Villandry - too big for its boots?

This review was first published in February 2001

Villandry is the corner deli for rich people, a sort of gastro-fantasyland for wannabe 21st-century Elizabeth Davids. The look is urban rustic: Proven?al as reinterpreted by the sort of people who live in loft apartments and drive Audis.

It is the sort of place where you can spend the same amount of money that you might drop on a bottle of perfectly drinkable champagne at your local Unwins or Victoria Wine, but only get a bottle of Vouvray. But then, that is the point of Villandry, it is all about inverted gastro-snobbery. Villandry is a place where one would be less embarrassed to be seen swigging Irn Bru from the can than drinking Sauternes with your foie gras.

Forget hanging out at the Purple Bar with Kate Moss or getting on first-name terms with David Beckham. If you are a Villandry-head, your hero will be someone like Claudio Vannelli (an olive-oil importer, not a soccer player), and your idea of a killer night out is a tasting of first, cold-pressed, extra-virgin.

The Villandry newsletter, printed on brown paper that looks suspiciously recycled, is as much a part of a certain type of affluent London kitchenscape as a signed copy of Nigella's cookery bible.

At this point, I ought to come clean and admit that some years ago I was a fan of the old Villandry on Marylebone High Street. However, this incarnation on Great Portland Street is a truly smooth operation, as slick a piece of lifestyle wish-fulfilment as I have seen in a long time. It is the sort of place where, in a film, two good-looking food snobs might start up a relationship over the culatello and cornichons (if, of course, we made romantic comedies in this country and not violent gangster flicks).

This is a great food shop, with shelves and counters piled with stuff you would have to go a long way to find anywhere else in Britain. Now, I'm as greedy as the next person, but for some reason Villandry just does not do it for me. It is like the foodshop bit of Clarke's in Kensington, or Sutherland's on Shepherd's Bush Road, but much bigger, and therein lies my problem.

The stock is excellent. Staff, in their hessian aprons, are helpful, understanding, knowledgeable. But when the concept is expanded to occupy the sort of square footage you normally associate with a branch of Habitat, it loses that cornershop intimacy, that queue-for-ages-at-the-counter-while-the-dippy-girl-gets-to-grips-with-the-coffee-grinder quality that the gastronomically aware middle classes prize in their delis.

Villandry is simply too big to be a discovery. Once everyone can tuck into a bread-and-butter pudding made with fig-and-almond panettone, the fun rather goes out of food snobbery.

Sure, Villandry tries to maintain that cornershop feel: the restaurant menu is pinned inside a fruit box resting on an easel by the entrance to the rather utilitarian space that houses the restaurant; the plain tables are covered in paper tablecloths; coats are hung on hooks around the room. But, rather ominously, the menu bears the legend: 'Please allow time as all our food is cooked to order.'

First, I hate waiting for anything. Second, I should hope that the food is cooked to order. I didn't make my way past the bourbon molasses mustard, artichoke-and-caper relish, artfully displayed croissants, charcuterie dangling from the ceiling and carefully arranged wines to be served with something piping hot from the microwave or fresh off a fast-food conveyor belt. I want authenticity, lashings of it. I want it saut?ed, shredded, steamed, chargrilled and, more importantly, I want it now - if not sooner.

However, I kept these thoughts to myself as we ordered a full English breakfast for my sons, a bowl of leek-and-potato soup with truffle oil for my wife, and fillet of turbot with broccoli, new potatoes and hollandaise for myself.