Table talk

William Sitwell at Le Cellar in London

LE CELLAR IS A NEW, dinky temptress of a place in Clerkenwell, London. If you’ve managed four weeks off the booze since Christmas and feel like abandoning the wretched wagon, wander up St John Street and you may well hear her siren call. Inside, your winged angels come in the form of two Frenchmen. And just to complete the metaphor: the rocks upon which your vessel (I’m not mixing the metaphor, by the way; the bandwagon you’ve been travelling on is amphibious) will inevitably crash come in the form of bizarre crockery (more on that later).

The Frenchmen are Simon Maniora and Anthonin Charlier. They met at school, and Le Cellar is the fulfilment of a dream they’ve had since their teens. I’m not sure of the exact details of the original brainstorm, but perhaps it occurred at le weekend. They could have been wearing les tee-shirts , and while their friends preferred things like le surf, they hatched a plan to one day visiter à Londres and ouvrir a place serving très bon wine to les rosbifs.

Whatever the route to the present day, I’m very glad that they did it, for Maniora and Charlier are fabulous hosts and their enthusiasm for wine is infectious. Le Cellar is a tiny space but all the more special for it. The decor has been pared back to the original brick walls, you can sit around barrels or at the bar, and visit le actual cellar downstairs

where the wine racks rest on a gravel-covered floor.

I was with a fellow sipping enthusiast and we were happy to sit at the bar. Behind it, Maniora and Charlier enthused about their bottles, many of which were open in front of us – all shapes and sizes, in large ice buckets or out on the chunky wooden top – willing us to taste.

We drank whites: a smooth and rich white burgundy (Château de Bel Avenir) and a Jurançon Sec, a blend of two lesser-known grapes gros manseng and petit manseng, made by Clos Lapeyre, which produces a tangy little number. There was also a lively Italian verdicchio from winemaker Fattoria San Lorenzo, and a light sauvignon blanc from the Loire Valley made by La Grange Tiphaine, called Trinqu’âmes. With pudding: an epic and rusty-looking, honey- and plum-tasting dessert wine called Chez Jau. Oh, and there was a magnum of red going about the place. I can’t recall its name but I managed to lasso it and get it poured into one of the variously shaped glasses in front of me.

And in the midst of this elegant treatise against abstinence came various dishes. I noted that on Le Cellar’s website it said, ‘Each small dish is… a definite eye and mouth orgasm.’ Written by a French person, this would perhaps be forgivable, but the chef here is an Englishman called Matt Smith. And the way he presents his food is strangely incongruous with the earthiness of the wine bar. Tiny pieces of sea-bass sashimi came on a vast brick of salt – a striking thing to see but you’d better guzzle it fast because if you leave the fish on the slab for longer than a few seconds then you get one hell of a salty mouth orgasm.

A pair of oysters presented in a little basket came with a pipette, with which one could squirt on some spicy dressing, and we shared a plate of cured pork, from slices of salami to a wonderful serrano and some rich rillette.

The scallop burger was less of a triumph. This was a sort of deconstructed dish that came with a squidink bun on a scallop shell. The buns were, to my mind, like Dyson vacuum cleaners: terrible in conception and utterly hopeless.

The pig’s cheek was the perfect example of what I mean by the incongruity of the food. A melting, deeply rich slow-cooked piece of meat, with soft mashed potato and a carrot shaving – that came served in half a wine bottle.

Maniora and Charlier explained how they cut the bottle in two. It involves a blade, a great deal of water spurting out of a hose and a lot of time. Actually, this lunacy almost makes a Dyson seem sensible. Come on, boys: if we can drink wine out of a glass, tell the chef to serve his food on a plate.

Oh, and while you’re having a word, ask him not to bother making pineapple spaghetti, and to send out the cheese with a knife not a letter opener. A few tweaks and Le Cellar will be parfait.

While you’re having a word with the chef, ask him to not bother making pineapple spaghetti

Above Oysters, which come with a pipette for applying the dressing. Below Pig’s cheek