EATING OUT

Tom is seduced by a French dining spot with an English accent in London’s Borough Market

What’s in a name? At the risk of sounding like some sexist old dinosaur (as if!), I rather expected a restaurant called Camille (deep in Borough Market) to skip on the sunnier side of the French culinary boulevard. You know, lots of Provençale soups and salads, a stuffed artichoke or two and a delicate leg of spring lamb, cooked à la ficelle. But then I found out that Camille is resolutely unisex, as well suited to a burly Lyonnaise truck driver as to some blushing Niçoise jeune femme. So that’s me told.

But the menu here is unashamedly robust, nononsense, nose-to-tail stuff, a sort-of tour around France in an old Aston Martin, brought to us by the team behind Soho’s Ducksoup. I’m dining with David and Emma Louise Pudge, the brave father and daughter who bought me at a charity auction for The Institute of Cancer Research. David is a very senior lawyer, while Emma Louise is an excellent food blogger, and rather more clued up than me about what’s hot on the artisan bakery scene. Which isn’t hard. Anyway, they are both serious eaters and the menu is a beauty, chalked on the blackboard with the specials scrawled on the mirror. So far, so bistro.

Devilled eggs (yup, those old

Whole gurnard in garlicky snail butter. Genius

friends again) are made better by a lozenge of good smoked eel. Pig’s-head schnitzel has soft, lasciviously fatty meat coated in a burnished breadcrumb crust. At its side, a crisp, sharply bitter apple and puntarelle salad. Homemade boudin noir is equally rugged, a great thick slab of the stuff studded with alabaster chunks of fat, topped with raw egg yolk and a grating of fresh horseradish. It’s

soft and mellow, although it does crave a little more acidity to cut through all that luscious richness.

Calf’s brains, a special, are as good as brains get, meaning they’re gently sautéed in a beurre noisette with lots of lemon juice to stop things getting overly creamy. Crab on toast is a little less visceral, the meat freshly picked, the bisque sweet and subtle. An elegant riposte, then, to all that blood and offal. Whole gurnard is beautifully cooked and covered in

a vividly green and gloriously garlicky snail butter. Genius. The service is warm, the company splendid and even the puddings (especially an exceptional burnt milk tart) memorable. In short, a French bistro with a slight English accent. Très, très bon.

About £35 per head. Camille, 2-3 Stoney Street, London SE1; camillerestaurant.co.uk

Aah! Bistro: ‘The menu here is unashamedly robust, no-nonsense kind of stuff’