8/10
Telephone 020-8892 0602
Address 43 Crown Road, Twickenham, Middx
Open All week, lunch, 12.30-2.30pm (Sun 3pm); dinner, 7-10.30pm
Price About £30, inc wine & service
Wheelchair access; no disabled WC

If there is one thing that would most improve the quality of life for those of us living in the more piquant areas of urban Britain - apart, perhaps, from roadsweepers prepared to go that vital step beyond their strict contractual obligations and occasionally sweep the road - that thing would be a great neighbourhood restaurant 50 yards from our door. All my adult life, I was reflecting after lunch at Brula, I have dreamed of having such a place at the end of the road, perhaps in place of the bail hostel against the wall of which one of the neighbours was taking a decorous leak as I ambled past doing the reflecting.

Brula, alas, is miles away in Twickenham. It is 50 yards from a colleague's front door, however, and should you ever take the Simon Hoggart Tour, do ask the guide to stop off there for lunch. Simon, I notice from a perfunctory Googling, has never mentioned Brula in his writings, and no wonder. Only a madman would give directions to a hidden gem such as this.

After last week's horror story at Gary Rhodes's latest paean to corporate iciness, here is the perfect antidote: a restaurant owned and run by two chaps (BRUce in the kitchen and LAwrence front of house) who evidently adore France and French cooking, and want to recreate the languid charms of the provincial bistro a drop goal from the global HQ of rugby union.

Modern British bistros tend to look as if they are put together from an Ikea flat pack, and capable of being converted by a team of fitters into a Tex-Mex joint in 90 minutes. This one could have been airlifted in from Aix-en-Provence, with its pleasingly stained parquet flooring, antique chandelier, nicotine-painted brickwork walls, period posters and watercolour daubs. The woodchip wallpaper might be a touch 70s bedsit, but on the whole it feels absolutely right.

The friend who joined us suffers from a condition (a non-genital variant of Kathy Lette Syndrome By Proxy) that bamboozles him into confusing bad punning with wit, and he affected to believe we'd been served a high-class butter substitute with the bread. "C'est magnifique," he said, "mais c'est ne pas la buerre." In fact, it was finest Normandy butter, and it set the tone for an impressive meal.

Making an unprecedented stab at fiscal rectitude, my wife went for the prix-fixe menu (top value at £11 for two courses, £13.50 for three) and began with a creamy celery and almond soup, made with excellent stock and screaming of celery, if minutely undersalted. The punster liked his crab roulade with a herb and oil dressing (£7.75), the white meat being immaculately fresh and sweet, and my pan-fried scallops (£8.25) proved to be five plump and juicy molluscs with a medley of leeks, vanilla prunes and a lone rasher of crispy streaky bacon.

I was considering a second glass of a very decent house red (the wine list is brief but compiled with real care) when the decision was made for me by the punster. Having ordered the onglet steak (£13.50) - a cheap cut from the skirt that makes up in flavour for what it lacks in tenderness - for his main course, he greeted its arrival with, "How odd for the French to name something good after the English," before spelling out, literally, the onglet/Anglais homophone hilarity.

The meat, grilled in garlic butter and served with good (if oven-cooked) chips, had a nice pink interior, but the basic quality was mediocre. My almost overgenerous portion of roast Barbary duck breast (£13.25) was again well cooked, but lacked flavour, though the accompanying peas à la Française were superb. The highlight from the cheapo menu was my wife's huge chunk of roasted cod served with a beetroot and anchovy salad and a hard-boiled egg on the side. A chocolate pudding with orange cream was divine, and confirmed the suspicion that any minor failings in the kitchen lie less with chef than with butcher.

For all that, this was a really good meal at the price, and anyway, restaurants are about much more than food. Feeling at home the minute you enter one is a rare and delicious sensation, as is being cooked for and served by people in it not for vast profit but as a labour of love. The same might be said for the bail hostel at the end of our road, but if you'll forgive the nimbyist whining, I'll be dreaming about a swap until they lower me into the ground.