As French as the Left Bank

Brunettes are big. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we've lost our love of blondes: all that retouching of roots is so tiresome. The new template for physical beauty is exemplified by Angelina Jolie and swarthy football coach Jose Mourinho. There are dark times ahead.

Which might account for the sudden, inexplicable rise of the French. With their shadowy, sensual charm they're popping up all over the place, like their new president. Sarkozy is a bit of a legend. He jogs. He takes his mum to China. He's powerful, he's clever, he lives in a palace. And he's single. If he wasn't pint-sized, he might even be eligible.

Last time I was at the Plaza Athénée in Paris I spotted his glamorous ex-wife Cécilia, who is a towering Eiffel of a woman. What an odd couple they must have made. She is rumoured to be moving to London, to South Kensington, known locally as the 21st arrondissement or petit Paris, so great is the number of French living here. I wasn't sure I believed it until I heard 'alors' a hundred times before I got to the restaurant.

It's been a while since I visited South Ken. For a time I drank in the Zetland Arms (Zet alors!) - a lovely old pub run by Charlie Chaplin's brother in 1880 and always packed out in my day. I stuck my head round the door. It still is. Ah... memories.

Old Brompton Road is teeming with places to eat. In particular, the bright lights of the Beirut Express and Bosphorous Kebabs were creating their own significant carbon footprint - but this is not the kind of cooking you imagine the foodie French embracing, or even the legion of sloanes who also live here. But there, tucked away among the glaring neon is La Bouchée - a restaurant as tiny and as sweet as Sarkozy himself.

The mysterious motivation for just why Kate Middleton withdrew from canoeing across the Channel earlier this year finally becomes clear. Forget leaky tubs paddled by buxom gals, forget even the magnificent and finally up-to-speed Eurostar. La Bouchée proves that to reach France you need only brave the West London traffic. With its wooden floors, huge oil paintings and several blackboards, it was like stepping into one of those little cafés you can still find on the Left Bank.

Even the service made me think I was in Paris, because for the first ten minutes we were completely ignored. The waitress had perfected that avoiding-the-eye-of-the-customer look that always sends anxiety levels soaring. I'd taken a friend who was telling me about the time he'd been on University Challenge. Was Jeremy Paxman always rude to the undergraduates, I wondered? Indeed he was. Apparently, he snarled and he snapped like a big bad wolf. Afterwards the students were given sweatshirts bearing Paxo's acerbic catch phrase 'Come ON!' Gosh. Paxman as a BBC marketing tool. It makes the mind boggle.

Our starters for ten arrived - marinated goat's cheese, which came in the kind of container that usually holds bath salts; a sweet, garlicky soup (we think it was sweet potato); and an endive salad with Roquefort. Unfortunately, there was no bread to accompany the soup and, naturally, we couldn't catch the waitress's eye to ask for any, but the salad was as perfect and fresh as only the French can make. And as fault-lessly dressed as Monsieur Sarkozy.

Service improved as the meal progressed. Roasted cod with green mustard sauce and spinach was good, but the plate of scallops tasted gritty. The chips deserved a bonus point and scored a high 9/10 on the chip test (how I love them when they arrive ready-salted).

Puddings that worked were the crème br°lée and the tarte Tatin. Sadly, my sickly cheesecake was topped with the kind of bright pink gunk that I might expect to see at my niece's birthday party, though it's my own fault for ordering cheesecake.