Richard's review of Champagne + Fromage by French Bubbles

I like this restaurant. I don’t like, like it. I don’t even like it like. I just like it.

The reason that I say this is because in small places like Champagne + Fromage, you get to sit so close to your neighbours that you can follow the conversation. Mind you, even had we been several tables away, we could have followed the conversation from the corner table. I don’t know if the young lady liked the restaurant or not, but I know that she had just like come back like from her holiday, like. It had like rained literally the whole time, like.

What is it with the youth of today and the word “like”? Why use it (or “literally”, or “you know what I mean”)? OK, it has a use (as does literally), but not as a filler (“you know what I mean” has no use whatsoever and users of such phrase should be beaten around the head with a copy of The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English).

But I digress. C+F is basically a deli with a few tables. To ensure that we secured one of the few tables, we booked. All the tables were full, so we were offered a high chair in the middle of the shop. Not ideal, or even what we had booked for, but a couple soon left and we swooped on their table.

As noted by a previous reviewer, C+F basically does what the name implies: it serves champagne and you can eat cheese with it. (If you want to read a wonderfully snobbish rant about how C+F would be a good restaurant if it served proper food and some wine, then go to Trip Adviser. I know that I shouldn’t plug a rival on the SM page, but I love TA; I always go to the places least recommended, as they generally turn out to be the best. That, in this case, the owner saw fit to take time out to respond, politely pointing out that champagne is a wine, only makes it more fun to read).

But I digress once more. Having sat and ordered, I noticed something deeply annoying: I am a lover of small, grower champagnes. Forget the big brands, these are the (often) family owned places, turning out interesting champagnes, rather than the homogenous stuff punted out by the big houses. And they do have some lovely ones here, ones I had never heard of (Collin, Furdnya, Waris-Lamandier anyone? You have to be a real wine wonk to know these ones). I checked before we went, looked at the prices, thought that they were reasonable, and then got to the restaurant.

The prices quoted are for purchasing in the deli. If you want to sit and eat, the prices rise. Not by a few quid. Not by the added VAT. No, they double. That is wrong: it’s not as if they have to be specially stored, they are plucked from the chiller, where anyone can pluck . At least the food has been chopped or cooked: the whole roasted Mont D’Or with sliced meats for two was rich, oozing and artery clogging. It was gorgeous. I downgraded from the champagne I’d pre-picked, to a lesser (although still lovely) Furnya.

Service too is a let down: our waiter was French, and acted it to a T.

So overall, nice food, nice champagne, but I like it even more as a deli.