La Gazette - Battersea

So, La Gazette, a reasonably authentic, middle of the road, french restaurant in Battersea London, right down to the "give a **** if you order the wrong thing in my restaurant" attitude. There are two things which are good, and they are really good; the beautifully cooked, pan fried foie gras (laid on a bed of apples, lime and chestnuts) and the entrecote. Everything else I have tried has either been ordinary or worse. The steak tartare is particularly disgusting, coated in some mystery red gloop, a sort of spicey mary rose sauce is the closest I can bring myself to describing it. Diners not wishing to have to make an undignified stop on Battersea Park cricket pitch, as an unnamed friend was forced to do, may also wish to avoid the scallops.

the service is quite charming, albeit defiantly French. As a bloke, you can spend half an hour frantically semiforing and excusemeing to get a waiters attention, with depressingly little result. Any female company only has to cock an index finger and service will appear in nano seconds, breathily asking if there is anything, anything at all that could be done for madam.

In spite of this, and maybe because of all this, La Gazette achieves its aims in a way. It’s a fun night out and a good place to go and sit outside on a warm evening. The menu is not unreasonably priced, particularly the pan fried foie gras at £8.00, which makes the various eccentricities much easier to bear. An extensive, and again appropriately priced, wine list seemed to have a similar effect.