Loveable old scruff

There is something agreeably anarchic about the Number 77 Wine Bar. It's a scruffy place, paying little heed to the niceties of restaurant design or fashion. The wine list manages to be short, eccentric and good value all at the same time, there are some moody and exotic lagers on offer, the food comes in large portions and at low prices.

For a couple of decades this place has been a focus for locals, despite the rapidly changing nature of West Hampstead which has become (through the proximity of the Jubilee Line) a stronghold of buy-to-let. Where once most West Hampsteadians owned their own flats, you'll now find an increasing proportion renting in NW6 so that they can trek off to Docklands to earn a living. When they get home of an evening they party, and parties are what Number 77 does best.

The menu here takes a bit of summing up, but the best word is probably casual. That's not casual in a derogatory, slapdash sense of the word, but casual in that there is no formal structure to things. You could easily make a meal from the dishes headed 'Bits on the side - all £2.50'. Good homemade houmous, boquerones (those vinegary pickled anchovies), Cajun spiced chips, grilled chorizo. But turn to the main section of the menu and things are no clearer - dishes are higgledy-piggledy with starters stirred into the mains.

The standard of cooking is sound, one level on from 'dinner-party-ordinary', and the dishes have a faint ring of M&S about them. Skewered chicken Romesco is a chicken kebab lollipop with a decent home-made sauce, tempura prawns come with sweet chilli sauce from a bottle - these are pragmatic dishes and much loved by the customers. They both cost less than a fiver so they must either be large starters or small mains. Duck liver pate with balsamic onions, rocket and foccacia is stunning, a quenelle of paté the size of a goose egg, and it is really very good.

The menu wanders on to a watermelon, feta and buckwheat salad with mint, chilli nuts and French beans. A rather heavy chicken, smoked ham and Swiss cheese schnitzel is served with a chunky tomato salad. There is a top-notch beefburger, high-quality meat, cooked right, on a sesame bun with smoked cheese and braised onions.

Desserts are good - there's a chocolate-and-almond torte with pistachio ice cream, a cherry brandy crème bruleé and treacle tart with whipped cream. Meanwhile, the wine list chunters along an equally eccentric path- there's Astley Severn Vale, a gentle English white, sauvignon from Chile, merlot from the Pays d'Oc - all interesting, rather than well-known wines. Nothing (except for the champagne) tops £23 a bottle.

Number 77 is a part of the community, it provides food, drink and playtime for locals, and it does so without pretension and at competitive prices.