You can have fantasies about this place. It’s a slightly rundown hotel with a psycho family that has chainsaws in the back cupboard. It’s a place with a cave where either dangerous cabals of left-wing activists congregate, or a handy dark corner for late teenage groping amongst the flickering candles. It’s a sunny day back garden with a cluster of tables secluded amongst crops of rocks and overgrown vegetation but tantalisingly close to the Common. Or it’s a place with dangerously good food prepared with care and attention to detail the way that only the French can.

Our last visit, almost a year ago, found us eating smallish portions of fairly hearty Malaysian cooking while almost every other person in the country was watching England playing in the Euro Championships. We were the only people in the place and, liking the location as we do, decided to go for a bit more of the same. The Malaysian chef has since upped and decamped to the Indo-Chinese Restaurant about a hundred yards away, and the kitchen has returned to exquisite French cooking with a smattering of Modern British and Med offerings.

The lunch menu is an absolute snip at £6.95 for two courses – daily varying soup, on our first visit Scotch Broth tumbled full of barley and veg with strips of tender duck, and main courses including a phenomenal Steack Frites perhaps the best this side of the Channel. There are various other bar snack menus and blackboard specials, but it’s the attention to detail that makes this one of the best places in town. Salad fresh as hell and dressed gently, a board of bread and olives, friendly but hilarious service. This place is just absolutely great – a Spy secret – don’t tell anybody. M