La Galette, London

All you need with the perfect crêpe is a little butter, some cheese, or maybe some sugar. And a perfect crêpe is exactly what you get at La Galette, says Terry Durack

The concept of choice is highly overrated. Something for everyone too often means nothing special for nobody. In fact, the longer the menu, the more nervous I get.

Internal links

Second helpings: Other single-minded restaurants

The concept of choice is highly overrated. Something for everyone too often means nothing special for nobody. In fact, the longer the menu, the more nervous I get.

After all, mothers never give you a choice of what sandwich to take to school or what you would like for supper. It is cuisine fait accompli, take it or leave it, no questions asked. At dinner parties, you don't get to choose between the chicken, veal or fish. There is no excruciating dithering over the starter and the main, no weighing up of prices, styles and accompaniments, no diet-based decisions about fries and puddings. The lack of decision-making more than makes up for the lack of choice.

There are a few restaurants in the world that do one thing well enough to enable them to dispense with all the rest of the carry-on. At the vastly popular Café de Paris in Geneva, you can either have the entrecote steak with Café de Paris butter or you can have the entrecote steak with Café de Paris butter. It is the only thing the restaurant serves, apart from the salad, bread and chips that come with it.

It's the same with Henne in Berlin, which serves absolutely nothing but spit-roasted chicken – although here they sail dangerously close to the wind by forcing you to make a decision between mashed potato and fries.

So I am drawn to La Galette, as much as I would be to a restaurant called Le Cassoulet, The Liver & Onions or The Lamb Chop.

The name refers to the parchment-thin buckwheat crêpe of Brittany, the raison d'être for this smart, friendly, good-natured Marylebone restaurant. Owner Joe McDermott fell for the crisp, golden charms of the Breton galette on a summer road trip around France, and returned to Britain determined to open his own crêperie.

In doing so, he has resisted several unfortunate urges that usually plague such ventures. He has not themed the space with rustic rural French farmhouse memorabilia or cutesy-pie decor. Nor has he hired a graphic designer to come up with bright, childlike logos just waiting to be franchised all over town.

It's just a simple, modern, laid-back space with wood everywhere (chairs, bare table-tops, walls) and a pretty wall of banquette seating, spotlit from burnt orange to pale lemon.

La Galette takes la galette seriously. Both the buckwheat flour and eggs are organic, while chefs in the little kitchen at the back of the restaurant cook to order, hovering over three smooth round gas-fired cast-iron griddles, flipping, flapping and folding with all the concentration of new dads changing nappies.

There still is a certain amount of decision-making (damn it), with 14 variations on the theme. These run from a simple Normandy butter benchmark (£2.75), to the classic complet of ham, cheese and egg (£6.50) and on to an ambitious presentation of seared scallops with leeks and mushrooms (£8.60).

Essentially, the kitchen sticks with a scorecard of Breton 1, France 2, and the rest of the world Nil, as does the wine list. You can start with a little jug of Breton cider and a plate of olives, caper berries and cornichons, or a Kir Breton and smoked-salmon blinis, and feel safe in not tripping over, say, Thai red curry galette with scallops and banana blossom.

A small and simple charcuterie platter of saucisson sec, deeply flavoured Bayonne ham, and some rather anonymous garlic sausage (£6) isn't bad, although it should come with bread included rather than as an extra (£1.50). At least it's good, crusty sourdough, delivered twice daily to the restaurant, and cut to order – details too often overlooked by restaurants charging twice the price.

Breton cider is drunk from traditional earthenware wine cups known as bollées. A 25cl pichon of dry Kerisac (£2.95) is refreshing, likeable and unreservedly Breton, but I still prefer still wine. A 2000 Côte de Duras Mou-vedre (£14) has relaxed berry tones that are perfectly at home with the rustic simplicity of a galette complet. It may look like a piece of partly folded laundry with an egg on top, but it's delicious; the edges crisp, the middle soft and giving, the cheese oozy and the ham bright and fresh. Breaking the yolk adds a rich lava flow that pulls everything into a whole.

A smoked-salmon galette with crème fraîche and chives (£8) is both more ambitious and less satisfying, the heat changing the silkiness of the salmon to something else that isn't quite as good as smoked salmon, if you know what I mean. It feels a little dry.

Strangely, it doesn't seem ridiculous to end with a dessert crêpe. This entails more choices – there are 13 sauces and toppings, including crêpe Suzette poached in Breton cider and flamed at the table – but the best is the simplest. A plain buttered crêpe is sprinkled with sugar and squeezed with lemon (£3.50). It's light, delicate, smooth and sugar-crunchy, the acid tickling the sides of the tongue into wanting more. No cloying ice-cream, no sauce and no embellishments are needed.

I like La Galette a lot. It's simple, fresh, bargain-priced and clever enough to do one thing well. Go for breakfast, lunch or dinner. And here's a tip: have the pancakes. *

La Galette, 56 Paddington Street, London W1, tel: 020 7935 1554. Open daily 10am-11pm. Around £40 for two including wine