Wake Up and Smell the Garlic Butter

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A traditional French lunch at Chez Kristof

The French may be slowly abandoning the once common two-hour lunch in favour of le sandwich munched at their desks, but at Chez Kristof in Hammersmith Grove, they seem to prefer to do things the traditional way.

On the day we visited it was not exactly warm, but the weather was passable enough for us to want to sit outside and watch the world go by as we ate. In what seemed to be quite a speedy start to our meal, a waiter and waitress appeared almost immediately with a basket of bread, some butter and some olive spread to keep us busy while we studied the menu. We felt pampered already.

As with many restaurants these days, Chez Kristof offers its own Credit Crunch Lunch. This is £9.00 and comprises a salad, a main course and a coffee. The only problem is that the offer only applies to one set dish: Pork Provençale with petits lucques (a kind of green olive) and hazelnuts. So if you are not a fan of any of these ingredients, it is no good. We went instead for the set lunch of two courses, which is £14.50 per person and allows you to choose from the entire menu. We squeezed three courses out of this by having a starter to share, a main course each and a dessert to share too.

It is not every day you get the chance to try eating snails, and so, presented with the opportunity, we went for escargots with garlic butter for our starter. We were given a pair of tongs with a hole in them to hold onto the delicate little creatures, and a two-pronged fork to tease them out of their shells, and by the sixth and final snail, we had got a good technique going. A bit like mussels in texture, the snails had an overwhelmingly garlic buttery taste and I suspect that without this they would probably be quite tasteless. Local wildlife these creatures were definitely not. They were far classier than any snail I have ever seen, and Mother Nature had done a good job on them, bestowing them with delicately patterned white and brown shells.

After our starter, it was a long wait until our main courses – one poached skate and lentil vinaigrette and one fennel and butter bean gratin - arrived. I suppose in Paris, you would spend the time watching beautiful people walking past or admiring beautiful architecture. Watching the world go by in Hammersmith Grove, meanwhile, mainly involved observing a constant stream of white vans driving from Shepherd's Bush to Hammersmith or vice versa plus some outsized vehicles trying to squeeze their way round the corner into Trussley Road.

Two steaming-hot dishes were finally brought to our table: the very thick triangle of fish served on top of some brown lentils was either a fin or a tail – we weren't sure which and the waitress was not able to enlighten us. Either way, the fan-shaped piece of fishmeat both looked and tasted beautiful. The fennel and butter bean gratin was also good and had a crusty topping which was cheesy without being over-the-top greasy. Once we had tasted both of these dishes, the long wait between courses seemed completely irrelevant.

Keeping an outside eating space looking smart is a constant battle against the elements and while we were sitting on slightly grubby garden chairs at the front of the restaurant, where several smokers sought refuge, we would have got an entirely different impression if we had sat inside: we could see through the window that the interior looked smart and contemporary with wooden floors, square spotlights and uplighters, elegant purple and white walls and spring daffodils on each table.

For dessert we had the warm banana cake, which was served to us on a giant plate and the whole creation looked as though it had been specially designed just for us. The small square of cake had a scoop of vanilla ice cream clinging to its side, a few tiny squares of banana were dotted about the plate and the whole work of art was finished off with a honey-coloured sauce drizzled all over it. An impressive look and the burnt sugar topping gave it an impressive taste too.

Our final bill, for two set lunches, drinks and an 'optional service charge', came to £47.81. I do have a bit of an issue with being charged £6.50 for a glass of wine and £3.25 for a double espresso, but if you want to eat superb quality food – and this really was exquisite – then it is a price worth paying.

Yasmine Estaphanos

11 April 2009