Le Cercle

Le Cercle is a venture by the same team (Vincent Labeyrie and Pascal Aussignac) behind Club Gascon, the Michelin starred French restaurant near Smithfield. Le Cercle, one of three venues in the group, is a destination French restaurant off Sloane Street that serves its food in bite size tapas portions. One orders a few courses off the menu, as many as required, finishing off with a dessert. Each course comes with its own recommended wine. It's a very fun restaurant to go in a group of 3 or 4.

The restaurant itself is underground, with comfortable chairs and white tablecloths over round tables. There are 2 cotton curtains which divide the dining floor into 3 parts, one of which is the cocktail bar. The decor is sandstone and wood floors, which is casual, yet redolent of good French food. It works.

Le Cercle
1 Wilbraham Place
London SW1X 9AE
020 7901 9999

I went with the Pretty Lady, CY and KN. We decided on red wine (a Saint Nicolas de Bourgeuil 2003), which I'll blog about separately because it was worth a post on its own, then we ordered our courses. The service was a little shabby, probably because the courses are a nightmare to remember. The table next to ours ordered 4 courses each (not including dessert), and another table seemed to order 5 courses each. We settled on 3, as the ladies weren't hungry, and I had just spent the day swigging whisky at Whisky Live.

It's not really that polite to take notes when one's eating, and I really only do it in the presence of people who understand, like the Pretty Lady occasionally, and Yumchia. I do know what I had, and I'll describe it here, but I've missed about half of the Pretty Lady's meal and most of CY's and KN's.

Anyway, we started with a vegetarian course. I had an aligot and smoked chestnut soup, which was interesting in itself - aligot is a French mashed potato dish with cheese blended into it. Mine came at the bottom of a little tureen of smoked chestnut soup, which was sweet and smoky, going perfectly well with the savoury mash. CY had little ravioli in truffle jus, which was delicious, but strangely unappealing after the aligot.

For the next course, I had stewed rabbit with chicory salad. There were a number of other accompaniments on my dish, but as the rabbit was perfectly spiced and done, without the over-gamey taste that can sometimes pervade it, I didn't really notice them. They didn't matter. KN had the beef onglet with stewed olives, which was a little undercooked, but juicy nonetheless. The Pretty Lady and CY had a duck breast dish, which was very pink and didn't appeal.

I ended my main courses with a pot au feu, which was perfect. A little cast iron pot appeared, with olive tapenade on a little crostini and horseradish with pickles on the side. The lid lifted to show several slices of beef in a clear soup, almost a consomme, with carrots and potato placed delicately next to them. Very nice presentation, and very tasty too.

Dessert was just as interesting, with the Pretty Lady going for a white "chocobar" (effectively a white chocolate cheesecake) and KN ordering a tarte tatin. CY and I shared a cheese plate. The tarte tatin was middle of the road, while the chocobar was well executed and quite delicious. The cheeses on offer were of good quality - Comte Vache, Brie, Roquefort, Brique de Jussac, a goat's cheese and a hard cheese - and came with a generous helping of raisin bread. I tend to judge cheese plates by the accompaniment as well as the cheese, and this restaurant didn't disappoint.

Overall, quite a tour de force of French cooking. I enjoyed the meal, although the helpings were small, and were I not filled up with whisky I would probably have ordered at least one more course. Prices were reasonable for that standard of cooking, and the restaurant didn't intimidate or seem pretentious like many Chelsea venues can. One or two failures (the Pretty Lady's duck breast comes to mind, as well as a mackerel starter KN had), but I'll definitely be going back, for the wine list as much as the food.

Scores:

6 March 2008: TFQ = 25, CS = 27, S = 12, AD = 8, VfM = 7. Total = 79 points.

What does this mean?