16th May, Le Gavroche

It’s Dewi’s, my partner’s birthday. A Monday. We have a booking for 8PM.

We’ve both had the Monday from hell, only just manage to leave the office in time, and feel more like a couple of pints at the pub or a bottle of wine in front of the telly, rather than putting on a suit and going for a fancy, probably rather stiff meal.

We get there, still rather stressed. A friendly waiter greets us as we walk in, checks the reservation and takes us to our table straight away. Upstairs they have a bar, the restaurant itself is in the basement. The ceilings are quite low, the décor rather dark. The lighting is quite nice though. It feels cosy, old-school, elegant but not to formal or stiff.

Dewi, being an architect and a bit of a Design-Nazi, is not impressed though. The light fittings are awful!

They have put us on one of the tables right next to the kitchen, so there is a constant banging of pots and plates and shouting of orders. And no background music to cover it up. I don’t mind seeing the kitchen, if it is meant to be part of the dining experience, but this is just a bit annoying.

The service is impeccable though.  When they hand us the menus I get asked discretely if I’m Mr Canthal. As the reservation was in my name, this meant that I was handed the menu with the prices. Felt like a very classy way of doing it.

We didn’t really spend much time looking at the menu as we had already decided to go for the 8-course tasting menu, “Menu Exceptionnel”. And a peach and champagne cocktail to kick the evening off.

I then got handed the wine list. Even though list is not quite the right word in this case. It was more a book. An encyclopedia. Of French wine only. Nothing else. The prices start in the mid 30s and seemed to be pretty much open end. I got bored (and a bit scared) looking for the most expensive one.

Not being a wine buff I gave up and asked for help. The friendly, young, female sommelier (Or is a female sommelier a sommeliere? Sommelisse?) seemed to sense my lack of expertise and just asked me to tell her what type of wine I usually like to drink, reassuringly pointing out that I could also mention new world wines. Phew.

She ended up recommending a moderately priced but very nice Margaux.

And here the feast starts.

An amuse bouche of something that seemed like a spring roll filled with chorizo and little crackers with artichoke puree did indeed amuse my bouche. Lovely. Keep this coming.

Souffle Suisesse. A cheese soufflé, covered in a creamy cheese sauce did absolutely taste like Switzerland. Beautifully cheesy. A bit heavy though for the first course, with 7 more to come.

Next we had marinated salmon, vodka jelly and asparagus. Sounds good, tastes rather weird. The vodka jelly was quite bitter, the salmon a tad salty, the asparagus a bit bland. Not a winner.

The langoustine and snails in Hollandaise sauce with Basque chilli and parsley were a whole different story. Great textures, a smooth creamy sauce with a fantastic spicy kick. Great! But again quite rich, considering there are 5 more courses to come. We’ll be rolling out of here. Better go easy on the bread.

Now roast bone marrow with ceps and air dried ham. Not something I would usually order on a menu. The whole mad cow era kind of got me off bone marrow – should I have ever been on it. But if you are going to eat it somewhere, in a place like this it should be fine. And it actually tasted pretty good. Again really nice textures. Something soft, something crunchy, something meaty.

From the start we had been looking forward to the braised monkfish in red wine. I love monkfish. And it didn’t disappoint. A beautiful fish, well seasoned, with glazed salsify. Even Wikipedia couldn’t tell me much more than the fact that salsify is a vegetable. I could have guessed the same. A tasty one on top.

The grilled Scotch beef in red wine shallot sauce and potato puffs was sliced and served by the Maitre D’ at the table. Red, soft, fantastic.

We had already seen and smelled the cheese cart being pushed through the restaurant. It is nothing less than impressive. Almost the size of a ping pong table and covered in the most amazing cheeses. We went for four different ones each, all quite generous chunks, crispy bread, chutney, quince jelly… I couldn’t finish the plate. Beaten by cheese.

The desert was a bit of a chocolate feast. A rich chocolate truffle on puffed rice, rum jelly and a bitter chocolate sorbet. The sorbet was very nice. Rum jelly works a lot better than vodka jelly. The chocolate rice crispy had some of that space dust in it that explodes in your mouth. It’s interesting, but doesn’t really make it taste better. A bit Heston Blumenthal I would say.

Done? Nope. There is still a plate of petits fours, including a macaroon that topped Luxemburgerlis from Spruengli. And coffee and chocolates and nougat.

Stick a fork in me, I’m done!

So what was it like overall? Since this is the first restaurant of the list, it is hard to give it a mark. We decided on an 8.

The food was really nice, some dishes were amazing.

The service was extremely friendly and attentive.

The place is quite cosy, but nothing special really and could do with a revamp.

And the bill? Well, we didn’t stay within the £300.

£100 each for the tasting menu.

A £69 bottle of wine.

Plus champagne cocktails, water and service make for a grand total of £339.75.

Is it worth it? Maybe. Possibly. What you get for the £100 tasting menu is pretty impressive.

Would I go again with my own money? Probably not.

Already looking forward to the next one though.


http://www.le-gavroche.co.uk/

I clicked on something!

Who the hell wins competitions?

I for one don’t. No raffles, no prize-draws, not a hook-a-duck, niente.

And apart from buying the occasional lottery ticket whenever the Euromillion Jackpot reaches some figure beyond comprehension, I generally don’t even bother entering competitions.

So I was rather surprised when I had several messages on my voicemail from a lady telling me that I had won a competition from The Times and Harden's Restaurant Guide.

I dimly remember getting a Facebook message and clicking on something … Eat like a King, the Times’ list of the UK top restaurants… win a meal or something…

Hence when I finally managed to speak to the lady I was rather nonchalant about the whole thing. “Oh, I won. That’s nice. Thanks.”

It was only later that evening, when I thought, hold on, what was that? The lady left several messages and sent me two emails. I must have won something worth all that effort.

So I checked again online and it was indeed worth something: £300 to spend, not just at one, but at each of the UK’s top ten restaurants. How cool is that?!

Not being a native English speaker, I didn’t quite trust my reading comprehension skills and sent another email to the lady that had contacted me, asking if it meant that I had won £300 to spend at any of the top ten restaurants or indeed £300 to spend at each, meaning a grand total of £3000.

She reassured me that it was my lucky day and I would be dining like a king at each of the UK’s top ten restaurants. Yes, at each. Yes, that’s all of them. Yes, the top ten. Yes, each of the top ten. Yes, £300 at each.

As you can tell, at this point I was getting rather excited and Clarisse, that’s the lady from the competition, was probably getting a bit annoyed.

I spent the next 4 hours googling the 10 restaurants, reading menus and drooling all over my keyboard.

Gidleigh Park

Le Gavroche

The Fat Duck

Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons

The Ledbury

Waterside Inn

Markus Wareing at the Berkley

Kitchin

L’Enclume

One-o-One

In case you wondered, no, I’m not vegan or vegetarian. I don’t have any allergies and there really isn’t much I don’t eat.

I like food. Actually, I love food. I love looking at it, buying it, cooking it, eating it.

A good cooking show is my version of soft-porn. And that doesn’t mean it has to be one of Nigella’s.

I love eating out too. But haven’t been to any of the places on the list as they’d usually be a bit outside of my budget. Hence I was loving this prize.

Over the next few days Clarisse became my new best friend as I tried booking the first restaurants through her. Almost like having my own PA!

“Clarisse, could you book me a table for 2 at Le Gavroche please?” Love it!

Unfortunately Clarisse doesn’t get any priority bookings and all the places are pretty much booked out well in advance. So it required a bit of advance planning and I’ll have to wait a while for the first gastronomic extravaganza.

First booking: Le Gavroche 16^th May.

As the date of the first booking comes closer and I’ve managed to secure a few more, I ask Clarisse how it works with the payment. Will they know how much I can spend? Do I get a voucher?

She just asked me for my bank details and a few days later I had an extra £3,000 on my account. Hmmmm.

Excellent, one could think. Now I can just pocket the cash. Or spend it how and where I want to.

But in some ways it ruined it a bit for me. I really loved the idea of the prize. It’s a treat that I would never give myself. Yes, maybe one of the restaurants on that list, sometime for a special birthday. But I would probably go and be really frugal, look at the prices, never spend £300.

No. I do want to stick to the original idea. I'm going to eat and lick the plate clean.
So I've started looking for competitions to win a personal trainer.