Meat and greet at La Chaumiere

This review was published in July 2002

There's a 1970s French film called La Grande Bouffe in which four middle-aged men repair to a house outside Paris to systematically eat themselves to death.

Nearer to home, Chelsea to be precise, you can almost repeat the experience in the suitably Gallic atmosphere of La Chaumiëre. The only choices you make at this eccentric-new spot are what kind of meat you want for a main course (the choice is terse: sirloin, rack of lamb, roast chicken and the like, no messing, no frills) and your choice of pud. The rest of the menu just comes. And comes. And comes.

So we had: olives; mushrooms a la grecque; aubergine 'caviar'; Bayonne ham; a boiled egg and a tomato each; terrine; an idiotically large basket stuffed full of whole vegetables with a vat of vinaigrette; salad 'a la crëme'; about a stone of wood-fire roasted sirloin; baked potato; green salad; four slabs of cheese; and a crëme brulee. Every course came accompanied by slice after slice of chewy, toasted pain rustique and sweet butter.

By the end of this astonishing repast, I felt a distinct sense of kinship with a foie gras goose. I had to go home and do some solitary disco dancing to try to work a fraction of it off.

The eccentricity isn't confined to the menu. On affluent, urban Cheyne Walk in a former pub, the proprietors - former head chef of La Chaumiëre in the South of France, Yvan Gaydon and his corkscrew-curled wife Celine - have recreated the kind of restaurant you'd come across in a small Provenćal country town. Rag-rolling on walls impersonates tobacco stains; the furniture is as rustic as the bread; nooks sprout baskets of lavender; there are even copper saucepans by way of decoration. I know! In central London in 2002!

It's so unlikely as to be instantly endearing. Then, most unusually, there's a huge open fire in the centre of the room which sends so-seductive tendrils of woodsmoke into the evening air. It's on this that our main courses are cooked.

But is it any good? Well, yes: overwhelming, certainly, but largely excellent in an earthy, unsophisticated - and large - way. The quality of the ingredients is impeccable: exemplary Bayonne ham melted in the mouth and its accompanying aubergines and mushrooms were packed with winesoaked flavour. Vegetables are justpicked fresh - the blamelessly unadorned tomatoes packed real, home-grown tomato flavour.

Meats are flown in daily from France and our charred sirloin, with its fragrance of woodsmoke and yielding flesh, was a high point (although, spoilt brats, we both longed for some Bèarnaise sauce...). Cheeses - Bleu d'Auvergne, Camembert, Tomme de Savoie - were in perfect nick. The salt was the sought-after fleur de sel de GuÈrande. Even the potato was flawless - don't mock, a great baked potato is hard to find - its skin toasted, and its flesh fluffy and nutty-flavoured.

So far, so marvellous. But here's the stinger: there's currently no choice and the behemoth of a set menu weighs in at £45 a pop. Our completely enchanting waiter (winner of my personal Charmer Of The Year Award) told us that they were having a few weeks of 'soft' opening, taking until September to really get the formula right.

Our pleas for a more flexible menu - or a smaller set one in addition to the marathon - ('Think where you are,' we counselled, 'you're in Chelsea for God's sake.') fell on receptive ears.

The restaurant's parent (patronised, we were told by the enchanting one, by the likes of Bono and Cher) boasts the motto: 'on ne change rien' - we change nothing. Here's hoping its London offspring sees sense enough not to follow in the same hefty, reactionary footsteps.