A blow-out at the pop-up; or Pierre Koffman's genius revealed

I haven't been able to even give a hint of what was to happen last Saturday, as it was all a surprise for my sister's birthday and she does - she says - read this blog. So for actual whole weeks - and it has felt like a decade - I have had to keep schtum over one of the most exciting restaurant events of the year... And now, dear reader, I can tell you that we spend Saturday night en famille at Pierre Koffman's pop-up restaurant on the roof of Selfridges. And it was everything you might have dreamed.

(A small background note: if you're not quite getting all the adulation and foodie-groupie-screaming about his 'return', know this: Tante Claire was the seminal restaurant in London until Pierre Koffman, genius 3-Michelin-starred chef closed it, turning the space over to big Sweary Gord - tant pis. He progenated the chef world with chef babies including Eric Chavot, Tom Kitchin, Bruno Loubet and Tom Aikens. He has been absent for some time; and now he has returned...). The great joke is his proteges are joining him in the kitchen - on the night we visited, we were treated to Bruno on carrot-peeling and Eric on potato-pureeing.

The entrance to the restaurant is one for the exclusivity-lovers. A dedicated -guarded - lift, a quick ascendancy into a simple white corridor. Simple but stunningly decorated with minimalist objets - the ghost-girl with her veil is gorgeous. There's a small bar area but with the American Embassy setting off fireworks just next door, they sweetly moved us to our table in front of the glass wall so we could watch with a glass of wine and the bread basket - choices included bacon & onion, tomato, brown or white.

Then we're in with an amuse bouche of two discs of boudin blanc and noir atop a tiny refreshingly crisp tangle of lightly pickled red cabbage It's a palate-teaser echoing his earthy Gascon roots and it's an indication of the meat-centric food to follow. Veggies beware - this is not for you.

The menu is adventurous for something that's only around for a matter of weeks. Starters: lobster cocktail with avocado and lemon jelly; scallops in a laguna of squid ink; a special of langoustine bisque with accompanying raviolo; snails and wild mushrooms with bone marrow; foie gras with potato galette; game pithivier with a sticky jus corsé... I had the scallops - 3 perfectly seared and cooked sweet, soft pillows of shellfish surrounded by sticky, intense squid ink. I tried some of the snails - I'm still not keen texturally but the flavour was dark, woodsy - a clever pairing of fungi and gastropod. The langoustine bisque was silky-rich but not too sweet.

But, you know, starters, schmarters.... I'm almost tempted to write about nothing other than Pierre's signature main dish of pigs trotters, stuffed with sweetbreads and creamed morels, served with a cloud of potato puree so ethereally light and buttery you could bury your face in it. It came with two translucent discs of pork crackling - a textural foil for the rich sweet creamy unctuousness of the trotter. The sauce was a concentrated but not too sticky veal stock reduction, but fluid enough to coat the potato rather than glue to it. There are other mains available.

Oh all right then... Challans duck with herbs and spices, perfectly roasted; a pave of wild sea bass with artichoke barigoule was saved from being too summery by the woodsy artichokes. I'm told the Hare Royale is autumn on a plate. Or choose from a roast veal cutlet or cod with ceps, but why would you when there's Pierre's pigs trotter...!!??

Desserts - not my favourite thing - are startlingly good. My only criticism of the pistachio souffle - that I heinously had without the accompanying ice cream because the combination does nothing for me - was that it was too big. But then I only eat half a chocolate at a time so what do I know? The Toscano chocolate mousse with muscovado ice cream was another silky confection and saved from over-bitterness and over-sweetness by the orange compote. I'm assured the Gascon apple pie is what Eve should have fallen with, being the absolute apotheosis of orchard fruit.

And there we have it. Some quite stunning petits fours, good coffee and a few bottles of wine - FYI an Italian white called Kerner that I had never heard of and a big French Segla which was a tad too cool, but hey, you can't have everything.

I wonder if a taste of being back in this kind of environment would be enough to persuare PK back behind the stove. But I suspect the fun is in the temporariness - take advantage while you can.

Le Cassoulet

See these - perfect lovely scallops. As part of a perfect (pretty much), lovely meal last Friday at Le Cassoulet in Croydon.

Now you might not think Croydon a foodie mecca, but once you head down the high street towards South End, you start to hit a small lacuna of restaurants that are worth more than a quick eyeball through the window and a scurry past. We intend to visit them all, including Albert's Table, highly recommended by your Bookseller, and Fish and Grill, run by Malcolm John, part of a small chain that owns Chiswick's Le Vacherin and Le Cassoulet.

Back to the matter in hand: Le Cassoulet was almost extravagantly wonderful - and this in spite of MCD running the first day of a horrific cold, and even through his extreme discomfort, he loved it. We were also the youngest in there by a good 20 years, which indicates that the older denizens of Croydon know a good thing when they see it.

So glass of house Champagne to start with and a peruse of the menu. LC bills itself as French and I would say leaning towards Alsace, with the extensive - and mostly judicious - use of Alsace bacon throughout. We quibbled over starters: MCD eventually going with scallops with a black pudding raviolo and a little schmear of apple puree; I chose the octopis carpaccio with fennel, orange and caper salad. The scallops were to die for, the raviolo perfectly delicately thin, filled with a slightly spicy French-style boudin noir. My octopus was very firm in the mouth, but not tough - textured is the word - with the salad sprightly and refreshing in all the right ways.

Main courses were tougher. We both leaned towards the chateaubriand, but then we were going to be having an awful lot of cow over the weekend, so MCD went with slow-cooked lamb shoulder with haricot beans and a pomme puree (we will not go into his peculiar obsession with chips at every meal out...). This was delicious, but the little pot of haricot beans and goodies was odlly devoid of beans.... I nearly, so very nearly, went for the confit pork cheek with choucroute, but couldn't match a red wine I fancied with it, so ended up with the most amazing roast partridge. This, dear reader, was a work of art...

Firstly, I was presented with the whole partridge, very much dead but possessed of a bronzed goldenness hiterto unseen in St Tropez. We made our acquaintance most cordially. It was then returned to me with more accessories than a WAG in aforementioned St Tropez. The sauces - 4, count 'em -comprised a brown butter for pouring on first (a first for me too, but duly noted as an excellent idea), a creamy bread sauce, a rowan jelly and a deep red wine jus to flood the plate. Not mentioning the warm game chips, the watercress and the side of epinards a la creme... All fabulous, accompanied by a red from their Natural selection - a Cotes de Jura Pinot Noir - not too heavy as to send you to sleep, but more than a match for the lamb and the game.

Desserts - we're still going - were a bit of an oddity. MCD fancied the poached peach (in September...?) with honeycomb ice cream, which he loved, but which apparently last week had been poached pear, but was now peach... I mused over the cheese trolley, decided it might be a tad too much and plumped for madeleines which came with English strawberries (in September... again...?), which were fabulous, but wanted a sabayon-style accompaniment to be perfect, I think. Un petit Muscat pour encourager les autres and we were just about done.... The bill was incredibly reasonable - for all this glorious bounty, plus water, plus a glass of vin de pays de Gers white with my octopus + tip came to about £160. Not a cheap meal out, but not outrageous.

It's worth noting they offer steak deals in the week as well as 3-course deals, all of which are almost ridiculously reasonable (steak + accompaniments + good glass of red for less than a tenner...?). Go, go now. Just make sure you book, cos we'll be beating you to it.

PS: Don't tell me we aren't lucky to live where we live.... Check out Time Out - Exhibition Rooms and Fish and Grill in 1st and 2nd post...

Frank's Cafe & Campari Bar or A Night Out in Peckham

Ok, so it would take a lot to make me go to Peckham, voluntarily, for dinner on a weeknight. A lot. A whole staff outing and someone else paying, is what it would take, more or less... Luckily that was what was on offer last Thursday when we decided to venture to Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar, a pop-up restaurant cunningly situated on the 10th floor of the multi-storey car park.

Finding it is not an issue. It's the car park. Getting to it, you run the gauntlet of the kids on bikes doing death-defying speed stunts around the unsurprisingly empty car park, up and down the ramps, avoiding - but only just - unexpected vehicles that have the temerity to be parked there. In the car park. Anyway, once you're out of the car on the 8th floor and you've made it up the next two up to the roof, your next challenge is to make it across the roof without the winds actually sent from hell blowing you over to a splattery death on the high street below. A second's hesitation and you're just another statistic - albeit rather a novel one and a great foodie-challenge way to go.

Having done so, you can then aim for one of the communal benches; people will be accommodating and shove up if you ask nicely. Once you've clocked your surroundings and ordered a drink - the campari list includes bicyclettes (see below) negronis, etc but look out for a light rose which lends a touch of summer to the blackening skies - you're good to go on ordering.

The menu's great - something for everyone and designed as dishes to share rather than hog, though I recommend if you're ordering the vegetables with anchoiade, order two. If you're ordering the ox heart, it comes salad-style so make it three. You might like the sound of crab on toast, charcuterie platters, salads, more vegetables with hummus, grilled sardines. It's all good, quickly cooked and arriving at will with nothing really overstepping the £5 plate. And you can keep it coming until the food actually runs out. That's my kind of restaurant.

With the darkness really setting in, the skyline does start to look quite beautiful; people milling trendily at the outer walls, drinking sophisticated drinks and smirting - you can see why it's a huge hit. There's nothing quite like it, certainly not in Peckham (hardly Food Central, if it doesn't mind me saying so) and people are packing in.

If you fancy going, make it sharp-ish as it closes from 30 September. And two tips - wrap up warm and for God's sake, whatever you do, take the lift down to the bottom on the right hand side of the building. The shiny silver one that goes up and down like Eeyore's balloon - not the old, crappy one that's liable to send you screaming for the wee-soaked stairwell, which in turn will send you screaming back to the elevator. It was eventful, that's all I'm saying...