Become a Smithfield Cellar fella

This review was first published in June 2000

Smithfield becomes more rustic by the day. One corner of it is now decidedly Pyrenean, with Cellar Gascon (not a cellar but a ground-floor wine bar) opening up next to Club Gascon (not a club but a restaurant). It's odd that the concept of regional French eating and drinking hasn't been explored much to date in London: Alsace, Burgundy and Bordeaux would all be eminently suitable for this treatment, with the Languedoc and the Loire jogging along behind. Each of these regions has a wealth of local specialities plus a cellarful of interesting wines to offer.

The South West is France's backwoods country: boars, bears, berets, boules and bonfires; villages where everyone knows everything about everyone; mocking jokes about Parisians and stealthy cash-in-hand tax evasion; plus an exotic language (the enigmatic and guttural Basque) for that final note of rural incomprehensibility. The point behind Cellar Gascon is to explore its wines in the same way that Club Gascon ferrets about in its gastronomy.

The wine side of the Cellar works very well, though of course I would like to see everything available by the glass instead of just the 16 wines of the Cellar Tasting section. I don't mean that all the wines are good; it's just that they're all interesting. The dry white 1998 Iroul?guy (Xuri d'Ansa, for the fluent Basque speakers among you) is viciously tart, out on the raw, ragged edge of ethnicity, yet I still relished the chance to get to grips with its pungency and abrasive challenge (£4.50 for 175ml). The white 1999 Ch?teau Cl?ment Termes from Gaillac was a far more affable quaff, with its softly floppy floral style (£3 a glass). We found the red 1997 Ch?teau du Cedre Cahors a little too mineral, lacking in meaty substance (£4). Don't, under any circumstances, miss trying a glass of the red 1998 Domaine du Cros Marcillac, served chilled as it should be: a wonderful mouthful of vigorous, quenching, stony fruit (£3.50 a glass - though a bottle at £14 would be an even better idea). The dark, earthy red 1996 Domaine Berthoumieu Madiran is the prop forward among French country wines, uncompromising and forceful, just the thing to defuse yourself with after a day's hard trading.

With its padded brown furnishings, the place looks (not inappropriately) half-Spanish; the warbling taped chansons are very French, though, as is the reading copy of Le Figaro. Service is bright, from real South-Westerners, and you can buy and smoke stogies in one corner. And to eat?

This is my one qualm about Cellar Gascon. The tapas-style food is mostly very good: my guest and I gobbled up fresh-cut slices of jambon de Bayonne, black pudding, the fine saucisson and moister, bouncier saucisse; Piperade Basquaise was soothingly sloppy, and the "crunchy green beans and xipister" (a chilli dressing) was appealingly shocking. They had chipirons (baby squid), chopped up and stewed, and we ploughed through those too, and desserts like the vivid fresh yoghurt and quince jelly were delicious. But my guest and I are both thin and vulpine, with ravening appetites and the metabolism of stoats, and we found the dolls' portions (at £2.50 to £4 each) derisory. They would reduce prop forwards to tears. Even the bread (which we repeatedly ordered) costs £1 a throw. This is a wine bar; our lunch bill came to £60; and we still walked out hungry. Everything else is great, but that ain't good enough. More food, please.

Club Gascon
59 West Smithfield, EC1A 9DS