Chez La Vie, Harrogate
I recently tried to explain the name of this restaurant to a French dairy farmer and had to give up in the face of utter mystification. In fact, the name only works for an English-speaker and not very well then. But Chez La Vie itself works pretty well as a restaurant and has become a Harrogate stalwart, never surprising or innovative but utterly reliable. It does a fixed price lunch and early bird menu beloved of those eating on a budget and at £9.50 for two courses and £11.50 for three is as budget as it gets and très bon marché at that.
So I knew what would be on offer on the 'easy lunch' menu - exactly the same as on the 'early bird' and most of the choices have featured on both so long that they might as well be written on tablets of stone. The a la carte is similarly unchanging - this is not the place to come for a seasonally-adjusted tasting menu. If CLV was the only game in town, this could get seriously boring but Harrogate has more restaurants than locals can cope with, and the spare is mopped up by the thriving conference trade.
Dark wood, white tablecloths and baskets of sliced baguette feel very French, even though the excellent bread is accompanied, English style, with little pots of butter. The waiters are French as well, though over the Channel they would never be offering us Pinot Grigio as an aperitif.
My French Onion Soup could have been slightly hotter but nevertheless had been flashed for long enough under a grill so that the gruyere on top was thoroughly melted. The soup was intense, dark and satisfying (though possibly very slightly over-seasoned) and the onions had been cooked long enough to melt into sweetness.
The duck leg that followed was crisp on the outside, richly moist on the inside and falling off the bone. Just what a duck leg is meant to be, the epitome of duck leg, in fact, and though the Madeira sauce it was resting on did not particularly taste of Madeira, it was a good sauce. Maybe not the best sauce to serve with a duck leg, but the only one on offer so I used the last of the bread to mop up the plate.
The real weakness of Chez La Vie is its insistence of serving frozen chips and peas with everything. It is possible to order side dishes and most people do, but this somehow spoils the whole effect of being able to eat two courses for under a tenner - the charm of which gladdens the heart of every Yorkshireman and woman, and to which the lunching classes of Harrogate are by no means immune. Is it impossible to have a few saute potatoes on the side, with perhaps a spoonful of some vegetable morsel that is in season - not boiled like a la Anglaise but messed about with in that way the French have - a puree of carrots, for example, or a gratin of courgettes and tomatoes. But at least CLV would never present its diners with that hideous English invention, the 'selection of vegetables' - the horrible kidney-shaped side dish of steamed vegetables that all taste the same (and why - because they have all been boiled beforehand and are fresh from the microwave) and are fit only for the compost heap.
Verdict - value for money 8/10 service 7/10 quality of food 7/10
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