Telephone: 029 2034 1264
Address: 6-10 Romily Crescent, Canton, Cardiff
Cardiff wasn't looking quite its best that Wednesday morning after a spectacular deluge of the night before. There was something of Sidney Smith's masterly description of the battle between Mrs Partington and the Atlantic Ocean about it. One of the roads to the docks might have resembled an impromptu swimming pool, but for the roof of a black cab sticking up out of the water. Still, cheerfulness in adversity seemed the order of the day, to judge by public demeanour in general and by my fellow lunchers at Le Gallois in particular.
Le Gallois sticks out in Romilly Crescent in much the same way as that cab stuck out in the flooded underpass. Its neoteric, long, flat-glass frontage is something of a contrast to the cheerfully incidental, haphazard, domestic nature of most of the buildings in the street. Its name might be even more remarkable, were it not for Le Cassoulet almost opposite, where, according to the great and good Dr Jonathan Meades, you can find one of the finest versions of the eponymous dishes to be found in Britain.
But Le Cassoulet is owned and run by a Frenchman, whereas Le Gallois is owned and run by a Welshman, Padrig Jones. This suggested to me that the menu would be a homage to all things French, but it wasn't. Although distinctly French in technique, as you might expect from a chef who had spent his culinary formative years in the kitchens of a Hilton hotel and Canteen, it is by no means a spiritless gallop through the traditional favourites. There is something of the Pan-European approach favoured by so many contemporary chefs, but there is something characteristically British about the actual structure of the dishes. I mean, guinea fowl with fresh peas and broad beans and lettuce and morelles and sauce Albufera? That's not French.
That dish was on the à la carte menu, but I was drawn towards those on the fixed-price lunch, which was priced so reasonably as to put Le Gallois comfortably into the Guzzler camp, and which exhibited a more experimental and, to my way of thinking, interesting range, what with warm carrot mousse with rosemary beurre blanc; fricassée of lambs' sweetbreads with pearl barley and black pudding risotto, tarragon and garlic sauce; and warm cardamom and cashew nut clafoutis with lavender ice cream, all of which I had.
In concept and in many of its parts, it was a delightful lunch. The mousse was not so smooth as a classic of an haute-cuisine kitchen would demand, but was all the more individual and well-flavoured as a result. The pearl barley and black pudding combination, while not being remotely a risotto, was stupendously gooey and sticky, almost toffee-like, and demandingly toothsome. The cardamom and the lavender breathed complementary perfumes through the pudding. The flavours in each dish had been carefully considered and assembled.
Unfortunately, not so much care had been put into their execution. Mr Jones is not afraid of cream and butter, and I, for one, was delighted about that. There is hardly a sauce in the world that isn't improved by the judicious use of butter. But there should be enough vinegar in a beurre blanc to balance the butter, and if you are going to advertise rosemary, it should taste of it. The lambs' sweetbreads were generous in their portion, but they had not been sufficiently demembraned, so they appeared to have been encased in latex. And they had that floury taste of insufficiently cooked offal. And I am not sure that cashew nut clafoutis is a top-drawer idea - cashew nuts have a tendency to go soft and mealy when cooked, adding to the stodge effect of clafoutis, which is already something of a pretty hefty pud.
As I say, these flaws were really disappointing, because I liked the style of the food. It was refreshing and individual, and not simply a clone of a thousand other menus. I liked the style of the place, too. It was jolly, friendly and well-run, and clearly a good many of the 20 or so other lunchers were regulars, which contributes to a sense of place. It is also remarkably good value, with two courses for £10.95 and three for £13.95. As you might expect, however, I did manage to break the £15-a-head Guzzler barrier, largely by drinking deep from a bottle of perfumed and brilliant Collioure from a wine list of almost breathtaking reasonableness.
· Open Tues-Sat, lunch, 12 noon - 2.30pm; dinner, 6.30 - 10.30pm. Menus: Lunch, two courses for £10.95, three for £13.95; á la carte, one course for £18, two for £25, three for £30, four for £35. Cards Amex, Delta, Mastercard, Switch, Visa. Wheelchair access and wheelchair WC.
