Club Gascon

Fay Maschler Review:

This article was first published in August 1999

Just under a year ago Pascal Aussignac and Vincent Labeyric showed London the gastronomic resources of south-west France at their restaurant CLUB GASCON. They received immediate acclaim which, it can be said, started on these very pages, and such has been the pressure on the small Smithfield restaurant that it was only last week at a late lunch on the day of the eclipse that I went back to see how things were holding up.

Despite inevitable cavils that I had heard about inept service, small portions - small portions is the point of the menu designed to encourage unstructured ordering - and other gripes that follow perceived success just as night follows day, all seemed shipshape and Bristol fashion, or anyway Toulouse fashion. I had expected the chef to be on holiday - aren't all French people obliged to go on holiday in August? - but Aussignac was in the kitchen and the restaurant had that satisfying hum that you associate with a well-run room full of people who are serious about lunch. My friend and I were serious but circumspect due to at least lip-service being paid towards the notion of dieting. We shared six dishes which included spicy Basque pâté, piperade with white beans, carpaccio of goose foie gras with "xipister" sauce which seems to have a citrus content, grilled fresh scallops with cream of caviar and a lacy tuile of crisply fried potato, roast confit of duck with crème forte (horseradishy) and braised ox cheek in orange sauce with braised little gem lettuce. The best moments were the gleaming scallops, the ox cheek in terms of its sauce - the meat had practically carbonised on the top from long, slow cooking - the foie gras shaved into such thin ruffles it can't have been calorific, the duck confit and the unexpected strength of the chilli kick in the pâté.
We looked covetously at the dessert of roast figs with lavender ice-cream in Port sauce that was the finale in the five-course set August menu. Apparently it will be transferring to the carte in due course.

Prices have risen but not dramatically. There are still several dishes offered at £3.50 and the majority are less than £9. The combative regional wines and the list of armagnacs are a source of further pleasure.

The backdrop of St Bart-holomew's church provided an added spectacle in the form of first, a Japanese bride passing by and then a party of stout middle-aged ladies wearing elaborate Spanish combs and mantillas. It was engagingly surreal, almost as surreal as fine French food in a former Lyons Corner House.

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