La Chaumiere, London

A Chelsea brasserie with a huge, open brick fire, a limited menu of meat dishes and gimmicky serving? This one's strictly for the (City) boys, says Tracey MacLeod

On a bleak corner of Shepherds Bush, there's an ageing restaurant called The Ritz. "Care to join me for lunch at the Ritz?" waggish BBC types like to say. Presumably it's allowed to use the name because no one in their right mind could ever confuse a strip-lit caff with the world's most famous luxury hotel group.

But when a Provençal-style restaurant calling itself La Chaumière opened earlier this year in a swanky quartier of Chelsea, it seemed reasonable to assume some connection to the original near Nice, which specialises in meat cooked over a wood-burning fire. The London newcomer used the same technique, and offered the same kind of fixed-price, no-choice menu. It soon emerged, however, that there was no formal connection with the Côte d'Azur prototype, aside from a member of staff who'd once worked there, and the critical response to the new venture was skewed by disapproval.

Aware of La Chaumière's provenance, I was still keen to give it a try; there's something pleasantly regressive about eating in restaurants where you don't have to choose your meal, but can just sit there like a giant baby, while a procession of dishes is laid before you. My friend Oscar was curious, too; a restaurateur himself, and fan of the original La Chaumière, he found it outrageous that these carpetbaggers could borrow a famous name and get away with it.

La Chaumière is in the prettiest part of Chelsea, and has been attractively converted from a Victorian corner pub. Original features combine with a stripped-back scheme of plain tables and chairs, golden walls and an enormous brick oven, to create a rather magical interior of auberge-like snugness. The staff are unmistakably, sometimes impenetrably, French; if it wasn't for the view of Albert Bridge, the place would be doing a fairly good impression of being in deepest provincial France.

The fixed menu means that decision-making is limited to selecting your wine (from a list priced more for expense-account customers than ordinary diners) and the meat for the main course. Here there are only five choices, and two of them – leg of lamb and chicken – must be ordered in advance. Which leaves three dishes: rack of lamb, sirloin steak and côte de boeuf. No wonder the only other diners when we arrived were some City gents with cheeks to match their claret-coloured braces.

Admittedly, the start of the firefighters' strike probably wasn't the ideal time to be trying a restaurant whose raison d'être is a huge open fire. It's the centrepiece of the room, and at first seemed as though it would be the motor of the meal, when freshly toasted sourdough bread was produced from its depths. But the parade of starters that followed owed more to the fridge than the oven. Parma ham, aubergine caviar, grilled peppers with pesto, champignons à la greque, pork and duck terrine – all were up to scratch, but none had the true flavour of the south of France encoded in them.

No more did the basket of crudités that followed, apparently re-routed from a harvest festival, containing hard-boiled eggs, carrots, a head of celery, whole red peppers and slightly oxidised sections of fennel. Presumably its purpose is to create the illusion of abundance, without actually putting up the food costs; we returned it largely untouched.

Eating with a restaurant professional can certainly rob a meal of its magic. A fine-looking piece of beef was carved at our table on what seemed to be a cross-section of tree-trunk. "How quaint," was my reaction. "Health and safety violation," was Oscar's, as the blood seeped into the wood-grain. He had no quibble with the quality of the beef, though, crustily blackened by its exposure to open flames, and tender and ruby-red inside. My rack of lamb was also wonderful, arriving in the cast-iron pot it had been cooked in, over a thicket of Provençal herbs that had infused it with a sweet, grassy flavour.

Again, there was no choice of accompaniments; just some ordinary salad leaves, and baked potatoes that had been left to steam themselves flabby. "This is a male restaurant," decided Oscar. "Women won't come out and eat big pieces of meat. They should add some grilled fish to the menu." Mmmmmm, I agreed, cramming down the last hunk of lamb.

Like La Chaumière's meat, the cheeses have been imported from France, but it's a dullish selection of the usual suspects. The Camembert alone is unusual in being served deliciously ripe; illegally so, according to Oscar, who seemed to be relishing his role as poacher-turned-gamekeeper. Tarte tatin looked like the real deal, and may well have tasted great, but I didn't get the chance to find out before it was drowned in flaming Calvados, obliterating its caramelised fruitiness in a blanket of raw alcohol.

The crème fraîche served from a full-sized milk churn was the last in a procession of gimmicks that left us frustrated; somewhere in there, there's a decent restaurant struggling to get out. The meat is first-rate, the staff sweet and the room and position ideal for a great little local brasserie. But what local would want to keep returning for the same meal, particularly one that is priced at £45 a head? E

La Chaumiere, 50 Cheyne Walk, London SW3 (020-7376 8787)