Marco's case of Chop and change

This article was first published in April 2001

Last week, in a major interview, Marco Pierre White attacked the faux-french, corporation-run brasserie-type chains, lambasting Café Rouge, Café Flo and Chez Gerard as 'appalling'. 'They're an insult to all of us,' he sneered. Strong words. So it's nicely symmetrical he should open his new Parisienne Chophouse in a building which formerly housed one of those very same Chez Gerards.

The revamp of this basement space, by David Collins naturellement, is pretty astute: a re-creation of a bustling Parisian brasserie so punctilious it could be seen as either homage or pastiche. Rather than somewhere brand new, it looks as though it has been here for ever.

The ethos behind the Chophouse is equally astute: the menu looks much like the ones you'd find in White's Drones, Mirabelle et al, but is composed almost entirely of crowd-pleasers. The derided accountant restaurateurs couldn't have bettered it. Effort has gone into keeping the prices on gentle, not much more than the chains.

Having said that, we still managed to spend £113 for two by the time we'd had a couple of cocktails - full marks to the bar staff --a bottle of Gigondas from the shallow end of the wine list and a couple of digestifs. Not an outrageous amount of drink by most standards. So it's by no means a bargain basement.

Despite White's sniffiness about chains, he is now de facto at the helm of a very superior one and Parisienne Chophouse appears to be very much the diffusion offering. It doesn't tax the imagination to foresee branches in Wolverhampton and Falkirk.

However, for the moment we're very much in glossy Knightsbridge. The place was packed out with chaps with expertly-trimmed Blake Carrington-like silvery barnets and women with rock-hard helmets of hair or who looked like Tania Bryer (in fact, one of them was Tania Bryer, so you get the general idea).

Most of them appeared to be necking one of the menu's shared roasts: lamb, duck, beef or chicken à la broche. We went for the duck à la façon anglais which meant it arrived with a tiny dollop of apple sauce and gratin dauphinois. Go figure. The duck was excellent, thoroughly roasted so no trace of pinkness remained but still retaining a glossy moistness, its flesh basted by the fat from the skin.

The gratin wasn't the most sumptuous version: the wafer-thin potatoes had absorbed the cream into their slightly al dente waxiness. Our starters were more of a disappointment: salade russe with crab (at a distinctly ungentle £8.50) was a small ramekin filled with a superior version of the classic cubed veg and mayo salad but the evidence of any crab was fleeting.

Quiche lorraine was, well, quiche. Not a bad version, but not a memorable one either. By the time our 'selection of French cheeses' arrived, my date had taken to muttering acidly about prix fixe menus in Paris where you could've got the entire shooting match for a goldfish in a plastic bag. We were presented with a single wedge of brie. When I remonstrated, the waiter confessed that things weren't entirely up to speed yet on the fromage front and that the wedge was actually destined to be deep-fried for lunch. Did they think we just wouldn't notice?

In his aim to bring us reasonably priced good food, Marco Pierre White is to be lauded. But in today's frenzy about rip-off Britain, perhaps restaurateurs shouldn't be looking to the brewery chains as a point of reference but - much as it galls us - across the English Channel.

Parisienne Chophouse
3 Yeoman's Row, Knightsbridge, SW3 2AL