The perfect local restaurant

This review was first published in October 2001.

What do you want from a restaurant? Too often these days, restaurateurs seem to think we won't be happy unless we're surrounded by acres of dark wood veneer, impenetrable art or flat, light-reflective surfaces and stainless steel - otherwise why would every new opening from Eyre Brothers to West Street give it to us?

Either that or it's David 'friend of Madonna's' Collins, the highglam architect of the Blue Bar, Drones, Cecconi's and many, many others. Perhaps this approach appeals to the restaurant whores among us (and I am one, oh yes) who are not happy unless they're at the latest gaff within a week of opening. But do they go back after shelling out for their pleasures? Or do they simply move on to the next, younger model? I know what I think.

There are restaurants people go back to again and again, where everybody might not know your name but at least you are guaranteed a welcome, where the food and the decor are equally embracing.

The sort of places where people spend their own, not their companies' money. Just such a place is Maquis in Hammersmith, the newly-opened venture from the husband and wife team (endearingly called Sam and Sam Clark, both River Cafe and The Eagle alumni) behind the enduringly successful Moro in Exmouth Market.

Lucky, lucky residents of Hammersmith Grove: not only do they reside in some expansively handsome buildings but now they've got what's close to the perfect neighbourhood restaurant on their doorstep.

Maquis is not going to break any ground with its interior - tables and chairs which didn't impinge on our consciousness (a good thing); plush red banquettes; amateurish stencilling; nice, twinkly chandeliers. Nor is it going to have Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck looking to his innovative food laurels: the menu is short, uncluttered; French terroir-ish in flavour. (My favourite entries: the line that intimated small, well-behaved dogs were welcome and the Gallicly perfunctory 'vegetarian alternative' - ' a plate of vegetables from today's main dishes'.)

But, with a staff who made us feel as though they were truly, genuinely pleased to see us, it created a seductive whole.

And it's not afraid to invite snootiness - there is fondue on the menu and coquilles St Jacques with pleasingly retro piped Duchesse potato (beautiful, pearly specimens of scallops, nestling in their shells on a bed of earthy wild mushrooms).

And people like this kind of food: virtually every table brandished the fondue set. These weren't staid types, moreover, rather the cool, relaxed - and affluent - crowd that is most restaurants' Holy Grail. So if a cauldron of molten, aged Gruyere with calvados cider is your thing - it is mine - then this is the place to come.

It's also the place if you like chicken to taste of chicken: ours was bursting with flavour, it stood up well to its punchy anchoiade and the bitterness of the dandelion in the potato salad (although it appeared to be the stalks of dandelion, not the leaves like my mama used to collect from our back lane). Roast rack of lamb came as tender little chops with a creamy gratin of pumpkin and salsify - an intensely arid root that needed all the cream it could absorb. The only carp was caused by snails with mixed herbs and walnuts - perhaps a little too snaily for their recipient.

It's not even wildly expensive: around £5 for starters and £12-ish for fully accessorised mains - and a delicatessen and traiteur is opening next door. Maquis is already busy and deservedly so; I wish more new restaurants were like this.