High Road Brasserie, London W4

I'd love to be able to say that I enter every restaurant I'm about to review in a spirit of unimpeachable open-mindedness. But it just wouldn't be true. Far from being a blank slate, my mind is usually covered with graffitied preconceptions - sometimes favourable, if the chef has an intriguing track record or the cuisine suits my mood, and sometimes mildly hostile. High Road Brasserie fell into the latter category - not because I have anything against Nick Jones's Soho House group, of which this members' club/brasserie/boutique hotel is a new Chiswick outpost, but because every time I rang to make a booking (and I had to try a couple of times), I caught that whiff of condescension that a really successful opening can induce in the staff. You want a table when? For how many people? And in the background the waterfall roar of a full dining room backs up the faint implication that this is a place that can cope perfectly well without your future custom.

The saving grace with regards to the graffiti is that it really doesn't take very much to persuade me to wipe the slate clean again - and we're only two paces across the threshold before I'm making room for the first approving note. The interior looks great - a cool, modern expression of brasserie conventions buoyed up by one lovely exuberant twist - a patchwork of colourful, encaustic tiles on the floor that make you feel as if you're walking across a Shaker quilt. Approving note No 2 comes when we're handed the menu - wine one side, food the other and a gratifying sense on both that nobody's going to get huffy if you don't want a full three courses. There's a decent list of wines by the glass and half-litre carafes and a good scattering of small dishes and sandwiches with which to stave off hunger pangs, should you decide you just want to sip and chat. The style is post-enlargement European Union - stretching from Imam Baildi and merguez sausages, through choucroute, moules and fruits de mer, to the odd outpost of British insularity, such as sardines on toast (£7) and mutton chops with a parsley and caper sauce (£14).

Deborah starts with one of the drinkers' snacks - a dish of crispy battered squid served with a cayenne-dusted mayonnaise (£5), which sits very nicely alongside a glass of Spanish Viognier. I choose the potted Morecambe Bay shrimps - a delicious aromatic slush of nutty brown shrimps, mace, cayenne and nutmeg which is served with a generous helping of good brown toast. Neither item is exactly rocket science - in common with quite a lot of things on the menu - but they do suggest that the head chef, Duncan Impey, takes as much care over the simple things as he does over more complicated dishes. I feel a slight pang that I didn't order the fish soup - which briefly vied with the shrimps as a first-course contender - because I'm willing to bet he does it right.

I stick with English antiques for the main course - those mutton chops, which arrive with a little copper pan of smooth parsley and caper purée. And bang goes another prejudice - because far from being coarse or gamey, the chops are excellent - a firmer texture than you might expect from a young lamb but also a wonderful density of flavour that works well with the bright green sauce. I thought the capers might be there to muscle down something sheepily pugnacious in the meat - in fact they just add a delicate spike of piquancy to the dish. Deborah's mixed grilled fish is just as unshowy and just as good - an assembly of shelled prawn, tuna, bream, grilled aubergines and courgettes - in which every component is precisely cooked. We finish by sharing a Floating Island - which rather disappointingly arrives without the usual tracery of amber caramel. The poached meringue and the crème anglaise are both fine - but isn't the whole point of this dish that burnt-sugar tang melting into the sweet, eggy blandness of the custard? It's not enough, anyway, to overturn my new prejudice about the High Road Brasserie, which is that a meal here, whether it's breakfast, brunch or dinner, is likely to be solidly pleasurable. In fact, we decide that the only really serious drawback to the place is that it isn't a lot closer to home.

High Road Brasserie, 162 Chiswick High Road, London W4, (020-8742 7474)

Food
Ambience
Service

£85.50 for two with three glasses of wine, service included

Side orders: Go West

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