Review: A La Russe, Windsor

Visit Windsor on almost any day of the year and you’ll find a town awash with tourists from across the globe, visitor numbers out of all proportion with the modest-sized town centre. So you’d expect most of the restaurants to be horrid affairs with glitzy frontages and gimmicks, serving up over-priced rubbish to people who will never be returning. And there are a lot of those. But there are a handful of gems, if you look hard enough. Maybe not exactly cutting the edge of culinary fashion, but very good. That’s a fair summary of A La Russe: an absolutely classic French-restaurant-in-Britain. It feels like you could have walked in here at any time since the 1970s. And on the evening we were here (Christmas Eve, admittedly) it felt like all the clientele were long-time locals.

So what did we have? Well, the baguette and butter given to the table was exactly what you’d expect: warm, crunchy, soft and incredibly easy to scoff. Maureen started with a half-dozen snails in garlic butter, jolly good though could perhaps have been garlickier. My wild mushroom cocotte was perfect for a cold winter night, bags of pungent porcini and truffle flavours bursting from the gooey Comte cheese cap of the little ceramic dish. For main course I went with ribeye steak in a sauce of porcini and marsala. The steak was a flavourful piece, nicely done and the sauce was just the right indulgent and creamy-boozy-fungi hug for a festive occasion. Maureen’s rabbit with chestnuts and lardons was another comforting piece of French cooking, in a sleek herby white wine sauce.

Somehow I found room for a tarte tatin, which was the perfect classic: solid pieces of apple, but cooked until saturated with the slightly bitter butter-caramel flavour, and the most delicate of crisp pastry beneath. Maureen thought she was going light with the grilled pineapple, but it had been simmered long in a slick of sweet caramel sauce, leaving it just sickly with no balancing juicy tang. Really the only properly bum note, though.

A La Russe is a totally sound option for French cooking in Windsor. Heading for £50 for a three course meal, but that feels like decent value for the quality and the location; the Castle is just over the road.