A great little bistro

This week's plan has gone awry. For this main piece, I intended to report on Fleur, the latest in the Marcus Wareing/Gordon Ramsay empire, leaving the corner panel to a tiny little spot in deepest Twickenham. But I was so blown away by what we found in the 'burbs that I'm coming over all iconoclastic: basically, Ma Cuisine is a better story than Fleur, so that's what you're getting.

People often ask how we work out the star system. They're intended to convey how successful a restaurant is in achieving its aspirations. So an upmarket spot, all Michelin trappings, serried ranks of staff and an haute cuisine menu could end up with two stars if it doesn't cut its ambitious mustard; while a terrific ockacbasi grill could get four, if it's a damn fine example of its kind.

Which brings us back to Ma Cuisine, subtitled Le Petit Bistro. Owner John McClement has been the leading light of the Twickenham culinary scene for several years - admittedly not that much of an accolade - with McClement's a few doors down from the new place.

Compared with its elder sibling - all beige drapes and soft furnishings - Ma Cuisine is pared back to the bones. Gingham oil cloth, functional furnishing, perfunctory little pictures dotted randomly about, a huge ceiling fan: it's like a romantic nostalgia-wallower has tried to recreate 1950s provincial France in commuter-belt Greater London.

The menu, too, is relentlessly oldschool bistro: French onion soup; poulet de bresse with salsify and cream sauce; fillet of seabass with fennel and Pernod; even coq au vin, for goodness sake! And I'm prepared to confess that, if it's done well, I love this kind of thing.

And, blimey, was it done well. McClement himself is in the kitchen and it shows.

We had four starters out of sheer greed, each one a belter. Chunky, sweet ham trapped in glossy, savoury jelly flecked with vivid parsley was an exemplary jambon persillè, a punchy sauce ravigote, tangy with capers, cutting its richness. Thick discs of foie gras - magnificently silky and deeply flavoured - came with a slick of mango: brilliant.

I loved our waiter, too. His gloriously Gallic insouciance was the perfect accompaniment to the evening. I asked him if the black pudding was home-made. 'But of course,' he shrugged. You mean the chef's in the kitchen stirring a vat of pigs' blood? 'Why not?' he replied.

Whatever; the result, encased in some first-rate pastry, was appallingly, deliciously rich; maybe the cream and Dijon mustard sauce was a salty element too far. A few caramelised apples instead would've made it one of my favourite dishes of the year. Asparagus with hollandaise: faultless.

Main courses dipped slightly - just slightly. An excellent entrecùte in a textbook au poivre sauce had been cooked medium instead of rare; our waiter was dutifully apologetic and removed a couple of (splendid) kirs from the bill, even though it had been devoured. Dauphinoise were rich, unctuous - this isn't food for the dieter - and mixed vegetables were fresh and perky. Cassoulet featured a huge, rather alarming saucisson, a suitably melting confit leg of duck and the requisite highly flavoured beans, but lacked a degree of soupy cohesion. Purèed potatoes, too. Oh God, death by carbohydrate! Nevertheless, we had puddings: a flawless crëme brûlèe and caramely, alcoholic crëpes suzettes.

But I've kept the best till last. For all this food - four starters - a bottle of Burgundy, water, two glasses of house white, we paid just £69.75. Astonishing, especially when the quality's so high. The foie gras costs £4.75, a third of elsewhere. I don't know how McClement does it.