Crème brûlée

Just a little corner of a lovely French restaurant I was taken to last night, lucky me. It's a totally authentic little bit of Paris sitting amid Brick Lane's curry restaurants.

To get there we ran the gauntlet of the over-enthusiastic curry salesmen all standing outside their restaurants and trying to tempt us in with free wine and poppadums. Clearly competition is fierce although actually I don't think there are any more curry places there now than there were 30 years ago when we lived there.

Hilariously, as well as a promoter standing outside, each and every restaurant also has a PVC banner strung up proclaiming it to be the winner of this cooking award (Brick Lane Masterchef 2009 anyone?) or that restaurant poll. And I mean every single one. Who started that trend I wonder? Possibly the printer.

Anyway we made it eventually and stepped off the street into another world where everything is French, including most of the customers. The food was delicious and brought to us by our waitress (who I think is also one of the owners of Chez Elle) and who I could cheerfully have paid to say "crème brûlée" all night.