One critic too many

To the untrained eye, the Brasserie St Quentin doesn't look like anything special. Situated opposite the Brompton Oratory, and with a Paris-in-the-Twenties feel, it resembles a slightly upmarket version of Café Rouge.

When I visited it on a Wednesday lunchtime, it was virtually empty and the food, while perfectly adequate, was nothing special. On the face of it, then, just another bog-standard French bistro, no different from thousands of others on high streets up and down the country. It'll probably be turned into a Starbucks within the next ten years.

To the cognoscenti, however, there's something unique about the Brasserie St Quentin. It enjoys the enormous distinction of being the only restaurant in London to be named after a restaurant critic. That's right, one of those scumbags. The late Quentin Crewe, who cofounded the Brasserie St Quentin in 1980 with Hugh O'Neill, more or less invented restaurant criticism as we know it today.

It happened when he was working as an associate director of Queen magazine in the Sixties. In those days, it was unheard of for a restaurant critic to write about anything other than the food. A typical review would go on about the sauces and the garnishes without once mentioning the other diners. That was considered vulgar, the sort of thing gossip columnists did rather than gourmands.

On one fateful morning, Queen's regular restaurant critic failed to turn up for work and Quentin, who was off to have lunch at Wilton's, volunteered to fill in. On his return to the office, he wrote a scabrous, 1,000-word review in which he described how doddering old aristocrats were served nursery food by buxom waitresses dressed as nannies. The prices, he said, were so exorbitant they resembled death duties: aimed at capital rather than income.

It caused a sensation - nothing like it had ever been written before - and the modern restaurant column was born.

I would dearly love to emulate my great predecessor by writing a scandalously indiscreet review of Brasserie St Quentin, but nothing remotely untoward happened. Quentin Crewe and Hugh O'Neill sold it to the Savoy Hotel in 1989 and they, in turn, sold it to the Chez Gérard Group. O'Neill bought it back in 2002 and poached the executive chef from Tramp, Nana Yaw Nitri Akuffo, to run the kitchen. It still offers the reasonably priced French food that Quentin Crewe was so fond of - he wrote a classic book called The Great Chefs of France --but that is hardly a rarity these days. Indeed, there are probably more such bistros in London than there are in Paris. It's about as exotic as an Italian delicatessen.

I started with a 'courgette flower' - a slightly bland fish mousse - followed by Dover sole. Had I opted for the set lunch I would have got away with £25, but since I ordered à la carte and had a glass of wine I didn't get much change from £50. The Dover sole was pretty good, but then it nearly always is. The new potatoes and broccoli that accompanied it, by contrast, were fairly ordinary. But I can't in all honesty employ one of Quentin Crewe's famous put-downs - he once compared a soup to boiled tennis shoes.

My fellow diners - all ten of them - were a fairly nondescript bunch. There was one fat bloke dining by himself, a father-and-daughter couple by the window and a couple of tables of American tourists. Presumably, it's the sort of place recommended by concierges in the area. All told it was a bit of a non-event: vin ordinaire.

If any entrepreneurs reading this think it might be a good idea to name a restaurant after me, I'd counsel against the Brasserie St Toby. Even Café Toby sounds a bit poncey. The best I can come up with is the Frog and Tobe. However, few of us can expect to follow in the eminent Quentin Crewe's footsteps.

Brasserie St Quentin
243 Brompton Road, SW3 2EP