Great Queen Street, 32 Great Queen Street, London

In Ronald Searle's Winespeak, the word "Unpretentious" is characterised as a little fat bloke in a vest and trousers with braces dangling around his knees, enthusiastically swigging a bottle of red wine which he has just uncorked. The image came to me early on at Great Queen Street. As Covent Garden restaurants go, it's strenuously down to earth. The old floorboards ring beneath your feet like a Western saloon.

The tables are small, square and wooden, barely wide enough for the chairs to fit between the legs. The walls are painted dark plum-aubergine, illumined with those droopy lamps you used to find in Soho drinking dens circa 1972. This place used to be a pub, and the bar is solid and elegant; all evening, people ambled in off the street and leaned against it, chatting – friends of the management, I assume, rather than presumptuous pedestrians.

The people behind this stripped-down eaterie are masters of informality. They started The Anchor & Hope gastropub in Waterloo, a great success despite their curious booking policy. There isn't one. That is, you turn up, put your name on a list, and after an hour or so waiting in the dark and crowded boozer, you are allowed into the dining room. Happily, the food is a blessed relief: it tastes like real home cooking, slow-roasted, casseroled and baked with care and attention.

Here, they let you book in advance, but the food isn't quite as exciting. The menu is unexciting to a Homeric degree: "Asparagus", " Brandade", "Terrine", "Cauliflower soup" – it's so unpretentiously blunt, it borders on the brusque. You half expect to see "Fish £10" or "Meat £12". As you are puzzling over what kind of terrine is on offer, the wine arrives. You can choose from five whites and three reds available by the carafe, an innovation of which I heartily approve. The only drawback is that, with the carafe wines, they give you little peasanty tumblers, filled until there's no room for a bouquet. Wine glasses are given only with the more expensive stuff. I'd never encountered this oenological apartheid before. It felt like we were being penalised as cheapskates.

Assuming (correctly) that it was salted cod mashed with potato, I ordered the brandade and very good it was too, salted to the right degree, the mash nice and floury, set off by a solid egg-white, pointlessly supplemented by endive leaves oiled-up like a bodybuilder. My friend Philip's foie gras ballotine was "good and moist and lots of it" but it arrived with a single piece of toast, like a gesture or a garnish, rather than a necessity in eating foie gras.

The main courses were a tough choice. So keen is the chef on seared meat, he offers huge lumps of it for several people: beef Wellington for four (£60), rib of beef for two (£42.80) or three (£51), slow-cooked shoulder of lamb "for four-ish" (£58). In the interests of variety, we chose from the four other main-course options, Arbroath smokie, cod, rabbit and duck. The smokie was enormous and pungently smoked but arrived without the promised cream and chives sauce. When adjusted, it was phenomenally tasty. My confit of duck was grudgingly confined to a single leg, but it was tender and crisp-skinned and its attendant chorus of peas, lettuce and mint warbled in green harmony.

The service in Great Queen Street is remarkable, alternately scatty and precise. We had to ask twice for a side-order of greens (and practically beg for real wine glasses) but our waitress was so friendly and beguiling, one would forgive her anything. When the pudding menu arrived, she said, " Chef says to tell people not to have the strawberry tart. He's not happy with it. I think it's fine, but he says it's too runny and he is, you know [sigh], the chef." I never heard a kitchen dispute brought front-of-house so charmingly.

We decided not to chance the iffy tart. Philip had the buttermilk pudding with prunes (identical to the prunes that had garnished his foie gras) and was surprised to find it a lemony blancmange. My muscat caramel custard was a teeth-coatingly dense variant of crème caramel. I would have preferred the eggy version. But who cared? By half-past ten, a laid-back party atmosphere had developed. We got talking to a sweet young Irish couple and ended up pushing tables together, calling for more Portuguese Douro and postponing the journey home. You don't get that kind of convivium in Gordon Ramsay's places. This strange hybrid of Soho bar and working-man's café has definitely got a certain je ne sais quoi. Or does that sound too pretentious?

Great Queen Street, 32 Great Queen Street, London, WC2

Food

Ambience

Service

Around £35 a head including wine