Bourgeois with polish

A key hangout for Polish émigrés in the Fifties and Sixties was Chez Krysztof in St Alban's Grove, Kensington. A couple of decades later, Jan Woroniecki, son of the owner, turned the site into Wódka, a Polish restaurant with bold emphasis on the joys of the fermented grain or tuber. Jan went on to open the estimable Baltic in Southwark, a modern syncopated hymn to Eastern European cooking (and vodka).

Chez Kristof, which Woroniecki has just opened in Hammersmith, is gentle on the vodka, strong on French bourgeois cooking considered with a fresh eye. The concept can't help but draw comparisons with Maquis, a French bourgeois restaurant which previously occupied the same site.

Sam Clarke, of Moro, who opened it, seemed to have studied Moorish cooking in great depth for the brilliant, everpopular Moro, but for Maquis it felt as if he had just gone on a holiday to France which was cut short. There was a flurry of interest in the fact that it was possible to order fondue, but presumably not enough steady business ensued.

There is nothing like a half-price running-in period to fill a restaurant. Last Friday, which I think was the final day of preview prices, Chez Kristof was packed. All the pavement tables were occupied and stayed that way during a monsoon-like downpour. Staff were struggling to cope and, with Woroniecki at the helm, were able to manage, although some tables muttered about long waits.

The menu, entitled Draft Opening Menu, kicked off with Raspberry Rossini, the cocktail of the day made with Framboise, raspberry purée and champagne. Small dishes of pissaladière, anchoïade or bagna cauda - crudités with a warm garlic, anchovy and olive oil dressing - which preceded the first courses proper would have been ideal cocktail-accompanying food.

But three of us started with soupe au pistou, sautéed sweetbreads in a casserole of beetroot, Swiss chard and coco beans, and octopus and baby squid with tomatoes and garlic.

Chef and cookery book author Simon Hopkinson, who was with us, said of the soupe au pistou, served in a deep white bowl, that it is "the nicest I can remember". He praised its limpid quality and the extra-special white beans.

I loved the sweetbread dish, where stern vegetables offset the buttery quality of the meat. Only he who ordered the cephalopods was disappointed as the accompanying sauce came much too close to ratatouille for comfort. Reg had a nasty run-in with ratatouille at a formative age.

Other first courses of the sort you might hope for on a French menu are there: grilled boudin noir with apples and Calvados; steak tartare; terrine de campagne with confit of onions. Main courses are also comme il faut. There is cassoulet, bouillabaisse, roast pigeon, braised rabbit and baked leg of lamb Provençal, but we chose char-grilled coquelet with garlic and shallot dressing, loin of pork in bacon with petits pois à la Française and bavette steak with red wine, shallots and French fries. "A classic marchand du vin sauce," said Hoppy.

All were very good, not extraordinary food, but ordinary food cooked with finesse. A side dish of Puy lentils was excellent and, almost most impressively of all, the green salad was made with only soft leaves, the sort we call English lettuce, dressed with a vinaigrette, just the way you get it, or used to get it anyway, in France.