An affair of the stomach

I really, really liked La Petite Maison. Strike that: I lurved it. I want to marry it, have its babies. Marina and Maison sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G. That's how much I liked it.

I didn't expect to. It's in Mayfair. It comes from the same stable as Zuma and Roka. It's based on an original in Nice much frequented by the likes of nearby neighbours Sir Elton, Bono, Liz Hurley, Rod Stewart and Roger Moore. Can you read that list without an involuntary shudder? So you expect super-posh, super-pricey, super-poncy.

Except it isn't. Oh, it's not cheap - far from it - but the bill doesn't deliver a nosebleed and fellow diners are not all on expense accounts. And it's far less brittle and look-at-me fashionable than its stablemates; the room is classically lovely - creamy, airy, with well-spaced tables graced with starched napery and twinkling glassware.

Oh, and a knobbly lemon and brace of worryingly testicular plum tomatoes. There's a full bottle of grassy Ligurian olive oil, into which you can dip vast loaves of rustic bread. A couple of glasses of Provencal rose wine, and I and my equally curmudgeonly companion start to feel incredibly well-disposed towards the world.

And then the food starts arriving, and with it true romance. Provencale flavours, a collision between France and old Genoa, rich in vibrant vegetables, fresh seafood and lashings of that oil. It's been given an extra layer of sophistication: often a mistake - why fix it if it ain't broke? - but not here.

So pissaladiere, that rough-and-ready pizza/tart affair, has been translated into little fingers of the finest, crispest pastry, topped with a sweet, sludgy tangle of caramelised onions, those weeny, surprisingly delicate Nicoise black olives and silvery smoked anchovies. Gorgeous.

We have to have salade Nicoise. It's a model of its kind, complete with floppy romaine lettuce, canned tuna - as is correct - good eggs, more of those teeny olives, anchovies and broad beans. Peppers, too, but roasted and peeled, not just bunged in willy-nilly. The dressing is luscious: herby, garlicky, mustardy.

Then sardines: boned and dressed, but retaining their fresh, butch flavour, punched up with tiny croutons, red onion and the sweetness of peeled grape.

This isn't the most technically brilliant, fancy-shmancy cooking in London. But golly, it's good. Chef Raphael Duntoye has a sureness and lightness of touch that doesn't need bells and whistles.

And it reinforces, yet again, my suspicion that all the gimmick-heavy grandstanding technique you get in so many places (possibly thanks to The Fat Duck's regular appearance at the top of those arbitrary Top Restaurants To Go To Before You Die-type lists) is designed for people to name-drop and obsess over rather than get stuck in and enjoy.