Grace Dent reviews Pique-Nique: another place to be furious over never having time to visit

Ambience: 4/5

Food: 4/5

My brain, as you might imagine, is terrifically cluttered with memories of restaurants.

Ones that sparkled, others that fizzled and ones I thoroughly resent. If I have spent an evening daubing on primer, composing my face with kohl pencils and pouring myself into a pencil skirt in the past decade, rest assured I have a resounding memory of the vibe I felt there. Hervé Durochat’s Casse-Croûte on Bermondsey Street, which regretfully I have not visited for about four years, lives on in my mind as one of London’s loveliest restaurants. It’s the sort of place that makes me gently disgruntled with my jammy, greedy, ever-stimulating schedule that stops me going back. But if anyone asks me where to eat, last-minute, south of the river, I’ll say dreamily, ‘You could try Casse-Croûte, this tiny, perfect French place… but it’s small and just absolutely gorgeous, so you’ll probably not get in.’

My memories of Casse-Croûte are of balmy Saturday nights spent in this shack-like, modestly hewn, single room, applying my A-level French to the simple menu du jour chalked up on the blackboard, of demolishing pissaladière and mousse au chocolat, and if I’m honest, flirting with the young, Gallic male staff. Gosh I hope Durochat pays them danger money for that. There comes a point in the life of every female diner where in your mind you are all vibrant, sparkling and naughtily charming cleavage, but in the kitchen you are merely the red wine stained sexual harassment vehicle on table three. With all this in mind, news of the arrival of Pique-Nique, Durochat’s second place, sparked joy.

I’d tell you Pique-Nique is just down the road from Casse-Croûte, but this is not the full picture. Initial trips will involve a confused trek up and down Bermondsey Street, then into a park, mumbling, ‘Why is my phone sending me into a park? It can’t be behind these tennis courts.’ But Pique-Nique does indeed live in a sort of re-purposed park kiosk, which is all at once strange, wrong, right and totally charming. It’s open from 9am until 10pm, serving ferociously delicious jambon beurre baguettes heaving with cornichons. There’s croque monsieur, poulet de Bresse et frites and glasses of Domaine de la Tournelle. From midday a simple menu of three starters and three mains offers something for anyone who simply wants to be fed in a French manner; deftly and deliciously.

Pâté en croûte and entrecôte sit alongside grilled things such as turbot and selle d’agneau roti aux herbes. Expect petits pois à la Française, fine salads, nine whites, nine reds and Herve himself on hand being knee-weakeningly charming as usual. Pique-Nique’s vol au vent sauce Nantua will feature, I predict, on end of year London ‘2017 dishes’ round-ups. Any British person mentally scarred by the piffling dry British vol au vents our Aunt Sheila foisted upon us at family parties, probably filled with tinned chicken supreme and left by a radiator to grow a skin, must do themselves a favour and visit Pique-Nique. Here the vol au vent is enormous, warm and unctuous with bechamel and crayfish. I didn’t know whether to eat it or ask my lawyer to draft me a pre-nup and marry it. There was a perfect raspberry soufflé with a sorbet on offer the evening I visited, which still clouds my mind’s eye.

There’s a stiff curfew of 10pm, I’m guessing as the place is inside a municipal park, which is good as it saves a woman like me from herself and another carafe of wine. It also makes the end of the evening quite gloriously silly as you totter tipsily past the tennis courts. Here’s another place for me to be furious over never having time to visit. Please go and enjoy it for me.

Pique-Nique

1 Glass of Chiroubles £7

1 Glass of Rully £7

1 Maigre £9

1 Vol au vent £9.50

1 Selle d’agneau £19.50

1 Turbot £19.50

1 Carafe of Le Grappin £32

1 Soufflé £7.50

1 Glass of Le Grappin £16

Total £127

​Tanner Street Park, Bermondsey, SE1 (020 7403 9549; pique-nique.co.uk)