The world on your plate

KASSOULET; 127 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AQ. Tel: 0171 792 9191. Open for lunch Mon to Fri 12-3pm and Sat and Sun until 3.30pm, and for dinner Mon to Sat 7-11pm and Sun until 10.30pm. Average price per person, pounds 20. Credit cards accepted

REELING ABOUT at a vast literary cocktail party the other night I spotted a much-loved face, the mother of one of my oldest friends, and a woman of great elegance and beauty and I suggested she might like to join my wife and me for dinner. She bellowed "Rath-er!" and we were off. By the time we reached deepest Notting Hill, she was having second thoughts. If we were kidnapping her, she warned us, she would not fetch a great deal from the white slavers.

In fact we were taking her to a new restaurant in Ledbury Road, housed in what used to be a corner pub. It is called Kassoulet, written up in the kind of purple lettering you see on Egyptian tombs in films featuring the Three Stooges.

Inside it is another kettle of fish, sort of Ozzie artistic. The walls are a matt nail-varnish pink, the pillars pale blue, there is a big photograph of a naked woman somehow or other incorporated into the structure beside the bar, some sublimated Aboriginal art in the form of buff to brown pictures hanging in neat formations, dark-blue banquettes and round grey plastic tables, and the chairs have backs like hinged mobiles, shield-shaped pieces of polished wood that catch you quite a thwack in the small of the back when you sit down.

Kassoulet, I also realised, is in the same category as the Sydney Festival the year I was privileged to perform there, when it was called the Carnivale with an acute accent on the "e".

The service, within a few days of their opening, was slightly slapdash. The girl who brought our water filled both my wife's waterglass and her wineglass, and a young couple at the next table experienced an "episode" when one of the waiters knocked a bottle of wine over them, splashing various items of clothing. This seemed to be resolved later in the evening when the manager revealed that he came from Sydney, and they said that they had recently been on holiday there.

Our distinguished old friend had a look at the bill of fare and said it was the most repulsive menu she'd ever seen, but I refused to be disheartened. I asked the manager what sort of food they specialised, in and he said "traditional French food updated for the Nineties". Our guest was convinced he had said "Jewish or French food updated for the Nineties", but we explained, and she became more thoughtful. The menu, it is true, does list some odd things. It starts with pumpkin and coconut soup, there is twice-cooked pork belly with sour cherry chutney, baked lobster flamed in Ricard - the traditional French influence coming through - with snake-bean salad, and oven-baked cod studded with smoked salmon, bok choy and oyster sauce and I ordered a bottle of something red from Lanquedoc at pounds 14.75 - gourmets are well catered for. There is a very extensive wine list with, for example, a Puligny Montrachet Premier Cru at pounds 49.95 which I was unwise enough to describe as a "rough cafeteria wine" at the moment our guest was discussing Mrs Blair and she wanted to know why I called her a rough cafeteria wife. We pressed on with ordering.

According to our guest it was more sophisticated to choose your main course first, and she asked for traditional French ham knuckle Kassoulet, preceded by bresaola with pear, Parmesan and rocket. Or, as she insisted it was pronounced "roquette".

My wife started with baked filo pastry with English goat's cheese and leek, followed by venison medallion with roasted root vegetables and juniper- berry jus, and I ordered avocado and pousse salad with sumeshi, then, keen to complete the traditional French experience, ostrich fillet with sweet-potato dauphinois and Szechuan pepper sauce.

Other diners were smart, confident, a lot younger than us and enjoying themselves as, by this time, were we, reminiscing happily about the first time I had fallen victim to our guest's sense of humour. I was at a party conference in Blackpool, when she had introduced me on the dancefloor to a young MP's wife she had never met in her life who had a particularly wide and naive smile and convinced her that I direct- ed toothpaste commercials.

Then the food arrived, and in general Kassoulet manages a good robust standard. The bresaola was fine, with fresh Parmesan, a slice of pear and the "roquette"; my wife was enthusiastic about the filo packets of goat's cheese; and my own salad was a compressed drum of chopped avocado and other salad - I presume the pousse and sumeshi - on a similar-shaped base of rocket leaves, but it was a bit heavy on the garlic.

My wife's venison also got the thumbs up, but there was a fierce argument about the ostrich. I thought it looked and tasted like fillet steak, so did our guest when I gave her a slice of it, but my wife said it tasted nothing like steak and not to talk nonsense. In any event it was dark pink, undercooked, tender and delicious, the sliced sweet potato made a very good accompaniment to it, and I felt barely a qualm about raiding the zoo for supper. It was also, as we were told by the charming manager, well on the way to becoming traditional French food as it was reared in south-west France.

The Kassoulet was not quite a cassoulet, being insufficiently cooked and with its ingredients somehow still uncombined, but it was after all spelled with a "K".

For pudding the ladies had a cappuccino brulee and two spoons - this was dismissed by our guest as "creme caramel with a dollop of cream and cocoa powder on top" - and I had a spiced mango and pistachio ice cream that was exactly what it sounded like.

There is, as I may have strongly suggested, a whiff of the Antipodes, as well as France, about Kassoulet. But for the price - our meal for three, including the wine and the tip came to a very reasonable pounds 93 - it is a valuable addition to west London.