Music and the food of life

Ronnie Wood hired Jamie Oliver to cook for his wife's 50th a couple of weeks ago, which, given his high righteousness stock right now, is a bit like having Gandhi come over to cook your tea. They ate risotto then roast chicken and rhubarb pannacotta. Apparently Jamie gave a heart-warming speech to the guests about how he had cooked a simple family meal for a family get-together. Bless him, has he never eaten leftovers and a pot of yoghurt? Good, simple food is one of the cornerstones of happiness - along with wine, music, love, lots of money and a large house on the beach.

For this reason, I liked the Defector's Weld. We drank a rioja that was a smooth, full-bodied steal at £13.50. They've got the music going on too - one of the owners is the DJ Jon Carter (Mr Sara Cox), and the music is appropriately cool and esoteric. They have fine names DJing on Fridays and Saturdays - with Derek Dahlarge, LCD Soundsystemand Nouvelle Vague lined up.

I took Northern Gary and Posh Lucy. Lucy had a goat's cheese salad, 'nicely browned, gooey and sharp', with large wedges of boiled beetroot and sweet walnuts. Gary's mushroom soup looked awfully pale. It turned out to be leek and potato, which needed more seasoning, or at least more leek. The textures were all right, but the flavours were non-existent.

I had to have tofu - you never see it on pub menus. The Weld's sister pub, the Lock Tavern in Camden, is near Select model agency, so here was something for ladies. It was not marinated much, so the tofu itself tasted of bugger all, but the crust was a dense, crunchy mix of black and white sesame seeds.

The same sesame crust came on Gary and Lucy's salmon, which was cooked to moist, slippery perfection - pleasing textures again. The chips were magnificent, homemade, sweet, with a crisp shell. My grilled trout was beautifully cooked, plain but for a few stalks of parsley sticking out of its belly - it was served with a simple salad that did not come from a bag, but the dressing could have done with more punch. £8.50 for this dish suggests that their profit margins on food are admirably narrow.

In the upstairs snug bar, a room arranged into corners and nooks of privacy, it was dark, but not so dark to let us know we were in a place with an ironic Edwardian drawing room-meets-spit-'n'-sawdust feel. The design is cleverer than it might initially seem. It beats any other pub in the area for slouchy, young, pub atmosphere. If this is going to end up a chain then bring it on, it's about time someone at the cheaper end of the market broke out of the gastropub mould.

The Defectors Weld
170 Uxbridge Road, W12 8AA