A trolley good show chez Conran

This article was published in February 2002

'It actually looks rather nice,' chirped my cosmetics mogul friend and I in unison as we strolled up to Almeida, the Islington outpost of the Conran empire.

As many of the team here had been taken from the Orrery , where my friend is a regular, he was greeted like a visiting potentate. We were given a tour of the open-plan kitchens and proffered glasses of champagne. Feeling left out, I asserted myself by demanding that we were moved to a better table, whereupon the hero-worship of my friend started again and I resigned myself to near anonymity and took to surveying the scene.

Almeida is a bright and unpretentious space, which benefits from a cosy, claret-walled b&w-photo-lined sunken bar into which I can imagine retiring for a post-prandial Partagas and a cup of Calvados.

However, our fellow customers on a Friday lunchtime seemed to be anything but bright and unpretentious. Instead, they conformed - man, woman and Guardian-reading playwright in black knitwear with black draught excluder around his neck - to an Islington stereotype. Black polonecks seemed to be favoured by those of a literary bent, while elderly architects/designers favoured a daring shade of grey. There was more poloneck action here than I have seen anywhere outside a Fran?ois Truffaut movie.

It wasn't merely the knitwear that would have helped the prince of Nouvelle Vague cinema feel at home. The slightly kitsch tricolour motif leaves one in no doubt as to the gastronomic orientation; so it was slightly disappointing that the water we were offered was Hildon. If, however, you pronounce it ''ildon', like our waiter, it sounds more French.

As part of my friend's triumphant arrival, we were made to eat a dish of oysters and sausages. The oysters had a special and rather stylish, greenish tint, while the sausages were cocktail-sized Merguez-like affairs. We were variously informed that this was a speciality of the Basque country, Bordeaux and, indeed, the Pays Nantais.

Whatever the genesis of this dish, it is an example of a praiseworthy trait of Almeida: the introduction of mildly experimental dishes and combinations. Similarly quirky, if ultimately less successful, was the side order of gratin de l?gumes, or more accurately gratin de pumpkin, in which the melted gruy?re and the piping-hot pumpkin fused into a faintly challenging dish.

Such neologisms are outnumbered by a roster of robust Francophile faves: pied de cochon, confit de canard, coq au vin, steak au poivre etc. And for good measure, we also had the charcuterie trolley wheeled over for inspection. It was hearty-looking stuff: aged salami, two types of rillettes and ceramic jars of cornichons and cocktail onions.

From the starters, I ordered Omelette Foresti?re, which was brilliant: looking like a flat pancake sprinkled with fungi, it was startlingly good. If I were being critical, the troncon de turbot that I ate as a main, while generous, had perhaps been a little too crisped in the pan. My friend, meanwhile, found the pancetta with the scallops en brochette were too fatty for him.

Then, adopting his best Frankie Howerd manner, my friend insisted I order a Basque from the trolley of tarts. Ooh, er, missus. I'd flagged down the trolley and was one step ahead of him, just as Conran is ahead of the majority of restaurant fashion. At a time when the restaurant trolley faces extinction, Conran has one for both starters and puds. I rather regret that a trolley was not introduced into the main courses, too, but that would have been too gimmicky, something Almeida is not.

It is touches such as these that make Almeida such an agreeable experience. The food is classically inspired, not too tricky and, on the whole, well prepared. Service is enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The look is pleasant and welcoming. The pricing is neither too rapacious nor giveaway. It succeeds precisely because it does not try too hard to be anything other than a decent and, although I dislike the word in this context, honest restaurant. At Almeida, what you see is what you get.