettuce and radish salad with a buttermilk dressing. This seems the best way to go at lunchtime at least.

Cheese courses are unusually imaginative - I loved the pickled gooseberries and homemade crackers that were served with the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester - why can’t more restaurants do this? Puds, by contrast were possibly a bit clever-clever - salt caramel apple and hazelnut was a busy plate of jagged shards of hazelnut tuile, dried apple and the now-mandatory crumbs (below) while the flavour of violet in a dessert of chocolate, honeycomb and violet was drowned in a sea of chocolatey topsoil. Unlike the rest of the menu it all seemed to be striving a bit too much for effect though I’m probably the last person to pronounce on puddings.

The wine list is short but imaginative with a particularly good selection by the glass. My crisp, dry Petrucco Friulano 2011 from the Friuli was the perfect foil to the dishes we'd picked. Service is friendly and unsnooty and prices more than reasonable for the area. There’s a working lunch and pre-theatre menu of two courses for £16 and £19 for three.

Will it work better than St John’s? Who knows? It was worryingly short of bums on seats when we lunched there a couple of weeks ago but it’s had good reviews and is in a part of town (just off Leicester Square) where there should be plenty of punters.

Basically it’s a modern, sophisticated reasonably priced restaurant in a place you wouldn’t expect to find one. A good spot to meet a friend in central London.

One Leicester Street is at (surprise, surprise) One Leicester Street, London WC2 7BL. Tel: 020 3301 8020.

I ate at One Leicester Street as a guest of the restaurant.

Les Grès, Lindry - a breath of fresh air in Burgundy

Burgundian restaurants are some of the most traditional in France but Jérôme Bigot’s charming, original Les Grès wouldn’t disgrace Paris’s fashionable 10th arrondissement.

It’s in the depths of the country in a tiny village outside Auxerre* yet managed to pick up an award for best ‘bistrodidacte’ this year from the influential restaurant guide Le Fooding

The evening menu - no choice 7 course tasting menu - ticks all the contemporary boxes - local sourcing, smoking and pickling (there are, unusually for France, well-thumbed copies of the Noma, Faviken and Mugaritz cookbooks on the bar)

While we were waiting for the meal to begin they brought a pretty-as-a-picture amuse of pickled vegetables, fruits (including the local Yonne cherries) and (surprisingly delicious) pickled elderflowers. The chef used to be an painter and it shows.

There was a superb dish of incredibly tender squid and mealy fresh coco beans in a natural, sweet tomato broth, a cumin-spiked sardine with a bold slash of smoky aubergine purée and a perfectly cooked piece of rare duck (sous-vided, I’m sure) served with pickled cucumber and mushrooms about which my husband raved. And he doesn’t like his duck rare.

Then a fantastic dish of bavette with miso and a smoked red onion purée, a startling combination of almost raw meat, smoke and umami. The cheese dish too was brilliant - a scoop of ivory-white fromage blanc floating in an emerald green soup of basil and coriander topped with oregano flowers.

Inevitably with food this experimental a couple of the dishes didn't come off. Snails, in my view, need a more robust accompaniment than cucumber and capucines (nasturtiums) and a dessert of finely sliced peaches, apricots, confited black olives and chibouste had a bit too much going on but then I can remember eating dishes that didn't work at El Bulli.

Two other things might put you off. They obviously like to serve everyone at the same time so if you arrive early, as we did having skipped lunch, you may find yourself waiting for a good three quarters of an hour for the first course to arrive.

And the short, carefully chosen wine list, which has been put together by Jerome’s wife Marie Hélène according to this blogpost, is made up of natural wines - but that’s a plus in our book. And no, that doesn’t mean they’re all ‘cidery’ or funky - there’s plenty to please more conventional palates including Thomas Pico’s pristine Domaine Pattes Loup Chablis ‘Vent d’ange’ which we tasted at the domaine the following day and the bottle we ordered, Fanny Sabre’s fresh, elegant Bourgogne Passetoutgrains, which suited the food very well.

You can also opt for the ‘menu carafe’ which has four well-chosen matching wines but which adds another 30€ each to the bill.

You wonder at first how they can survive in such a remote spot but they’re well within reach for Paris weekenders and holidaymakers a large party of whom were in the restaurant with their very sweet, well-behaved kids, all tucking into this crazy colourful food.

If you’re after traditional Burgundian cuisine, Les Grès won’t be for you but we loved it. One of the best meals of the year.

Our meal cost 49€ for 7 courses plus 25€ for wine. There's a lunchtime option of 29€ for 4 courses though it's closed on Mondays. It’s a small restaurant so you’ll need to book, especially at weekends.

Restaurant Les Grès, 9, rue du 14-Juillet, Lindry (89240 ) Tel: +33 9 52 31 64 10

* yet just off the A6 motorway

Bistro d'Alex, Florensac - a real find in an unlikely location

On a return visit this week to Bistro d'Alex in Florensac I found it just as good as it was when the review below was written five years ago - and the set menu, now 18€ (£15.50) for two courses, only 3€ more expensive.

We have actually been a couple of times in the interim - and been unable to go even more often than that. It's always packed, especially at weekends, so it's essential to book.

The menu is a little longer and more ambitious with a number of dishes that attract a supplement including the inevitable foie gras and a lobster lasagne but we stuck to the basic menu: a nice riff on pissaladière with marinated sardines, a pokey potato salad with jarret de porc and plenty of mustard (obviously using up leftovers), roast pork belly and rosemary potatoes, onglet with a strange but rather delicious creamy pasta 'risotto' and a fig tart (below) which we shared.

Wines which come from the co-op which rents out the space are still a ridiculous 2€ a glass. Total damage 42€ for two. Still one of the best places to eat in this part of the Languedoc, I reckon.

My review of February 8th, 2008:

Le Bistro d’Alex sounds like a smart Parisien neighbourhood restaurant. In fact it’s anything but. It’s a clever and ambitious initiative by the cave co-operative at Florensac down on the Languedoc coast.

Co-operatives are the traditional way of selling wine in the area. Owned by the local growers they would vinify the grapes and sell wine in bulk. Derided for their poor quality wine they’ve been getting their act together over recent years bottling their wines instead of selling them in plastic ‘cubis’ and even producing the odd prestige cuve. But the Florensac co-op has gone one stage further and opened a restaurant next door to a very large showy tasting room and shop, a complex they’ve dubbed Vinipolis.

We turned up on spec and were nearly turned away until I reassured them that we would wait for a table. The place was heaving. A local winemaker who was hosting the tasting room for the morning offered to take us through a few bottles. (This was standard treatment - he had no idea I was a wine writer).

The wines we tasted - 5 whites - were simple and clean. Decent everyday quaffing but there’s a time and place for that. The sauvignon in particular, a ridiculous 3.99€ (£2.97/$5.78) a bottle was a real bargain.

The food though was something else. We each had six fabulously fresh oysters from the nearby Etang de Thau (a very good match with the Sauvignon) then I had a deliciously savoury hunk of veal that had been roasted on the rotisserie served with a creamy wild mushroom risotto. With it I drank a perfectly decent glass of Merlot that cost - wait for it - just 2€ (£1.49/$2.90) for a 175ml glass. My husband had an exemplary tuna a la plancha with fried aubergine chips. Our menus cost just 15€ (£11.18/$21.74) a head.

Although the space itself is quite utilitarian it’s been stylishly decorated and the tables are set with good quality glasses and cutlery.The eponymous ‘Alex’ - chef Alexandre Fabre - used to work for a one-starred restaurant called Léonce (now closed) in Florensac, which accounts for the quality of the cooking and presentation. If you’re in the area it’s a real find. But make sure you book ahead.

Le Bistrot d’Alex, 5 avenue des Vendanges, 34510 Florensac Tel: 04 67 77 03 05

(NB At the time of writing there were no signs to the restaurant in the town. If your sat nav lets you down follow the signs to the Cave Co-operative)

Grainstore, Granary Square: where veggies take centre stage

If you want to understand where the London restaurant scene is heading you need to go to Grainstore. Sure, the capital is still in thrall to pork, barbecue and street food but Bruno Loubet’s exciting and ambitious new project is a clear pointer to the way things are going.

Loubet’s been around for a while. He was a leading light of the restaurant scene back in the '90s then disappeared to Australia, returning in 2009 to set up Bistro Bruno Loubet in the Zetter which celebrated his French roots. But he’s been nursing the idea of Granary or something like it for some 20 years apparently - a restaurant where vegetables play centre stage and meat and fish are just an accessory.

The menu takes some grasping. Veggies are listed first so it’s easy to skip the fact that there’s a protein element. Main courses are modest in size - it’s all about small plates and sharing. At least that’s how the two of us justified ordering three starters. Four if you count the bread - some oddly disappointing focaccia and flat-tasting dukkah (middle eastern spice dip) which just tasted of nuts and sesame seeds.

Seared asparagus with green gaspacho sauce was a lovely idea though as were courgette, broad bean and prawn felafel (right) though the mojama in the daily special of borlotti beans and charred spring onions was a bit elusive. Early days, early days.

A main of smoky corn and quinoa tamale and properly sticky pork belly is understandably a best seller already but our favourite dish was a beautifully balanced dish of fresh salt cod, sautéed padron peppers, almonds and black olive oil (black tapenade in effect) which made me long to try it at home.

It was also a star pairing with the Roman smoked paprika white wine (yes, you did read that right) which I couldn’t resist ordering from a list of aromatised ‘Greco Roman’ smoked or herb infused wines devised by top mixologist Tony Conigliaro. It was supposed to go with the chilli con veggies which we didn't order but its smoked paprika notes just hit the spot with the cod.

So yes - trend alert! - the drinks are worth paying attention to as well. There are several cocktails which have been paired to individual dishes which are flagged up on the accompanying cocktail list. I also tried the Granary Martini, a fiery concoction of mustard vodka and dry vermouth which was recommended with the felafel but I think went better with the mealy beans but suspect there would be as many views on this as there are vodkas in Congliaro’s back bar. (You’re more likely to get agreement on the fact that £4 is a lot to pay for a small glass ‘hay and grass water. It’s pleasant, but should cost about half that. A French Blonde (grape juice, elderflower cordial, lemongrass and verjus) sounds much more exciting.)

Desserts? Yes, I loved them but suspect that those with a sweeter tooth might not - or opt for the white chocolate rice crispie and dark chocolate mousse instead. We shared a fabulously wobbly goats’ milk panna cotta with spiced candied tomatoes (look out for tomorrow’s match of the week) and strawberry and balsamic ‘jam’ with a spicy hit of horseradish ice cream (right) - neither excessively sweet which is a plus in my book.

There’s so much to take in here - not least the huge and beautiful room with its open plan kitchen - that I feel I need to go back to get a full grip on it. Preferably in a month or so once the kitchen is fully into its stride. But it’s an exciting and genuinely original project which I’m sure will be a game-changer for the London restaurant scene. If you’re remotely interested in where food is heading you should go.

Grainstore is at Granary Square, London N1C 4A, just behind King’s Cross station. Look at the helpful map on the Find Us page of the website. Tel: 020 7324 4466.

I ate at Grainstore as a guest of the restaurant. You should get away with paying about £25-30 a head for food plus drinks and service. There's a 'surprise menu' available in the evening from £35 a head but it needs to be ordered by the whole table.