Marcus Wareing at The Berkley - 17th November

I love a good dessert.

Marcus Wareing supposedly makes the best. At least that’s what Harden’s, The Sunday Times and Remy Martin think.

On this year’s Sunday Times Food list his restaurant did not take any of the top spots, but he received a special prize for the best dessert. Sweet.

Walking into The Berkley immediately you feel like a bit of a celebrity. The restaurant itself is nice as well. The lighting is good and it feels elegant yet quite intimate. But still you do get a little bit the feeling that you are in a hotel restaurant.

There is a range of different tasting menus to choose from as well as à la carte.  We went for the “Seasons of Britain“ menu paired with British wines - partly because this one included Marcus’ famous custard tart.

And British wines? Well, let’s see. If they serve them here, they can’t be too bad.

On the menu it looked like “Seasons of Britain” only included three courses, but as always there’s an amuse bouche, a pre-dessert, lovely bread, so we surely didn’t walk out hungry.

The first full course was lobster and broccoli. I was really looking forward to that, we haven’t had lobster on any of the menus so far. And it was nice, but not quite as fantastic as I had hoped. We’ve had crab or langoustine at some of the other places that were nicer in consistency and flavour. A good dish though, with broccoli cooked in three different ways and a nice sauce – soft flavours that allowed you to still taste the lobster.

We then had the grouse with truffle, kale, Pink Fir Apple potatoes and bread sauce. Very strong flavours, the grouse was quite gamey, but I really enjoyed it.

I’m becoming a big fan of kale as well. Overall just a really lush autumnal dish.

And now it was time for dessert, the moment I’d been waiting for, the custard tart.

What we got though didn’t look like a tart at all. Oh, a pre-dessert! Horlicks, honey, whiskey. Really lovely. An ice cream filled pastry in whiskey foam and little pieces of honey jelly. Made me look forward even more to the famous custard tart.

Then it came, the tart, accompanied by a glass of British sparkling wine. The consistency was absolutely perfect, the custard dissolving as soon as it touched your tongue, a beautiful pastry. But the best British dessert? Nah. I thought it was a bit bland. It might be though that I’m not British enough for it. I’d never had custard tart, I didn’t really know what to expect, I didn’t have memories of eating grandma’s custard tart as a kid. My partner had those and thought it was divine.

Overall the food was very good, but will the night stand out amongst the others? Probably not for the food.

For the British wines? Perhaps. They were surprisingly good. The key word though is probably “surprisingly”. The expectations weren’t very high, but the wines were actually really tasty, especially the Ridgeview sparkling rosé that came with dessert.

What the night will definitely stand out for is the service. The staff was very friendly.

The lovely lady with the Champagne trolley, who seemed to like gin more than the sparkling she was offering and joined us in lamenting that the restaurant didn’t stock Hendricks or any of the really good gins.

The waiter that honestly seemed to want to know if we enjoyed the meal and then engaged with us in a conversation about all the other places we had been to and the ones that he would recommend.

The sommelier was a bit of a lecturer, but as we were having British wines, I actually thought this was quite interesting. And we even got a personal tour of the kitchen from the maître d'.

Marcus wasn’t around at that moment. But I bumped into Roger Federer on the way to the loo, which added the little celebrity factor that you expect when dining at The Berkley.

A bit of a blunder though came with the bill. They overcharged us by £80 and when questioned on it didn’t seem to understand their own bill, leaving us to explain the prices on the menu and do the math.

It ended up coming to £285. Not too bad.

And we left with four little bags of chocolate truffles.

Would I go again? Not sure. Maybe for the lunch menu which seems to be excellent value for money.

http://www.marcus-wareing.com/ 

Three more restaurants to go. Need to make the next booking.

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/

Le Manoir aux Quat' Saison - 11th September

A great Chef is an artist. I totally agree with that.

Some are also fantastic entrepreneurs, who have build restaurant empires out of nothing and have themselves become brands.

Nigela Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, a few of them could be considered stars, or at least celebrities.

Raymond Blanc seems to believe he is all of that and more. At least that is the impression I got after everything he had to say during our visit to Le Manoir.

No. I did not meet him. But I had the feeling that I had met him and he was a rather pompous, unpleasant, arrogant man.

There were signs, leaflets or cards everywhere, telling us what Raymond Blanc thinks, why he does things a certain way or just to point out that he owns and runs the place. What could or probably was meant to be a nice personal touch, came across as pretentious and slightly obnoxious.

One of the leaflets on our table told us that Raymond found that “constant interruptions” by the staff can be a bit annoying, which is why they will not be explaining every course unless you ask them to. 

Outside, he explains that he discovered some issue with the algae in the pond, which is why he decided to do some maintenance work to it.

The rather cheaply printed and poorly designed menu also came with a comment from Raymond, telling me that I was allowed to take it away as a memento. Thanks Raymond.

Raymond seems to have a bit of an urge to mark his territory, making sure that his name is on every sign around the place and making sure that you know that he is the one who decides and does everything around the Manoir.

Generally there was a bit too much branding and merchandising around the place. Just the fact that there were three leaflets and flyers on the table. One with Raymond's explanations about what he feels and doesn't feel is annoying, another one selling his latest book and one more promoting some other event. Not very classy. Pamphlets are for tourist information centres, not for expensive restaurants. Put something on the way out, where people can take it with them if they had a nice meal and want a “memento”. But don't leave flyers on the table.

OK. Rant over.

The Manoir is actually gorgeous and definitely worth a detour if you are in the Oxford area. A beautiful old building with stunning gardens.

Ferraris in the parking lot and petite women wearing sunglasses and hoodies and having hunky boyfriends carrying their Louis Vuitton travel bags to the car, make you think that Kylie or Madonna surely stay here once in while.

Two friends had decided to come along and we kicked the afternoon off with a nice glass of Rose in the gardens which we had to finish in the lounge as it started raining a bit. The lounge though was very cosy and I could well see myself spending an afternoon on the couch with a bottle of nice wine.

The selection of amuse bouches was lovely, apart from a little "curry ball" that tasted like samosa from the M&S party selection.

We then got taken to our table. And sorry, here I'll need to do another rant-interlude.

First off all, the dining area in the conservatory once again suffered from the slightly off design we already had experienced in some of the previous restaurants. The nice countryside manor made way for a bit of a Casablanca theme. Palm trees and ceiling fans in a rather awful 80s conservatory structure.

We opted for the tasting menu, which at £120 for 7 courses was one of the more expensive ones we've had so far. And on top they pointed out that coffee and petit fours are not included. I'm sorry, but if you're charging £120 for 7 courses, a coffee and a couple of truffles are not going to damage your profit margins. Or charge an extra £5. But it just seems a bit cheap to have big paragraph under the menu, saying that the coffee will be extra. Strangely this was not explained and signed by Raymond.

OK. Now definitely rant over.

The food was fantastic.

Ravioli of Butternut squash. Lovely.

Grilled Cornish Mackerel, apple, soy, honey and ginger. Very Nice.

Risotto of tomato and fresh garden vegetables, mascarpone cream. Sounded a bit boring, tasted divine. Quite a big portion though.

Roasted duck breast, garden Swiss chard, blackberry jus. This was really nice. Blackberries go extremely well with duck.

Somerset goats milk Cardo cheese, flat peach, cumin and celery. I honestly can’t remember eating this dish, so it couldn’t have been that great.

Williams pear almondine, caramel croustillant and ginger sauce. I could happily have had a family sized portion of this. So good.

Manjari chocolate and raspberry crumble. There wasn’t much crumble, but it came with an absolutely amazing raspberry sorbet on the side and the chocolate tart was rich and creamy. A very nice ending to the meal.

The service was good, but the people at the hotel reception seemed nicer and friendlier than the actual restaurant staff.

The sommelier pulled a bit of face when my friend Emyr asked for a new wine glass, because there was sediment in it after the first bottle. 

Not on.

But they didn’t even blink when by mistake I left only a 55 pence tip. (Just in case you wondered, I realised this as I was putting the bill away and still left a proper tip.)

A nice walk around the grounds and a game of croquet on the lawn made this a really nice afternoon and we left very happy.

The bill came to £661 (plus tip) for 4 people. Not exactly a bargain.

Would I go back? Not sure. I loved the manor and the gardens and the croquet and the food was mostly excellent. But the merchandising and Raymond’s ubiquity were really a bit off-putting.

http://www.manoir.com

Next up: The Ledbury

L'Enclume - 29.08.11

Waverex peas, onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel. Minidor yellow, summer savory, pickled nasturtium, white Vienna, Yew tree Herdwick Hogget. Chenopodiums? Sea buckthorn?

I have no idea what half of the things on the menu are.

Can I blame it on not being a native speaker? I just will.

Then there are some things that I would not necessarily choose. Duck sweetbread? No thanks. Stout ice cream with liquorice? Doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

But hey, it’s all about trying new things, experiencing new flavours, taste sensations, isn’t it? And besides, there’s not much choice at L’Enclume. There is no à la carte. You can choose between 3 Menus: 8 courses, 12 courses or 12 vegeterian courses. So 12 courses of mostly unknown ingredients it is then.

L’Enclume is in the Lake District, in a cute little village called Cartmel. Cartmel is probably most famous for the horse races that take place here once a year, but it is becoming more and more of a food destination. To cater for the crowd that L’Enclume attracts, the other local pubs seem to have brushed up a bit and a few fancy food shops have opened. A lovely baker, a wine shop, a great cheese shop, the Cartmel sticky toffee pudding company. All really nice.

The restaurant is pretty much right in the village centre, in what looks like an old farmhouse.

Inside we encountered the slightly off design that seems to be common for Michelin starred restaurants.

It’s a nice old space with crooked, white walls and some old wooden beams. But they tried a bit too hard to make it “modern and elegant”, with some awful art and rather random table decorations made of sticks and stones, that looked more like they belonged in a cheap spa. Maybe a design consultancy for posh restaurants would be a good business idea.

We waited for our table in the lounge with a nice glass of rosé Champagne and were presented with some duck scratchings and cheese crackers – a bit random and not really worthy of being ceremoniously presented and described by the waitress.

We then got taken into the dining room. The amuse bouche was a cheesy biscuit with broccoli puree and freeze-dried raspberries. Sounds interesting, but the biscuit was so cheesy, that you couldn’t really taste anything else.

First course, Waverex peas with crab and calamint. It came in what looked like a little bag made of porcelain and I was expecting a cold soup. It turned out to be a nice, creamy mousse though with big chunks of crab and fresh peas at the bottom. Really lovely.

Cod ‘yolks’ and rocket, garlic, salt and vinegar. A bit Heston Blumethal. Something that looked like a small egg yolks but actually was cod mousse and came with a garlic foam. Nice, soft flavours.

Vegetable dumplings in beef broth wispy leeks and fennel sounded great but were rather disappointing. Three ravioli with different fillings that got covered in a watery gravy. Not very exciting.

Raw squid and black bulgur, artichoke and radish was fantastic. A bit like a ceviche.

Heritage potatoes in onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel sounded a bit strange but tasted amazing. A little portion of comfort food.

The next dish I had been dreading. Minidor yellow with duck sweetbread, corn cream, summer savoury.

I eat pretty much everything, but am not a fan of sweetbread. And the thought of duck sweetbread does not sound appealing at all. Little bits of duck thymus gland? Not so sure about that. But it actually tasted fantastic. The sweetbread was crispy fried, the minidor yellow (a kind of runner bean) nice and crunchy and a rich sauce to go with it.

The grilled crystal lemon with prawns from Gairloch, fresh yogurt and pickled nasturtium I can barely remember.

A plaice fillet and white Vienna baked in salt, kale greens and razor clams was much more memorable. And the Yew tree Herdwick Hogget, turnips, cider and chenopodiums was even better. Incredibly soft and tender meat.

And now the deserts. Damson cake, honeycomb, mint and sweet cicely. Quite enjoyed that.

The Coniston oatmeal stout ice cream, liquorice and sea buckthorn though was just plain awful. A round patty that looked like a defrosted piece of breaded chicken breast and tasted like that too. We really wondered what the chef was thinking when he put this one together and if no one had ever dared to tell him that it was just wrong. I finished it, expecting that I would eventually get some interesting taste or texture, but it really didn’t work.

The sweet cheese with walnut, gooseberry and Douglas fir made up for it again. Nice and tart gooseberry cutting through the sweet cheese. Lovely.

As a final treat we got an aniseed milkshake with an apple meringue. I really enjoyed it. Dewi though thinks that aniseed and milkshake should stay away from each other. Well, if it was up to him, aniseed should probably stay away from everything.

Some of the dishes were excellent. Interesting and creative, local ingredients, fantastic presentation. But overall the style of the dishes was somehow a bit too similar. A lot of them came with what almost felt like the same foamy, creamy sauce.

The service was very good. They only had 3 people looking after about 15 tables, but still managed to be incredibly attentive and made it feel more personal than at other places where there is always an army of people milling about.

But rather than just reading out the long list of unknown ingredients in each course, they could have explained a bit more what they actually are.

I wouldn’t mind knowing what a pickled nasturtium is before I put it in my mouth.

Would I go again? Probably not.

There are plenty of other good places in the Lake District.

The next evening we went to a pub / restaurant / hotel called The Drunken Duck. Imagine very posh gastro-pub meets hunting lodge. Really cosy, excellent food, fair prices and overall a much more satisfying experience.

Next week though it’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saison. Quite looking forward to that.

http://www.lenclume.co.uk/

http://www.drunkenduckinn.co.uk/restaurant.htm

 

29th May: Gidleigh Park

Not all of the UK’s top ten restaurants are in London. It would be pretty bad if that were the case, I suppose.

For me that means though, that I’m going to have to plan in some weekends away.

On the upside, none of the UK’s top ten restaurants seem to be in Milton Keynes or Blackpool, but rather in very pretty places. Gidleigh Park for example is in Dartmoor National Park, in Devon. There are worse places to go for a weekend away, I reckon.

How to get there though? I don’t own a car, so the options are train or bike. Or train and bike.

So we packed our bikes onto a train to Exceter and then cycled to Mortenhampstead where we had booked a hotel. Gidleigh Park also has rooms, but at £310 per night, they are a little outside my budget.

Despite having the lovely Clarisse book this quite far in advance and having her call a few times in the weeks before, we were only able to get a lunch booking. In hindsight though, lunch was  definitely the better choice

Moretonhampstead is pretty close to Gidleigh, but not exactly walking distance.  We could take a taxi. But we also wanted a bit of a cycling weekend. So we ended up carefully rolling up our trousers and dress shirts into our bags, packing the good shoes and the deodorant and mounting our bikes.

Dartmoor is rather hilly, which meant that we ended up working up a bit of a sweat, but also a bit of an appetite. Probably a good thing ahead of a Michelin-starred feast. The appetite that is, not the sweat.

After 2 hours of cycling we stopped in Chagford, the closest village to Gidleigh Park and used the public toilets to freshen up. Very classy, I know.

We then got onto our bikes again in our smart casuals and started cycling towards Gidleigh.

The private road that leads to Gidleigh Park is already very pretty and as soon as you enter the actual property, the landscape becomes absolutely stunning.

A little brook, spring flowers and a beautiful old building in front of a lush green hill. Rather stunning.

A little less stunning: we stopped to change our shoes behind a bush by the road.

Arriving at the hotel, it was clear that we were the first people to ever arrive there on bicycles -the guy from the valet parking looking at us slightly disconcerted.

We got there a bit early and were led into the drawing room. All very lush. Countryside Britain at its very best.

They brought us the menu, wine list and a lovely amuse bouche, consisting of salmon mousse and a fantastic shot of pea and mint soup.

After a short debate we opted again for the 8-course tasting menu. After all we had cycled to the restaurant!

The wine list was similarly impressive as at Le Gavroche, but included wines from all over the world. Even a nice Riesling from Schloss Rheinhardtshausen, which I picked because the estate is close to where my mum lives and I had been there before.

We were then led to the table to start our second gastronomic feast.

The Brixham scallops were actually just one scallop, but probably one of the biggest I had seen and extremely nice.

Every French restaurant has to have some foie gras appetizer on the menu. Here it was a terrine of foie gras with Madeira jelly and truffled green bean salad. I do like foie gras, so was quite happy with this.

The Cornish Salt Cod was one of the dishes that the waiter had “warned” us about before. He had explained that this dish was a bit different, that it was only warm, not hot and that it comes with a rather acidic lemon puree. Apparently customers have often been a bit surprised by this dish.

For me this was actually the best dish on the menu. Cornish salt cot, Beesands crab, chorizo, samphire, tarragon and lemon puree. An absolutely brilliant combination of flavours with the acidic lemon puree cutting through the rich chorizo. So good!

The Cornish duckling with cabbage, turnips and roast garlic was lovely, really well done, but felt like grandma’s home-cooking after the salt cod adventure.

Then, once again, a bone marrow dish. Seems to be the thing to do if you're a posh French restaurant. Wild Dartmoor beef with smoked bone marrow, a horseradish confit and red wine sauce.

I’m discovering that I’m not a big fan of bone marrow. It came as a big cube topped with something crunchy that I couldn’t quite identify. The smoky flavour was actually very nice. So was the crunchy topping. But I just find the gelatinous texture rather unpleasant. Loved the horseradish confit though.

I really like the fact that all produce at Gidleigh Park is locally sourced. But the selection of South West Cheeses was not particularly impressive. Compared to the amazing cheese cart at Le Gavroche, overflowing with smelly, creamy, runny French goodness, this felt like Sainsbury’s party cheese selection.

6 courses done, it was now time for the puddings.

A “starter desert” of exotic fruit salad with a passion fruit sorbet. Nice and tart.

The Plate of Apricot looked brilliant – food architecture. A pyramid of apricot and almond nougatine parfait, a perfect cube of silky apricot mousse and a sphere of sorbet. The texture of the mousse was amazing.

For coffee and petits fours we moved outside to the lovely, sunny terrace overlooking the gardens. The petit fours were not really petit fours, but rather a desert lover’s dream.  Crème Brulee, a raspberry tartlet and a chocolate fondant. My three favourite puddings, all on one plate. Christmas had come early!

Afterwards we went for a nice walk through the gardens, trying to digest the 8 or 9 courses. The whole Gidleigh Park experience lasted almost 5 hours.

As an overall experience it was great. 

The setting is simply stunning. 

The food is very good, but I would say that the salt cod was the only truly memorable dish.

The service was impeccable. But there is always such an army of waiters - every course seemed to be brought in by a different person - that it somehow lacks a personal touch.

And the bill? Again we didn’t quite manage to stay within the £300.

£120 each for the signature menu.

£44 for a bottle of Riesling

Plus another glass of wine, water and service makes £330.

Would I go again? Probably yes. The setting and the overall experience are lovely. Perhaps I would go for afternoon tea tough. A couple of ladies were having tea out on the terrace next to us and the tea tray looked fantastic. It’s probably a lot less expensive and you still get the same beautiful surroundings.


http://www.gidleigh.com/

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/