One huge caff' was the desire Peter Langan of Odin's expressed for his latest gamble: a crepuscular, picture-festooned, Paris-style brasserie on the site of the old Coq d'Or, where everyone from ‘Tony Blackburn to some effete antique dealers in toupees' - not to mention Langan himself - could eat and gossip and dream the time away. Someone has to do the cooking, though, and early reports were predictably scabrous until Richard Shepherd was wooed away from the Capital to a working partnership here. They still need a maître d'hôtel to control the staff, but Shepherd's coeur d'artichaut farci à la Nissarda (95p) and filet de boeuf en croûte (£3:50) are better than you expect of a brasserie, and his choucroute garnie (£2-60) and ‘delectable' duck pâté would ‘go down well with a French road-mender'. Boudin aux lentilles is ‘not quite as filling but just as good', and Bratwurst with hot potato salad is a further essay in the same style. Sweets, made on the premises, can probably be given a miss. The wines (from £2.30) more than suffice, with Spanish white Torres Viña Sol at £2.75 and the house champagne £6.60 for the vieillesse dorée. Live music may occur, and there are even books in the foyer. In view of the owner's entrepreneurial record, and a very patchy test meal late in the year, more reports will be welcome.
