A walk on the wild west side

This review was first published in December 2001

With its fairy lights, junk-shop furniture and service ethic that takes laid-back to a whole other level, this long-established little brasserie has found its spiritual soul at the grungy, Golborne Road end of Portobello Road.

Visit out of conventional dining hours as we did and you get the impression you're invading someone's extended private dining room - someone who used to be a bit of a raver in the 1970s but has faded into a kind of hippyish respectability.

It reminded me, for no tangible reason, of my university career, spent lurking in Edinburgh's collective-run coffee shops (sadly, I've no Harry Potter to show for it). Despite its French name, there's little on the menu to indicate rampant Francophilia: beetroot and red wine risotto, anyone? Fishcakes? Gravadlax?

And the food is very hit-and-miss: we loved our steak with brandy and green peppercorns and our ground beef, smokily charred, highly seasoned and flanked by mounds of McDonald's-ish frites; pommes dauphinoises were cakey and addictive. But the gravadlax was too fishy and fleshy - a flabby farmed specimen, insufficiently marinated - and, instead of a mustard and dill vinaigrette, came with a crëme fra"che dressing which tasted, according to my date, like fish-flavoured Milk Of Magnesia.

My Merguez sausage and boiled egg salad wasn't bad, just woefully underpowered - not something you expect from those normally explosively-flavoured tubes of lamb. Still, it's not wildly expensive, does a decent Kir and is a perfect vantage point for people-watching on the wilder fringes of West London.

Brasserie Du March? Aux Puces
349 Portobello Road, W10 5SA