No more beating about the bistro

In my childhood, the word bistro outside a restaurant meant that inside you would find classic French or French-inspired dishes of a modest, solid bent (stews, soups and a steak meal always featured).

Bistro heaven

Then it started to refer to European food generally. For the last five years or so it has seemed to refer to any not-too-huge restaurant with a not-too-long menu serving not-too-formal food in nice but not-too-posh surrounds. The food is now not relevant at all. Actual French bistros slowly fell off the map.

Happily, well-loved and followed French chef and restaurateur Michel Morand opened Bistro Michel in January. Morand is the man behind (among other places) the famed Auberge Michel, which closed in 2011. At Auberge he served haute modern French cuisine. Now he's back with heartier, mostly traditional fare.

Of course there is French onion soup, and this one is good, with proper bread and best quality cheese atop. There is foie gras terrine, delicious fatty pork cheeks with lentils, steak with bearnaise, skate-wing with sauce bercy (and more). I needed to add salt to most dishes but then I'm a salty eater.

My best part of the menu is the gratin section, a whole glorious chapter dedicated to things topped with cheese and put under the grill: broccoli, potatoes, spinach and pap, macaroni with truffle oil, even mashed potato. Bliss. Even more blissful, this is one of the only restaurants around that doesn't sport hideous, amateurish "modern art" on the walls - those swathes of primary-colour acrylic vomited over canvases impasto style, which seem to bedevil eating spaces, boardrooms and hotel lobbies alike.

Fabric, tiles and mirrors abound and one large wall is covered with a map of the Paris Metro system. There are clever allusions (brass rails, for example) to bistro-ness, to a certain European dining experience in the 1970s, but it is played down and never gets bistro-Disney. And they serve breakfast.

• Bistro Michel, Blubird Centre, corner Atholl-Oaklands Road and Fort Street, Birnam. 011-440-0769

Classic French onion

As summer disappears, something akin to a French onion soup seems very necessary. Here's a delicious version. International Onion Soup (serves 4-6). You need: 5 cups chicken or beef stock, strained / 2 to 3 cups sliced onions / 2 tbsp olive oil / 2 tbsp butter / salt to taste / around 2 cups mix of gruyere, mozzarella and grated parmesan / good bread, not supermarket / 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley. How: slow-cook onions in oil and butter until caramelising. Really slow. Add stock and heat to boiling. Add salt if necessary. Throw in parsley. Toast bread, top with cheese and place under grill until just browning. Pour soup into bowls, plonk bread on top and serve.