Viajante - 15th October

I cheated.

Dewi and I were celebrating our five-year anniversary on the 15^th and I cheated.
Not on him, but on the Sunday Times Food List.

The restaurant I picked was not part of the Sunday Times’ top ten list.

Shame on me, I know. But I really doubt that I’ll be able to make it all the way up to Edinburgh any time soon, so I won’t be able to go to Kitchin. And I’ve been trying to get a table at The Fat Duck for ages without any luck. And everybody says that the Waterside Inn is nicer in spring … 

I had actually heard great things about Viajante. Friends had been a few months back and said it was fantastic. Nuno Mendes, the Chef, has been doing some interesting things with The Loft and recently with Minotour, the exhibition/pop-up restaurant in the tunnels of the Old Vic (I was gutted I couldn’t get a table for that!). He does have a Michelin star as well. So Viajante seemed like a legitimate alternative.

The place is in the “trendy” East, in the old Bethnal Green Town Hall, which has been converted into a stylish new hotel.

As you walk in, there is a small reception area with the swanky bar to the right and the restaurant to the left.

The first thing worth mentioning is that the place looks pretty good. While it was not quite up to the high standards of my Design-Nazi partner, it is definitely a nice change from some of the other, more stuffy places we have been to. More modern, cooler, but still very warm and welcoming. Someone has put some thought into the design and the lighting and – this is a first – there even was music. Not too loud, not intrusive, at just the right volume.

The nice, but rather low lighting meant though that none of my pictures came out, so what you see here is actually stolen from the Viajante website.

We got a table just in front of the open kitchen. Both chairs facing the action, so that you felt like you were sitting in a theatre watching a show. A bit awkward at first, to be honest. But they had asked us if we were comfortable with this table, so we couldn’t really complain.

And once you got used to it, it was actually quite interesting.

It didn’t have anything to do with the scenes you are used to seeing from one of Gordon Ramsay’s shows. No one was cursing, no one was sweating, no one seemed stressed. It all seemed extremely composed and almost choreographed.

At Le Gavroche we had a table close to the kitchen door and heard much more banging pots and plates and order shouting.

Nuno Mendes was working with the team, occasionally making a remark on one of the plates prepared by the other chefs, supervising everything, but also helping with the table service. You got the impression that he’s a really nice guy and that he has a good team working with him.

As for the food, Viajante has no à la carte. For dinner it is either a 6 course or a 12 course tasting menu. The 12 course menu has to be booked in advance. On the evening they offered us the option of a 9 course menu, including two more meat courses and a desert course, but we were happy with the 6 courses and matching wines.

What’s a bit odd though is that you don’t get to see what’s on the menu. It somehow felt a bit pretentious and patronising. I’m not going to ask for any changes to the menu, but I quite like to see it, so that I can look forward to whatever is coming next.

6 courses didn’t sound like much, but there was quite an assortment of different amuse bouches, five in total, and some very nice bread an butter to start with.

The potatoes with yeast and black olive were lovely.

The first actual course was rather strange though. Mackerel with lettuce and blackberries. Mackerel again. This time though it was raw. I quite like raw fish, but Mackerel has a very strong, fishy taste even when grilled. Raw and with the skin on, this was a bit much. The six large chunks of Mackerel were sitting on a green sauce, lettuce sauce, I assumed. Next to it some blackberries and a whole load of frozen raspberries. Whenever you got the right amount of each component into your mouth it was kind of OK, but generally just a really weird dish, too fishy, too cold and too much of it.

Good thing that the Riesling that came with it was excellent and helped to wash it down.

The highlight for me was the bread porridge with sweet corn, langoustine and girolles. Nuno’s take on a traditional Portuguese dish, Açorda. This was superb, interesting, different, unusual flavour combinations but at the same time really comforting. The kind of dish you wish would never end.

Excellent was also the cod loin with a stew of tripe, parsley and potatoes or Portuguese fish and chips as the waiter called it. Simply delicious.

A real surprise was the pre-dessert. Pickled and raw cucumber with reduced milk sorbet. Doesn’t sound very appealing, but I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The cucumber came in three different ways, pickled, as a jelly and as a granitá. Great flavours and really refreshing. Who would have thought that cucumber makes for such a good dessert.

Overall the food was very good, interesting, but some of the taste experiments did not quite work for me. The thought of the raw Mackerel with frozen raspberries still makes me shiver a little bit.

The whole experience though was very nice. Excellent, very friendly service, nice ambience, a bit of background music, the view of the kitchen, it all made for a really nice evening.

The bill came to £280. The cheapest so far, despite having a cocktail to start with and the 6 course menu with beverage pairing (£115 each). Still or sparkling water is included, which I thought is a nice touch, and so were coffee and petit fours.

Would I go again? I think so. But I might just go to the bar, which looked really cool and do the cocktail tasting. 4 cocktails, each matched with a tapa. Sounds pretty good to me.

http://www.viajante.co.uk/

Next booking: Marcus Wareing at the Berkley.

The Ledbury - 30th September

I had picked The Ledbury for my birthday dinner, mainly because it seemed very friendly and less stuffy than some of the other places. There is no specified dresscode and it has a nice website that doesn’t just focus on the Chef but introduces the entire team. Nice touch.

That friendly impression was further reinforced when The Ledbury got into the headlines during the London riots.

Looters broke into the restaurant and started robbing the customers’ wallets, phones and wedding rings, until the kitchen staff came out with rolling pins and frying pans to scare the looters away. As it seemed the looters might come back, they then locked the customers into the wine cellar and gave them Champagne and Whisky to calm their nerves. Quite a brilliant story, I thought.

The staff were indeed very friendly. Although I have to say that a few of them had rather broken English which seemed endearing and sometimes almost comedic, but didn’t give the impression of top-notch, professional service.

Plates were removed with a very friendly but rather funny: “You like?” and the pre-dessert became a “fruit of passion with some mousse”. Mind you, it was delicious whatever they might have called it.

The décor once again wasn’t really to our taste. A bit better than at some of the other places, but still lacking style or charm.

But those are really the only slightly negative comments I can make about the place.

The food was absolutely superb. Actually, the best we’ve had so far.

We had the tasting menu, with matching wines.

Every single dish was fantastic.

The ones that stood out were probably the flame grilled mackerel with avocado, Celtic mustard and shiso. 

We’ve had mackerel a couple of times on the menu, last time at Le Manoir, but this one was fantastic, perfectly grilled, the avocado and shiso giving it an interesting Asian touch that was pleasantly surprising for what is often classified as a French restaurant.

“Celeriac baked in ash with Hazelnuts, wood sorrel and a Kromeski of middle white pork” already sounded very intriguing. It got even more interesting when a small perfectly baked pastry was brought to the table. Beautifully shaped with baked thyme and rosemary twigs on top. The pastry was sliced open to reveal the celeriac baked in ash. I would have happily tucked into the pastry, but it was only used to give flavour and then removed. The dish actually tasted great and was paired with a Sherry. I’m not the biggest fan of Sherry, but it absolutely worked.

Another highlight was the roasted breast and confit legs of grouse with red leaves and vegetables, foie gras and cherries. So rich, but so good. It tasted of winter and Christmas and countryside as the grouse melted away in your mouth. Beautiful.

The only slight disappointment was the dessert. Figs with milk yoghurt, fig leaf ice cream and citrus beignets. Meh. It was fine, but didn’t live up to the standard set by the rest of the menu.

The wine pairing was fantastic. We tried some beautiful wines and the Eastern European sommelier had that typical Eastern European dryness, -a bit like the girls in Harry Enfield’s Polish café - but was very friendly and knowledgeable. 

And judging by the rather merry, one could even call it slightly tipsy, state in which we left the restaurant, it was actually not bad value for money.

By chance friends were sitting just a few tables away and were equally pleased with the whole experience.

The tasting menu with wines is £145 a head, so with tip the bill came to £330. I’m kind of getting used to these prices, which is a bit scary, and thought it was actually good value for money. Or at least well worth it for the exceptional food.

I want to go again.

http://www.theledbury.com/