Have you ever wondered what great chefs do when they get tired of manning the pass, cuffing incompetent underlings around the ears and berating less than subservient critics? They get around to making real money by starting up cheap(er) brasseries and bistros. It's been all the rage in Paris for some time. Over here, Marco Pierre White has done it. Raymond Blanc has done it. And Nico Ladenis, formerly of triple Michelin starred Chez Nico at 90, has done it twice. A few years back, he built up a mini-chain of Simply Nicos which he eventually sold on (and the standards promptly fell through the floor). Now he's at it again with Incognico, a medium-sized, rather manly establishment, which promises to be the first in a new series of eateries designed to bring decent grub to the New Labour working classes.
The name, of course, is a joke. It's not simply a pun, but a pun which contains an interior fallacy. Nico has never been incog-anything. I suspect that personally he is a shy and retiring sort of chap, publicly he had a deft way with the headlines and the gossip columns, and while he may not be setting the tempo in the kitchen any more, there is a good deal about the food at Incognico that bears his unmistakable and magisterial imprint.
This is not the cèpes risotto or boudin of foie gras of yesteryear, the Michelin marvels that many admired and few could afford, but altogether simpler and more accessible fare. The cèpes in the risotto have been replaced by ordinary mushrooms. There's the time-honoured combination of endive, Roquefort and pears; an equally traditional fillet steak au poivre vert; a dauntingly simple dish of grilled fillets of John Dory with thyme olive oil; veal kidneys with mustard sauce. Nothing particularly fancy about them, you may think, and nor is there, but there is a brilliant technical assurance which produces dazzling consistency.
These days, this is really rather refreshing. It's not so much a matter of an old dog learning new tricks, but of an old dog paring his tricks down to the basic elements and polishing them to a lapidary gloss. So what if the menu is fabulously, unreconstructedly old-fashioned? But for the passing nod to contemporary fad (crispy salmon with ginger and plum sauce) it could have been lifted lock, stock and petits pois a la française from some L'Epicure or La Popote of yesteryear, even down to the cursory, if characteristically polished, gesture in the direction of Italy (a grand, semi- deliquescent osso bucco with Parmesan risotto). This is French food that made our parents, nay even our grandparents, misty-eyed with gastro-nostalgia. It is the food that made them fall in love with food in the first place. And, in truth, it does so all over again.
I took Dorabella, as dedicated a vegetarian as I know, and the artichoke stuffed with a mushroom duxelle and enrobed (no other word will do) in a fulsome hollandaise caused her so much pleasure that nearby tables were under the impression that she was re-enacting the celebrated scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally. She was almost as deeply impressed by the open ravioli of goats' cheese with roast peppers, tomatoes and basil oil. Heaven knows, I have said my bit about this clichéd sop to vegetarian eating of the contemporary restaurant menu, but when the goats' cheese itself is a Class A item, as it was this time, and the bits and bobs making up the dish given due attention, why then goats' cheese dishes have their place.
While Dorabella was waxing lyrical, I was getting quieter, if no less profound, satisfaction from the endive, Roquefort and pear salad, which was rather fancier in the presentation terms than I am used to, but which is a classic because, with ripe pears, ripe cheese and crunchy endive, it is very, very harmonious. The grilled John Dory fillets were even more splendid, fat fingers of taut fish, the just caramelised outside of which helped emphasise the shining freshness of the fish.
As was always the way with French restaurants in the olden days, puddings get less significant treatment. On this occasion, the chocolate marquise bore scant resemblance to the definitive (and, it has to be said, system-crashingly rich) version of the recipe in Nico Ladenis's My Gastronomy, and the warm chocolate mousse, while suitably mousse-like, was rather too sugary for my liking. Still, considering what goes before, these are easy things to forgive.
And considering you can eat a three-course lunch of this standard for £12.50, why, you should come out smiling. We did, although the bill came to £74.50 (food, £54; drink, £21.20); we had wandered far from the set-price menu, but that's my prerogative.
