Les Deux Salons

40-42 William IV Street London, £50 pp

In the Great Greasy Gourmet International Cuisine Derby, the French have it by a nose.

Theirs is the only cooking that pervades our cultural consciousness to the extent that it has become memetic, the French bistro or brasserie– all red and white and menu du jour and vin de table – is a universally shared false memory.

The food is both pompous and peasanty, rich, hearty and clever. We all know the dishes; escargots, coq au vin, cassoulet, beef bourguinan; they are food as Platonic Ideal.

The Italians come close, but the use of olive oil rather than animal fat lets them down. The Spaniard can do clever things to a pig, the Japanese to fish. Closer still is American fast-food, a deep-fried buffalo wing smothered in hot sauce is a tasty mouthful indeed. But it is a base modern equivalent: yes it is food for the people and the ingredients are cheap and plentiful, but there’s nothing in its head.

And herein lies the secret to the French success. You can think of any raw ingredient, any primary food product, and there’s a country that does it better than France. Their cuisine has evolved out of necessity. Both the alchemy and the inclination required to elevate the snail to the status of a national dish are attributes peculiar to the French, and neither could exist without the other. Nobody does the addition of fat, salt and heat quite like them.

The menu at Les Deux Salons is a joy; andouillette and off-cuts and all soaked in the memory of unspeakable things done to geese. But this sets an ambitious pace, as these are dishes we have all eaten a million times in our minds, and reality is always going to suffer by comparison.

So much here is right; the décor is a tasteful fin-de-siecle take on a classic brasserie, and the wine list, pretty much all of which is available in 250ml carafes fuels a buzzy atmosphere.

We kick off with the least French thing on the menu, a special of scallop tartare with lime and pickled ginger. When it arrives the ginger has been withdrawn from the card and substituted for some coriander, which probably worked better and made a delicious light dish spiked with lime in the form of caviar-like balls.

Mother’s pork belly was good, flavourful and nicely layered, but not I thought as heady and hedonistic as it should be. A little like a reconstructed chop.

My own veal shin was braised to perfection, soft but not sloppy, and served simply with some greenery. There was definite potential here, and at the least it would have been very nice if it hadn’t been so extravagantly over-seasoned as to make it almost inedible.

I plumped for a carafe of Spanish Monastrell off a list that is better than the website’s. It was intensely typical of the variety, and absolutely lovely. It did wear its ‘naturalness’ rather aggressively though, which left a muddy feel in the mouth and a thick black sediment in the carafe.

Cocktails were well made, though I’m pretty sure my Daiquiri involved Tequila, and absolutely certain they put a glace cherry in it. Neither are were offensive moves, but both a little weird.

Les Deux Salons is a welcome addition to theatreland; maybe the waiters are a little too charming but generally they’ve got the Frenchy bit nailed pretty well, all the way down to the inevitable slightly over-priced, slightly disappointing food. And in the end that’s all they really need.

La Bastide Blanche 2008

£12.30, Waitrose

Last week I bought a smartphone. And not just any smartphone, the smartest and smuggest of all: an iPhone 4.

I became dribbingly obsessed with it pretty much instantly. I love it all; its tactile ergonomics, the near-constant buzzing and beeping, the million downloadable apps to solve problems that no one has.

This is not to say, of course, that it hasn’t made me profoundly depressed. Not for the most obvious reason, that I now have a small box in my pocket that is quite evidently much cleverer than me, but because I am now the same as everyone else.

The incorrigible plurality of life is what gives people vim. Difference is refreshing and exciting and cuts through the formulaic flabbiness of our working lives. I was close to letting a door shut, something needed to be done…

Grenache is probably the most widely planted red wine grape in the world, with over half a million acres of the earth’s surface given over to it. Its thin skins and long ripening period produce high alcohol and lively red fruit in difficult hot, dry areas. Its nobility can stand up to varietal wines, but mostly it’s blended; with the dozens of other grapes allowed in Rioja or Chateauneuf-du-Pape, or, all over the world, with Syrah and Mouvedre to produce the only blend to seriously challenge Bordeaux-style wines in the global popularity stakes.

This blend is widely produced in the south of France, in the Rhone and Languedoc-Roussillon, in California by the wankily self-styled “Rhone Rangers” and in Australia where it’s so popular that they’ve initialised it to simply GSM.

But always in that order. Proportions vary greatly of course, from vineyard to vineyard and from year to year, but generally you're looking at around 70% Grenache for alcohol and fruit, 25% Syrah for smoke and spice and 5% Mouvedre for a heady farmyard nose and acid structure. The wine is big, fruity, fleshy, food-friendly, easy-drinking, complex, clever and fun… everything really.

Thank god then for the small French appellation of Bandol striking a blow against this homogeneity. The bottle I held in my hands listed those same familiar grapes but in a thrillingly different order: Mouvedre, Grenache, Syrah.

This is immediately apparent on a pleasingly austere nose dominated by animals and herbs. The palate is heavy on the acid, but there’s just enough summer fruit to give the wine life and grippy tannins for a balanced structure, some smokiness but no pepper. Rarely has the drunkeness of things being various felt so good. Almost savoury itself, this is real food wine and could be no happier than next to lamb roast with rosemary. Good stuff.

Unfortunately I had no lamb to realise the wine’s full potential, but perhaps that wasn’t the problem at all. Maybe what I really needed to know was: can I pull a Dom Perignon style trick and Warhol-ise it using a clever app on my lovely new shiny thing?

Yes, I can.

Papa Luna 2007

Majestic, £7.50

New Year's resolutions have always struck me as a bit rigid.

I don't much like the lack of leeway they provide, the implicit pass or fail mentality doesn't sit well with the fuzzy grey-area in which I exist. Things never seem to get resolved anyway, quite why every year a large proportion of the population pretends they're going to is beyond me.

I'm not averse however, to the odd improbable-sounding lofty aspiration.

Which is why this year I'm going to give up smoking, alcoholism, drugs and gambling, before quitting my job, taking a wife and moving to live in the hills of Andalusia among the gypsy folk where we will eat only the local peasant fare and drink rough wine from unmarked flagons.

First up I obviously needed to learn Spanish. Having decided on this I cracked open a bottle of an old Calatayud favourite Papa Luna to celebrate.

The 2007 which was once stocked by Majestic at around £7-8 per bottle, but is no longer listed on their website, 'though I bought up as much as I could from two local branches a couple of months ago, since when they've not had any more.

In a move clearly designed to confuse the lay-drinker, it lists a composition of 70% old-vine Garnacha, 25% Syrah, 5% Mazuelo and Monastrell. Translating to non-obscure names that's Grenache, Syrah/Shiraz, Carignan and Mouvedre.

Mind you, this is the kind of thing you would expect from Norrell Robertson MW, a winemaker who with the curious affectation of referring to himself as 'The Flying Scotsman'. The copy on the back of the bottle is mysteriously silent on the origin of this, and I have neither the time nor inclination to investigate but it's probably a pointless flying winemaker / train pun I imagine.

On the nose there's some lovely deep dark fruit, not overripe, lots of earth, leather and tobacco and little kick of the Mouvedre coming through with slight animal meatiness. Complex stuff with layers and layers of aroma.

This is nicely backed up on the palate with good cherry and blackberry, some smokiness, nice acidity and a fine tannic backbone. Again, a lot going on, deep and thought-provoking.

Damn silly name, really good winemaker.