Pizza Express and Café Pasta, like fickle women, behave as if they love you, but you know, deep, deep down that they don't. You just allow yourself to believe it, because pretend love is better than no love at all. But in restaurants - unlike in life - when love dies, it does not necessarily die for ever It can return where it is least expected. And nowhere would you expect it less than just off Kentish Town Road, NW5, in the murder capital of Britain. When Francine Lecomte and Michel Dilg opened the Petit Prince in 1977, the world was still loved-up and flowery And they were French And we had never seen couscous before. And there was so much damn love that grown men wept at the tables. People came from miles around, for the fantastic, exotic food, Saint-Exupéry murals and the low-key, classless bohemianism of the place Or so I'm told. By the time I got here Michel and Francine were long departed, having fled in 1983 to escape the pressures of restaurant-running The love had gone The place was leased out Laurels were rested on Standards dropped.

I went occasionally for big plates of grain covered in thin soup and a knuckle of grey mule Not very expensive Not very tasty. McDonald's had moved in nearby, all the nice people had gone to Primrose Hill. Anyway, couscous had become available to the British public in more glamorous places, like Momo (which is to the rejuvenated Petit Prince what Lili Savage is to the young Jean Seberg). Now the nice people are back in Kentish Town, the house prices are up, and Lecomte and Dilg are here again. Hearing that things had gone awry they returned from France to save the day Out went the murals, the darkness, the dodgy food In the Nineties, Bohemianism is just a state of mind. So the walls are white and the Saint-Exupéry pictures are small and framed. There are little wooden tables, pot plants in the window, ornamental mirrors and an airy, café-like feel What is more, the food has undergone a revolution.

Or, rather, a counter-revolution. This is where the love comes in. Nothing very special about a mushroom fricassée in general, but almost anywhere in London if it was under a fiver it would be inedible. Here it is marvellous: a big pile of very fresh mushrooms and loads of cream In England you expect to see fish soup only in posh places. Here it is about three quid and as honest and decent a fish soup as you could hope for. Big chunks of white fish skulking in the bottom give it a bouillabaisse-like chunkiness; there are plenty of croutons and the rouille is good and garlicky. The grated cheese is cheddar rather than gruyÿre, but there's plenty of it, and it's not processed. The couscous is unbelievable.