Bon Appetit, Dundee - Restaurants in Dundee | s1play.com

Oui, c’est bon

Review published on 27/02/2006 © Sunday Herald

Last summer I was in France for two weeks and not once during that whole period did I eat a single bad meal. However much commentators lament the impact of gastronomic globalisation on French cooking, the fact remains you have to be something of a dimwit not to eat well there.

While, in the main, French food in France is still admirably good, French food in Scotland is a poor performance category. With the odd exception, restaurants that actively brand themselves as French are of two sorts.

Either they are run by French people whose enthusiasm has been dented by too many years living in Scotland and who do not face sufficient competition from peers to make them raise their game, or there are those Franglais chains run by faceless accountants who serve up a dreadful industrial baguette and indifferent formula food with Toulouse Lautrec on the walls and Edith Piaf trilling away in the background.

Walking along a dark side street in Dundee looking for a patch of streetlight to consult our map, we happened upon a restaurant called Bon Appétit and naturally, started reading the menu. The dishes had a true ring of authenticity to them – savoury tourte, cassoulet, merguez, gougère – and they felt right for this time of the year. The menu was less derivative than the Franco-Scottish norm. The fact that the restaurant looked invitingly warm, bright and welcoming clinched it. We took the last available table.

We emerged a few hours later distinctly pleased with our spur-of-the-moment decision. The food was really good at times and when less so, it was nevertheless a reasonable, uncynical effort. The owners, Audrey and John Batchelor, are Dundonians who have spent the last 20 or so years working in France. Audrey is very much the attentive patronne, straight out of the pages of an Elizabeth David book. Her staff are Scottish, but clearly serious in their endeavour to offer authenticity. They make a better fist of being a plausible French restaurant than many others in that genre.

The serious flop of the meal was a carrot, mint and orange salad. I like the French tradition of always offering a seasonal salad even in the depths of winter, but in this case, unfortunately the carrot had been more pulped than grated (a new food processor attachment is in order) and combined with the orange juice and mint, had taken on a bitter medicinal quality. This was effortlessly outclassed by a carefully constructed fresh terrine with vegetables set in a clear savoury jelly and nuggets of langoustine studded in its glistening, mosaic-like strata: a labour-intensive creation full of clear, natural flavours.

My chestnut and Roquefort tourte was refreshingly different. In truth, it was not much like a French tourte, the pastry being wholemeal, rather than buttery puff, but this was no hessian veggie option. The pastry was crumbly, short and almost nutty, topping a full-bodied filling of smoky-soft chestnuts and sweet root vegetables in a rich sauce that harnessed the robust presence of dark ale and the rich blue saltiness of the cheese.

Across the table was an immensely likeable cassoulet consisting of creamy haricot beans impregnated with the aroma of fresh herbs, tomatoes and melting pork, topped with a capable home-made confit of duck leg and a Toulouse-style sausage, made to order by a local butcher. On the question of suppliers, Bon Appétit needs to find a new source of bread urgently. Bleached white pap lets down everything else.

Of the desserts, an apple, caramel and yogurt pot was too straightforward, more like something you might whisk up for a Tuesday night pudding. But then the rustic, glistening, lemony pinenut and honey tart was wonderful. Pleasant, very personal service and a long and interesting all-French wine list offer further reasons to eat at Bon Appétit.

© Sunday Herald