Charm of Cannes in Chelsea

Summer in the city, and we're in Chelsea. The evening starts at the Admiral Codrington pub on Mossop Street. The place is overflowing with young men in those checked Tattersall shooting shirts, moleskin trousers, moleskin waistcoats (and, for all I know, moleskin pants too). We could eat at the Cod but it's too noisy, too smoky, and frankly, not my demographic: I didn't even go to the Cod when I was single because there was no faster way of sending a message that you were a nice Sloane looking for a rock for your ring finger than going there. You might as well have hung a sign around your neck.

So, as it was one of those nights (tang of exhaust, pong of hopeful aftershave, wafts of cigar smoke mingling in the heavy air), we left the pub and went along a few yards to Draycott Avenue, and stopped at the corner by a welcoming white awning and French windows opened wide to the street. 'Do you know Le Suquet?' my companion asked. No I didn't, I answered, but I could see that if you wanted to pretend you weren't in Chelsea at all but in a hilltop village outside Cannes, or eating bouillabaisse in a little dive off the harbour in Marseilles, you might come here.

We weaved through the tables, receiving a warm welcome from a French lady 'd'un certain age', with Gallic charm and perfect manners, to a ringside seat by the open window, where we would eat, I hoped, our twitchingly fresh seafood while being caressed by the city breezes.

Soon little bits started arriving. I never know whether free nibbles are a good thing or a bad thing. One, they're not really free, and two, they're often not worth eating. At Le Suquet, the couple on our right, a mother and daughter, were having snails, while we opened the meal with free whelks, which were served with a buttery pate and rounds of crisp toast.

Well, however much you love someone, it really does test one to watch them pick up a dark whelk, shiny with moisture, and go at it with a pin, before triumphantly exhuming a shapeless slimy morsel and then dangling it into their open mouth. Particularly if the couple on the next table are doing it with snails, and making little moans of pleasure as they do so. I felt, I have to admit, as if I had unwittingly strayed into one of those strange competitions they hold in America to determine who can eat the most Oscar Mayer frankfurters in one sitting, and it wasn't an appetising sight.

But once I overcame my squeamishness, and moved onto the main menu, I felt positive again. A chilled Sancerre helped (£25) and a plate of scallops cooked in cream and perfumed with saffron.

Though the scallops were ungenerous, they were an improvement on what had gone before (anything was better than watching people eat mollusc bogey. Sorry, but you know what I mean). And post-scallops, a fabulous plate of grilled, delicate langoustines, and, before I knew it, I was making moans of pleasure myself and sucking dripping shells with garlic juices running down my chin and I could see people averting their gaze from me to spare my own blushes.

After I'd dipped my fingers in the finger bowl, and mopped my face, I had a good look round. Le Suquet is a very pretty restaurant. It has an authentic French feel. It is clearly a favourite among the area's well-heeled residents, who were, without exception, well-turned out in a proper way, with the men in ties and the ladies in frocks.

But for my money (£140 for two), it could do with the following improvements: fresher bread, chilled water, plumper scallops, more space between tables - and I haven't even described how the chocolate mousse had no choccy kick at all and that the couple at the next table had their post-prandial tea out of a stainless steel pot of the type I last saw at Tebay service station on the M6.

If I lived in Chelsea, I'd probably go there again - as long as I could find a nice, rich, young man clad in head-to-toe moleskin to take me.