Naughty Piglets, restaurant review: Ignore the cries of gentrification - this affordable, delicious new venture couldn't be more Brixton if it tried

8 Brixton Water Lane, London SW2. Tel: 020 7274 7796

Margaux Aubry and Joe Sharratt's restaurant is a triumph

look, there's no point in pretending I'm not having this meal with Jackson Boxer. For those of you who don't know, or haven't noticed the hints on this page over the past several years, Jacko is one of my very dearest friends. He's the man behind London's best restaurant – Brunswick House café in Vauxhall – and a gastronomic giant while still in his twenties. I have known him for a decade and shared highs, lows and extreme versions of both, long before magazine writers starting drooling over him. He is straight up the best company over lunch of any man now living – particularly on short notice.

I texted him: "My dear fellow. Short notice, but can I steal you away for lunch today? Rare chance and am dying to see you. Xx". Jacko always gets two kisses. Back he came: "Oh wow. Let me see…" and within moments I had three direct messages on Twitter. "Booked naughtypiglets.co.uk, new opening in Brixton, strong pedigree, supposed to be great, also a focus of anti-gentrification protest. Good food, natural wine, politics, south London – all our favourite things! What time can you make it down there?"

Barely two hours later we're at the table; we've ordered the whole menu and a flight of wine. It's served by Margaux Aubry, a delightful Frenchwoman with a winning smile who came to London to study wine, met Joe Sharratt – head chef at Trinity in Clapham – and married him. Along the way she worked at Eric Narioo's Terroirs, a wonderful restaurant near Covent Garden that is the best place to take MPs, alongside Iqbal Wahhab's Cinnamon Club.

This, their opening gambit as a couple, is a triumph, with a long, open kitchen garlanded with cookery books, high tables at the front and seating at the back. There is plenty of natural light from Brixton's streets, wealthier and whiter than when I cycled round here as a kid. But the idea – popular online – that this is a betrayal of Brixton is garbage. Small, independent, entrepreneurial outlets are precisely what Brixton has always done best: whinge all you want about an influx of Stradas and Starbucks, but not over a smart young couple serving homely grub in generous portions at what you'll see below are bargain-basement prices.

The only false note during our lunch is a set of three ham croquettes (£4), served in a light batter but cold in the middle. Padron peppers (£4) are grilled but not too much, keeping their succulent sweetness. Burrata with Romana courgettes (£6) are divine, the latter doused in olive oil and cut not into ribbons but circles just big enough to really have some bite. Dashi – a simple broth from Japan – come with clams we have to pinch out and heaps of wild, pungent garlic (£7); the pork belly (£9) is served with sesame and Korean spices – the salty, sour, slightly hot paste offset by finely chopped spring onions and wedges of lettuce. And the black tomatoes come drowned in salted ricotta (£5), like little clouds of joy.

At this point, it's over to Jacko. "Stand-outs for me were the lamb [barbecued and served with Jerseys and salsa verde, £15] and beef [rump, with chestnut mushrooms and watercress, £18], cooked over charcoal. Grass-fed, well-aged, mature meat cooked over charcoal has the transportative mineral intensity to show low-intervention, terroir-orientated wine to best effect. Simon Busser's L'Originel was revelatory – a Malbec, or Cot, from Cahors, that was earthy, structured and elegant, brimming with light red fruit and evocative of the heavy clay earth in which they grow."

But I reckon the monkfish with artichokes and dollops of aioli (£16) and fried squid with tartare sauce (£6) even better than those. Cheese included a stunning camembert washed in calvados. A perfect panna cotta with rhubarb (£5) and scoop of chocolate with milk caramel and almond wafers finishes the story for just £5.

Yes, we have eaten and drunk loads, and yes, my score probably reflects a Jacko-specific bonus of one point. But what he calls the "quiet infusion of Parisian Bistronomique sensibility" into London is exemplified by this wonderful opening. Just as Tony Blair said his project would be complete when Labour had learned to love Peter Mandelson, so Brixton will only reach something like full maturity when it learns to love Naughty Piglets.

9/10

28 Brixton Water Lane, London SW2 Tel: 020 7274 7796. £80 for two, with a bottle of wine

Four more things I've been eating this week

Ginger nut

Biscuit of the week, possibly for the second time, is this tea-dip classic. Why has no manufacturer coated it in chocolate?

Chicken & supergrain soup

One of the weaker ones from the Marks & Spencer range – full of healthy barley, but lacking in punch.

Forerib of beef with watercress

Twice in a week from the Drapers Arms in Islington, yards from my house. Bloody good, literally.

Granola with coconut milk and berries

Posh staple of mine at Caravan in King's Cross. Pretends to be healthy – but it really isn't.