I cannot say for certain whether the new owners and administrators of Odette’s in Primrose Hill were born of the soil of Northwest London, nurtured thereon through childhood and youth, remain committed to it in maturity, anticipate a joyful dotage here and, when finally all that is mortal of them has been said and done, take solace in the knowledge that the worms that feed upon them will be Northwest London worms. But I doubt it. For all that Odette’s had of any local value they have stripped away, and what they have replaced it with can be had almost anywhere else. Which makes the new Odette’s not so much bad, per se, as pointless.

To be honest, I never much liked the old Odette’s, but I understood it, and respected it as a local institution. For Odette’s was to Northwest London as 192 was to Notting Hill or San Lorenzo is to Knighstbridge – a place that offered ordinary food, patchy service and inexplicably frisky prices in such a way as to so baffle outsiders that regulars felt truly special.

With its maze of mezzanines, vaults and conservatories, the walls painted dark green and decorated with gilt mirrors and fin-de-siècle cheesiness, it seemed, when I was young, a facsimile of the parental homes of friends of mine who lived nearby.

And then there was the “romantic” thing. On the basis of the cavernousness, the twinkling light and the French accents of its staff (who were Serbian, but faked it), Odette’s regularly featured on “Most Romantic Restaurants” lists, jostling for pole position with Andrew Edmunds, Le Poule au Pot, and one or two other places where the clientele is mostly first-daters too preoccupied with thoughts of imminent bare-naked shagging to notice the slackness of the kitchen.

But it was all good, honest fun, and there was always the Lansdowne or the Queens if you wanted more honest cooking, or Lemonia if you wanted bustle and value for money, or Chez Kostas if you wanted botulism.

But then it changed hands, faded from grace, closed, and has now reopened under the ownership – it says at the bottom of the menu – of the Vince Power Music Group, which I can only assume is a pop group that does power music (you know, Jennifer Rush, Barbara Dixon, that sort of stuff) with a front man called Vince.

And Vince, as we established earlier, is clearly not from North London. This you can tell from the way he has torn down all the old clutter – like some 21st-century Pip brought in to do the refurb at Miss Havisham’s Bar and Grill – whacked up bright-yellow and silver wallpaper and allowed the light to come pouring in, illuminating every nook and cranny, positively nuking the gentle penumbra of old, so that one can half-imagine the old regulars sitting at their usual tables in bomb-goggles, like the observers at Bikini Atoll, their faces sooted and their hair blasted back and singed as the light floods in.

Does Vince not know that in North London we like to eat in the dark? Our home dining rooms are more often than not in the basement, our restaurants sealed with blinds. We are not like that West London lot who think that eating is a spectator sport, to be done – as at Kensington Place or the River Café – under spotlights with giant windows for all the world to gawp and goggle and wish they could afford to do it, too.

Nor are we crazy about floral prints and giant, swagged yellow curtains – they may go down well in South Ken, but we are urbanites, not dog-loving bankers reared in Gloucestershire and only briefly sojourning in town because the money’s here.

And then there’s the food. Yoy, yoy, yoy. We’ll start with the “gravalax of salmon”, which was farmed, fatty and misspelt. I’d have taken “gravlax” (Swedish), “gravad laks” (Danish), “gravlaks” (Norwegian), “graflax” (Icelandic), or even the Finnish “graavilohi”, for they are all nations which once buried fish to preserve it (“grav” = “grave”), and may spell it how they like. I’d even, given the flabby artificial texture and cheapness of the flesh, have accepted it was a slab of Ruby Wax. But “gravalax”, no way.

Not with this awful, fatty, farmed stuff that tasted of nothing and was flaccid and wan like the hard-muscled king of cold water fish should never be. I tell you, Vince, you open up in North London with cured salmon on the menu, you want to get it right.

The grammar of “leeks and potatoes soup” was merely cute and acceptable because the poor grasp of English pluralising suggested the hand of a Frenchman. Except that a Frenchman would have seasoned the soup properly (it came alive only with help from the salt cellar), and he would not have spelt anything “ballantine”.

A “ballotine of quail with celeriac, apricot and walnut dressing”, on the other hand, would have been, as ballotines are, a combination of said ingredients swung round the head in a sock, knotted and steamed. “Ballontine” is the usual misspelling. “Ballantine” is just bollocks. It’s closer to a brand of whisky than a cooking method. My father ordered it and said it was “utterly faultless” which was nice to hear, as he has been unwell for a while and not enjoying his food as much as he once did.

Unfortunately, we had misheard. What he had actually said was “utterly saltless”, a problem that also afflicted the ham hock terrine, though not as badly as it was afflicted by the accompanying apple purée flavoured with vanilla, which was just wrong. Remember: “‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’”, and “pigs and vanilla don’t mix”.

My sister enjoyed her poached egg and lentils, but she is a comfort-food-only type, and was anyway in the middle of one of her colds. My mother said that the fried sea bream with salsify was “Very nice, seeing as I don’t like fish” (you want to ask her why she ordered fish, you ask her). And my dad had the poached halibut (again with vanilla) and seemed to enjoy it – but, between you and me, he had only been out of hospital a couple of weeks and was probably still excited just to be using a metal fork.

I had pot-roast partridge with a pastilla of its leg which, I am delighted to say, was excellent. I had half-feared that the pastilla (a sort of samosa filled with bird confit) would be served sweet and dusted with icing sugar, as the pigeon pastilla of the East generally is, and was delighted that it had been anglicised.

I was less happy with the chocolate truffles, which were made with salt, as has been the rage for a little while. They came to the table while my old man was having a fag in the downstairs bar, so when he came back I said, as convincingly as I could, “Have a truffle, they’re excellent”, just for the pleasure of watching his face pucker like Wile E. Coyote’s when he has been fooled into eating the “Acme” mineral salt disguised as birdseed with which he had been planning to dehydrate the Roadrunner. Through the horror of the mouthful, my father found strength to lament, “No wonder they didn’t salt the quail – they’d used all the salt in the chocolates.”

A sablé of poached pears offered with salted caramel suggests that the dicking around with our bourgeois preconceptions about flavour which began with the vanilla and pork dish does not end with the grotty chocolates. It’s Heston Blumenthal’s fault, of course. But only in the way that Ronaldinho is to blame for the step-over craze in playground football. One shouldn’t blame the piper for the kids that follow the music. Even if it’s played by a band as illustrious as Vince’s Power Music Group.

Odette’s
130 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 (020-7586 8569)
Meat/fish: 5
Cooking: 6
Spelling: 4
Score: 5
Price: two-course set lunch for £17.95 is laughable (a slice of farmed salmon followed by egg and lentils!); £35 for two-course lunchtime à la carte is obscene.

Rochelle Canteen
Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, London E2 (020-7729 5677)
Paul from Chegworth Valley Juices writes: “I read with interest your article on the Table. We also supply this great canteen, which seems kind of secret when I deliver there. They are making great food which seems pretty reasonable. It doesn’t have a public entrance – you have to ring the bell marked ‘canteen’ to gain entry.”

E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk with recommendations, but in future please put “restaurant” in the subject line, as the world has gone spam crazy and I’m losing the will to live

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