Eat-Drink-Man-Woman

Petrus (London): high class cooking

2012-01-26T19:54:00.000Z

(Visited 30/12/2011)

We squeezed into the 2.30 lunch slot, which became 2.40, waiting and munching pop-corns (paprika, lemon, original yet not sure it's such a cool idea) on the comfortable sofa at the entrance, entranced by the monumental cylindrical temperature controlled wine storage unit, around which the restaurant seems to revolve. It is an impressive room, with widely and rationally spaced tables, ideal for hosting an impressive meal. Did the lunch live up to it?

Well, the amuse immediately sets the tone and raises expectations of a not ordinary afternoon.

The Jerusalem artichoke mousse ever so velvety, in harmony with the exuberant truffle, and in harmonious contrast with some acidic capers below, all this lovingly engulfing a soft beef carpaccio. Not an ordinary amuse; Mark Askew (exec chef) and Sean Burbidge (head chef) are clearly dead serious about excellence.

We order, as one of the starters, a pheasant cooked three ways. But instead of that, this is what shows up:

Pan-fried sea scallops with celeriac, Granny Smith apple and truffle

This was a fabulous combination of sharp, earthy, sweet and umami flavours that only a clumsy execution could spoil. But the execution was as good as one can hope for, the first of a series of dishes where the cooking, as well as the seasoning, was chillingly precise.

There remains the small matter that we haven't ordered this dish. The person who took our order without writing it down had buckled under the pressure (room packed, last table orders). Well, ok, this is the way they do it, surely it feels more classy without a notepad, but Woman is on the verge of tears, oh the promising pheasant three ways... but the staff comes graciously in support of distressed Woman: of course we could have this, too, with their compliments and apologies three ways:

Windsor Estate pheasant three ways with shaved chestnuts and cider consommé

The three ways of the pheasant are a raviolo, a ballotine and a fatty piece of leg. You can probably see how good, multidimensional, succulent the meat was (do you remember those dry horrors of some home-, or even restaurant-, cooked pheasant?), to say nothing of the delicious chestnut shavings. But what propelled this dish skywards was the humble consomme', with its beguiling sweet-sour undertone.

The other starter we had ordered is

Pan-fried fillet of red mullet with clams, coriander gnocchi and a lemongrass sauce

Sorry to be repetitive guys, but the cooking of this fish was spot on, light crispness on soft moist meat. All components here truly work harmoniously together to raise the whole higher, congratulations, chef(s), as this is truly a great little dish. Can we just say, though, that the claims were rather pointless, in number, size, taste and function? Remove, remove! (and perhaps have more of the wonderful gnocchi).

The main of

Loin of Highland venison with braised shin, carrot purée and juniper sauce

is sumptuous, the succulent loin in the slightly crispy outside, the classical juniper accompaniment made into a ravishing sauce, the braised and wrapped shin telling yet a different story of texture and taste. Look at it: such a neat looking dish enclosing such a world of gustatory experience.

And then the bird:

Highland Red-leg partridge with pancetta, ceps and chestnuts, roasting jus

Presented cleanly in slices, the wrapping of the pancetta here really gives wings to the taste of the meat. What is striking is the soft and moist texture, obtained by sous-videing followed by quick panfrying, another exemplary display of meticulous cooking. The velvety jus builds the layering of flavours, the vegetables do not merely play second fiddle, and the final pretty textural touch is what felt like barley inserted in the slices of meat.

Lovely sides of Dauphinoise potatoes and multicoloured carrots were also brought to the table.

By now we are almost alone in the room, there is a general air of demobilisation. The service becomes noticeably less sharp, even if always kind. Some restaurants have live jazz, here they have live ironing

But we still want our desserts.

The Chocolate sphere with milk ice creamand honeycomb

is chocolate to the n-th power - the photograph has been taken after the perfectly formed and light chocolate sphere had buckled under the hot melting chocolate poured on it. A little piece of pleasant theatre for a dessert that aims, and succeeds, to knock you down. This was high class comfort food, interesting in flavours and textures: technically speaking, pure gooey pleasure!

Next,

Frozen yoghurt with wild heather honey, roasted fig, walnuts and red wine syrup

which was refined and intriguing in conception, the various components playing intricate games with each other, but perhaps did not work so spectacularly in terms of taste, especially because the roast fig (end of December?) simply could not (and did not) deliver. More for the intellect than for the glutton.

Another little piece of theatre with the unusual petit fours, small vanilla and Armgnac icecreams in a white chocolate coating, served in "steaming ice".

And more: chocolate coated almonds and two varieties of mint chocolates.

They really take chocolate seriously around here...

Oh, if only they took coffee as seriously as chocolate! Here we are, at the end of a remarkable meal, sipping poor filter coffee. Why, why, why? We 'remonstrate' with a surviving waiter (few humans are by now in the room, among them however we think we spotted Mark Askew running around, a good sign EDIT: or maybe not: we understand that Mark Askew has now left Petrus!), appealing to his Italianness. He insists on making us an espresso, and we don't dare tell him that the results are not enthralling either. Please, somebody do something about this.

The service varied in quality during the meal (due to the late time some personnel disappeared). Particularly comical was our attempt to enquire with a newly arrived young sommelier about the cooking of the partridge. 'Is it cooked sous-vide? '. 'Yes it's very sweet, nice isn't it'. 'No, we mean, is it cooked in a water bath?'. 'Water bath?'. 'No matter, yes it was very good'. The other waitress also had no idea, but she kindly asked in the kitchen. So it's not a 'total' service, in the sense that not everybody is au fait with the dishes. And let's face it, watching the ironing service performed in front of you is not top class stuff as the food (and no, it was not our first choice to get a table at 2:30 pm). But the attitude and procedures they have, the kindness of the individual waiters even when obviously tired and no doubt desperately wanting, but not showing to want, that we would just leave them alone, the generosity and smoothness with which they dealt with the wrong order, were admirable.

This was our last meal out for 2011 and, apart from the sour coffee note, it ranks with the very best. The dishes here are intricate and at the same time clean and coolly logical, flavours orderly working as a team and not against each other. This is impressive modern fine cuisine, executed spotlessly and with perfect judgement. There is a certain clinical air about the dishes, a certain lack of aggression that some perhaps might not find exciting; but as far as we are concerned, on the palate judgement we were blown away by the harmony of it all. The dishes here please you rather than challenge you. We'll settle for that. We anticipate this will soon be a 2* restaurant. Three courses (using top class produce) are £65, which is very fair for Mayfair.

Home

Medlar (London): total charm

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000Z

(Visited 29/12/2011)

The menu arrives and one immediately has good feelings: we would like to try everything. That is a good feeling.

The bread arrives (well made soft focaccia and a sourdough) and the good feelings swell. We start to understand in what sort of place we are: no showing off, stay within comfort zone, don't do too many things but do them well. Wise.

We go for two signature starters of the well-pedigreed Chef Joe Mercer Nairn: the Crab raviolo with samphire, brown shrimp, fondue of leeks and bisque sauce

of which we had read, and salivated about, a lot, was very good, but surprisingly also the weakest, in our opinion, of the whole lunch. True, the raviolo was thin and feather light and bursting with crab, the samphire and brown shrimps a delicious garnish, but we also found that the crab was a little overwhelmed and could not truly shine, and that the bisque was too creamy and lacked some alcohol (or other form of) kick, lacked depth - perhaps it would have been enough not to call it "bisque" to avoid high expectations. All in all, the dish tasted more than pleasant, but a little more monodimensional than we'd expected.

Mind you: to say that this crab was the weakest dish is to say that the standards are high.

In fact, the other starter, Duck egg tart with red wine sauce, turnip purée, lardons and sautéed duck heart

was a symphony of textures and flavours. The tart, light and crispy (puff-pastry); the mushrooms, strong; the egg, runny and luscious; the heart, soft and cooked just so: all played together to great effect. Thanks also to the delicious wine sauce and the powerful lardons (we could not fail to compare the effective use made of them here to the ineffective use made of pancetta by Locatelli the day before), this was at one stroke rustic and accomplished, assertive and mellow. Jon Tseng on egullet puts it better than we could ever do:

'It is a great example of taking a homestyle dish (I guess we start with oeuf meurette), putting it on steroids and turning it into real haute cuisine. The kind of thing I would expect to be done at Le Gavroche or at a Ducasse joint.'

Similar feelings we had for our main of Daube of beef with Bourguignone sauce and parsnip puree

which also played on several keys. No prizes for prissiness here, mainly one bold flavour after the other but staying together, the generous sauce really lifting the splendid piece of beef, the puree a sweet and apt match, the lardons once again doing heavy duty with a contrasting saltiness. Only the mushrooms were not impressive, a little watery and bland, they could have been removed at no loss.

The other main, Roast partridge with confit leg, pearl barley, foie gras and kale

showcased precision in cooking, the soft breast and the crispy leg in nice contrast. The foie gras was a delightful accompaniment for the drier meat of the bird, but unfortunately it had not been properly de-veined. The barley and the pleasantly acidic sauce added yet another layer to this accomplished dish.

And the desserts, too, what a joy. A Pear and frangipane tart with clotted cream

was quite rustic in style but had a meaningfully intense pear taste, as well as the almonds asserting themselves beautifully.

But the winner was the Prune and armagnac ice cream with financiers

big prune chunks in the icecream, suavely punchy with Armagnac, the financiers verging, for us, on the too buttery but with a lovely almond flavour. To finish all off, some high quality chocolate truffles as petit fours.

As you can see, we liked everything. To this, add the charming personnel and the charming, generous practices they have: the bread is freely re-supplied; they don't push the mineral water and after your bottle is finished near the end of the meal they ask you if you want to continue with a carafe; the teas (great little selection!) are constantly and promptly refilled. Moreover, any wine is also offered by the carafe: they'll open any bottle for you and get you a 500ml carafe at 75% of the price of the bottle, which seems a very fair bargain given that glasses of wine from pre-opened bottle are always disappointing.

Medlar is a cute little restaurant where very serious, gutsy and apparently simple yet refined, cooking is going on. The value for money is excellent, the lunch menu coming at £30 for three courses (we paid a £3 supplement on the bird) during the Christmas period, but it is normally £25. The dinner (same dishes as for the lunch) comes to around £40 for three courses.

Medlar may not break new culinary grounds, but surely, with its unfussy looking yet very intelligently thought out dishes, does make many people, including the most demanding gourmets in search of faux-rustic cuisine, very happy indeed. Absolutely worthy of a Michelin star in our view.

Home

Oxymorons?

2012-01-18T10:34:00.000Z

(London, Mayfair).
One must always make an effort not to be a prisoner of preconceived ideas, and be ready to accept that things may change.
But sometimes it's really, really hard.

Locanda Locatelli (London): 'Nice' but not 'Wow!'

2012-01-12T21:59:00.000Z

(Visited: 28/12/2011)

Many say that Locanda Locatelli is expensive for what it offers. But consider this: what's the price for time travel?

Because through the Locanda cuisine you step back a couple dozen years, and find yourself engaged by dishes whose conception would not have surprised our parents in their youth. And we could have exchanged today's lunch with the one we reported on five year ago without being able to tell from the dishes which one was had when. Preservation rather evolution is the philosophy here.

This is not meant as a negative! We are certainly not going to object to preserving intact our great culinary tradition. But then, everything is about execution. How did they fare in today's lunch?

The bread and parmesan grissini (unpictured) arrive and they are majestic: impressively well-made. In particular a 'rosetta' was airily empty inside exactly as it should be. One of the best, perhaps THE best bread basket in town, rivalled only by Koffmann's.

We skipped the truffle dishes:

as it looked a bit sad in comparison with the one we had recently had here (incidentally, at a fraction of the price: 4 euros per gram there, 9 pounds here - this is London for you).

One of the primi was essentially the same we had five years ago, Pheasant ravioli with rosemary jus

and once again was near perfect: quite well filled with intensely flavoured pheasant, the jus powerful but not overwhelming the pheasant, with a luscious dense texture.

But less convincing was the other primo, Chestnut tagliatelle with wild mushrooms

Of course making a dough with chestnut will always create a texture problem for the pasta, making it brittle, and that's expected, but the reward for this should be a superior flavour, which we did not detect. The sauce, boozy and creamy in a really retro style, was also too liquid in our judgment, but it was pleasant (no more). However, because the pasta was too smooth on the surface, there was a slight feeling of sliminess. Not pleasant.

The two mains are chromatically appealing thanks to the beautifully coloured sauces.

The Veal with lardo di Colonnata and fine herbs, parsnip puree, pumpkin, hazelnuts.

had an enticing assortment of ingredients, of which surprisingly the least impressive was what we expected to be the star, namely the lardo. However, the parsnip puree' was a joy, one for the glutton with its sticky consistency absorbing the jus, of reasonable (no more) depth. The hazelnuts were of high quality and they shone. The veal itself, ever so delicate, just managed not to be overpowered.

On the other side of the table, a Roast English partridge, grapes, chestnuts, black cabbage with pancetta.

Nice touch, the grapes, but the pancetta had no punch (so it was not a punchetta), and neither had the chestnuts, leaving the cavolo nero, and us, a bit underwhelmed. What happened? We don't know, but certainly larger quantities of these ingredients were needed in the dish to make a mark. The partridge was cooked with great precision, and had good flavour. Once again, while very far from being a poor dish, and while holding well as a whole, it failed to really enthuse.

What was spectacular was one of the desserts. This 'torte of the day', a 'Frangipane' with pears and stracciatella icecream

was good, the three textures (crumbly top, soft middle, and compact base) well balanced and the almonds commanding beautifully, with plenty of moistness and interest added by the pears and the icecream.

But even this paled near the Cassata 'Locanda' style,

a 'deconstructed' cassata made with superb ricotta, superb canditi, superb everything, all spread out for your pleasure. This was a masterclass in Italian flavours.

The petit fours were nice, too, though we have had better espressos (again, good, but just).

The service today was a little uneven, a little distracted, with a large number of waiters wandering around to not too much effect and without showing any genuine interest - and although this is for the cuisine, let us mention that the pacing of the dishes was also very unsatisfactory, with firsts and mains brought in record time, and then taking an eternity to clear the empty dishes and get our dessert orders. It took fifteen minutes from firsts to mains and fifty minutes from mains to desserts.

There is also a chance of a bullshitting attitude by a senior waiter or maitre d' who, when asked where the wild mushrooms came from in this season, told us they came from France. Very unlikely. We also noticed that after we asked a couple of questions like this, this maitre d' started steering well away from our table.... Maybe he didn't want to be bothered any longer. Or maybe we stink.

So, all in all, Locatelli continues to deliver good, on occasion very good (especially when it comes to pasta and desserts), but always very conservative, Italian cuisine. It is in a sense the Italian analog of Koffmann's, although we have to say that unlike at Koffmann's at the Locanda only few dishes managed to stir really deep emotion on this occasion, and there are also fewer sparkles of wit and original twists. Several times one says 'Nice' instead of 'Wow!' It is pricey, true, but as we remarked after our first visit there is also a sense of generosity in the portions, the non- rapacious prices for water and coffee, the rare absence (in London) of the gratuity automatically included in the price. With two glasses of wine at an (outrageous as usual in London) total of £27, and good coffees at a correct £2.50, each, we paid about £150 plus a tip.

We'll keep taking a peek at this institution every five years or so, at this quiet sort of date when it's incredibly easy to book, the room is only half full, and celebrities are scarce around to support the restaurant. Even if not always thrilling, Italian institutions need support nowadays.

Home

Plumed Horse (Edinburgh): uneven with some highs

2012-01-08T02:00:00.000Z

(Visited 23/12/2011)

Proceedings started alarmingly in this venue in the Leith “Michelinstrip” of Edinburgh (regrettably, the Plumed Horse has just been star-stripped by Michelin, butas you can see we are not deterred by this tragedy).

We asked what grape varieties werein a Sicilian white wine that had caught our attention. The guyin charge said he had no idea... but he could check on the internet. Um.

Thingsbecame even more worrying when he came back and said that the Sicilian whitewas made out of Sangiovese. Unlikely. To his credit he didcome back a little later to say that it was actually a Chardonnay.

And also tohis credit, the guy is really sweet and kind. And we appreciated sooo much the fact thathe didn’t put any pressure on us for drinks – we find it hideous when the first thing theyask you is whether you want a glass of champagne (if we do - unlikely - we'll ask without prompting, thank you very much), which happens far too often.

Two amuse bouchesrestore our faith. A trio of beetroot terrine with creme fraiche, ballottineof salmon with herbs and smoked caviar, and black pudding fritter

is onlymarred by the crazy saltiness of the salmon, while the fritter is delectableand the elegantly sliced beetroot adds that nice earthy vegetable dimension. The second amuse

is a bold butternut squash soup with chilli oil, very assertive and offeringnice contrasts. The palate is now for sure well awake.

Coming to seriouseating, two “set piece” starters are visually very attractive and well conceived. Tian of White Crab Meat, Cucumber, Pineapple Salsa, PassionFruit Dressing is as zingy,light, fresh as it is vertically ambitious in appearance (only one snotty comment: if you put dots, they've got to be all the same size).

And a delicate Terrineof Pheasant, Pistachios, Alsace Bacon, PickledPear, Cumberland Sauce, Thyme Brioche offers great balance offlavours and titillates the palate with sweetness from the pears and acidityfrom the sauce.

The pistachios do not make any impression – with them it’seither top quality and adequate quantity or nothing. Man finds the terrine abit dry but is silenced by Woman who says it's OK. Woman doesn’t care toomuch for the brioche but is silenced by Man who says it's great.

One of the mains is theonly real letdown of the evening, a RoastBreast of Guinea Fowl; Truffled Ravioli, “Cock-a-Leekie” Garnish.

Strangefirst of all that in a broth based dish like this no spoon is supplied. Maybe betterthis way, because what we can taste is rather bland. The anonymous guineafowl is dry (overcooked) and this time the couple’s harmony is preservedas there is no disagreement. While the raviolo is fine, something truly unspeakablemust have happened to a cardboard truffle with a horrendous chemical flavour. (We don't know and we don't want to know)

In the other main, a Roast Fillet of Brill, Saffron Parmentier Potatoes, CreamedLeeks, Scallop Sauce, the nottoo tasty fish plays second fiddle to the splendid protagonist: the potatoes,soft and creamy on one side of the dish, small roasted cubes on the other (the Parmentier),vibrant with saffron, not to mention the leeks that deserved to appear moreprominently.

This could easily have been a perfect vegetarian dish, withoutloss had the brill not been there. And the champion of potatoes Parmentier would have been happy!

For dessert, a DarkChcolate Fondant, Hazelnut Ice Cream,Cocoa Nib Crunch

is really fondant, that is luxuriouslymelting, the whole ensemble exemplary, and could only be improved by asuperior quality of chocolate.

But the stunner of theevening is the second dessert, a ClementineMousse, Marzipan Ice Cream, Chilli Tuile ofsuperb airiness, like a souffle’ really, intense in the tangy favour, on aclassy, also very light, sponge base. And the kick from the tuile, mellowed by theice cream, creates other layers in this refined, assured dessert (note also the this time precise hand that put the dots on the plate, one of those telling details).

The service worked well, with some unusual formality forthis type of restaurant (white gloves to change cutlery, where are we, at the Ritz?), the only negativebeing the manager, who shone for the total lack of presence in the room, spendingmost of the time either in front of the computer, or chatting with the waiters(with four staff for ten customers there was plenty of time), and did not evenbother to say goodbye when we left. Indeed we wondered what the point was of having a manager.

There’s evidently sound classical technique behind the dishesat the Plumed Horse, with chef Tony Borthwick, despite some inconsistency, ableto pull several strings in the harmony of flavours, from delicate to decisive. Ifit is true that there was a flop it is also true that there was a memorable dessert.What is missing, we think, is excellence in the main produce, which makes this restaurant a lesser brother of its starred neighbours in Leith. Whether this is compensated by theten pounds less that three dishes cost here (£55 pounds) is subjective. We feelthat the price is too high compared to what, overall, is inthe plate. Both in central London and in Fife (here) you can eat luxury ingredients (turbot not brill, pork loin not cheek, etc., all top quality) for that amount or even less.

Home

La Pech Abusé 2004

2012-01-06T02:00:00.000Z

There is more than one reason to like this wine. First, its name is a witty pun, abusé/Buzet: they were refused the Buzet denomination. We like humour.

Second, the reason why they were refused is that they did not comply with all the detailed requirements of the appellation (e.g. aging length). We always support creative individuals against rigid bureaucracy.

Third, their label is pretty (done by the daughters of the producer). We like prettiness.

Fourth, the wine is biodynamic. Ok, we don't like all the mystical babble, but it is nice to know that it contains no sulphur and the farming is organic.

Last and fundamental, it tastes good! Merlot and Cabernets (Franc and Sauv) in full Bordeaux style, so beautifully ruby that one would even feel justified in spouting nonsense on the virtues of biodynamics: we taste black fruits and earthiness and smokiness.

Discovered thanks to Massimiliano Baló, a clever young sommelier at Koffmann's. It costs £44 there, retail about a third of that (which, by the way, isn't bad by London restaurant standards).

Home

Yauatcha (London): impressive

2012-01-01T09:30:00.000Z

(Visited 27/12/2011)

When expectations of surly, pushy staff (as we’d read onsome sites and experienced ourselves in the past) are so spectacularly broken, with the trademark slick, dark, night-sky effect room adornedby a long fish tank along the bar, full (the room, not the fish tank) of efficient, UNpushy young waiters always swift to removefinished dishes, things can only look up.

And they did.

The dim sums were as beautiful and good as they come (we have been to China). We had theregulation scallop shui mai, a steamed vegetable dumpling, a steamed prawn zucchiniand cattlefish dumpling and a baked chicken Shanghai dumpling.

In all, the pastry was light, tight, pleasant; in the steamedones the gentle cooking method only adding to the sense of lightness, while the grilled ones offered crunchiness. In the scallop shuimai, the key is the balancebetween the scallop and the prawn (paste) flavours, with the gracious visual additionof the tobiko (flying fish roe). Perfect.A similar balance shone in the colourful zucchini specimen.

The sauces accompanying the Shanghai dumpling were adelight, one nutty, the other sharp.

A chicken hot and sour soup

impacted first with the heat assault, then gave way to uncover thedelicate sweet, sour and umami feast.

Welove vegetables, so we felt compelled to try a Spicy aubergine, sato bean, okra andfrench bean with peanuts

which was rich, unctuous, varied, vibrant of intensely satisfyingcolours and flavours. Only but not negligible defect, a piece of inedible fibrous material left inone of the vegetables.

Instead of the regulation crispy duck, we had the crispy ducksalad variation

executed with skill, crispiness and moisture both there, and manytextures in the vegetables (unfortunately once again including some inedible fibre, tsk tsk).

Yauatcha is at heart a tea house (-cha...), offering a unique selection offine teas. Instead of wine, drinking which somehow feels silly to us withthis type of food, we had an ever so delicate white Silver Needle and a stronger blue HighMountain Fo Shou. We are mentioning the names just to impress, as we're no tea experts and we have no idea of where these teas stand in the pecking order - but they tasted very good to us. The two pots, at £8 and £7.40, were more than enough for thewhole meal.

Yauatcha has the rare virtue of being able to cater for largenumbers at a very high level of quality. Except for a couple of slips in thepreparations of the vegetables, our lunch today was excellent. True, theconditions were ideal, the room only half full projecting a sense of calm aswell as slickness and the large number of staff being able to attendsolicitously to every table without effort – no doubt things might get a littlemessier and less smooth at peak times, yet what we’ve seen witnesses to a verysharp organisation in the kitchen and in the room.

At less than £90 for two includingservice, this was both one of the best value for money meals in recent times, and an excellent meal by absolute standards.

Home

Tortellini (homage to Woman)

2011-12-30T10:31:00.000Z

It's me, Man. I just want to say how good Woman's tortellini (one of my favourite types of filled pasta) were on our Christmas lunch.

Please note the perfect execution of the fiddly pastry work.

She decided to serve them using a fond brun, which is unusual I think but worked spectacularly well and was magnificently clear and delicately deep.

Well done, Woman! I'm glad to have worked as a lowly commis on this enterprise.

Home

Angler's Inn (Perth): a bit of a wasted journey

2011-12-27T21:06:00.000Z

(Visited: 18/12/2011)

This Inn just North of Perth has recently changed its website address, but hasn't seen it fit to change the links in other sites such as Viamichelin or even in their business card. All the links sent to an error page, so that it was impossible for us to see the menu online. Moreover, the owner equally did not see fit to inform us, when we booked on the phone, that on Sundays they do not serve their proper menu. They serve what they call 'High tea' instead, a stripped down selection of simple fare, admittedly at bargain prices. Since we had driven almost one and a half hours expressly to try this inn, it was frustrating (had we known, we would rather have driven an equal distance to our beloved Gordon's. for their simple but exceptional lunch menu).

Anyway, let's set frustrations aside and see what's on offer. The table are formally laid, with white clothes, which is a surprise as we were expecting something rustic. Maybe we're in for some refinement instead? Or is it nice punchy pub fare? Whatever, as long as flavours shine!

The starters, while simple, showed promise. The chicken liver parfait with Cumberland sauce and Melba toast

while minimalistically presented was pleasantly intense and rich without being overpowering, with a good smooth texture, though we would have welcomed even more of the nice sauce, or some other component to cut through the one-dimensionality of the dish.

And a Prawn and crevette cocktail with Bloody Mary jelly

pleased with good quality crustaceans (note, in two varieties), dressed in a balanced way and well complemented by the jelly. Only problem for the dish: the spoon for the jelly didn't fit the narrow part of the glass...It's a small deal, of course, but it set us wondering what on earth the staff was thinking, if at all, when deciding how to present this dish. Worrying.

Then this came.

The Chef's roast of the day (turkey)

If we were the Chef we wouldn't have wanted to associate our title with this dish. Although nothing tasted positively bad - in fact the turkey had good flavour - it was a catalog of culinary mishaps. The meat was quite tough and dry (even by turkey standards), the gravy that could have partly compensated for this just a pool of bland starchy water, the croquette chewy, the fondant potato not buttery and soft as it should be. The stuffing tasted exactly of nothing. The vegetables were too few. The jellies had a vague flavour of cranberries, but it was so evanescent we could not tell.

The other main, a Cumberland sausage served in lieu of the lamb shank listed on the men

showed that they source good produce here at the Angler's Inn (both sausage and potato), but the sauce once again was deeply depressing, not bad but lacking any depth whatsoever. The puree was good if a bit salty. And come on, in such a basic preparation, give us at least a proper vegetable accompaniment! A lazy dish indeed.

For the desserts you are invited to walk to the trolley and help yourself. These are our two selections:

You see a chocolate praline, a carrot cake, a lemon posset (which we thought was a creme brulee, it looks like it, but it tasted of lemon posset) and a gingerbread. You know, they must have a good chef de patisserie or a good granny in the kitchen...while simple stuff, this is exactly the quality that a pub or an inn should aim for: nice moisture and lightness in the cakes, nice balance and lemon flavour coming through brilliantly in the posset brulee, and nice crumbliness in the praline.

The service was ever so sweet but also a little awkward and ineffective. Also because of Man's own ineffectiveness (not admitting to his myopia he just nodded when the wine label was showed to him instead of checking properly that it was what he had ordered), a New Zealand Pinot noir was served instead of a Burgundy. Anyway it was reasonable and the good news is that it also saved us £20.... The carafe of water was frustratingly kept away from our table but there was no proper topping up. And there were those Fawlty Tower scenes, 'Do you want a sauce with the sausage?'.'What sauces do you have?'. Hesitates. 'Ehm, horseradish, ehm...mustard, ehm...'.'OK I'll have the horseradish'. Comes back one minute later: 'Sorry we don't have any horseradish'. Nobody enquired whether we liked the food. Long time to get our coats, and so on.

The cost was £66 with a £26 (very well-priced) wine, so on this front, full marks.

It's clear that they have some ambition at the Angler's Inn, but on the basis of what we've seen on our visit they have some way to go to attain the level of proper pub fare, lacking the punch of the best examples, and the setting is anyway too refined for a pub. So they probably aim at some higher level of cooking on non-Sunday days, though again on this day's performance we struggle to see how they manage. We assume and hope that the Head Chef wasn't in the kitchen that day. For what we've seen, Graeme Palliser at 63 Tay Street 10 minutes away in Perth is streets ahead in terms of culinary ability. Our modest impression is that the Angler's Inn should really be an Inn, forgetting about formalities and fine dining (the type of menu they seem to have on non-Sunday days), and focusing on serious, gutsy, properly made rustic fare.

Home

Game at Koffman's

2011-12-22T09:00:00.000Z

Knowing our passion for game, the powers that be at Koffmann's (read: Sandro who is normally in charge of the FOH when we visit on Sundays), although absent on the day, had made sure that a partridge and and a hare would be available for us even if not on the menu...

The hare was cooked perfectly, the soft succulent saddle offering the most obvious delight, and the almost oversize looking 'cake' with all the less noble but supertasty bits (the lovely liver scrumptiously stuck in the middle), despite its size and thus the risk of being dry still held a surprising moistness. At any rate, as in all game dishes at Koffmann's, there's never a moistness problem thanks to the generous sauces; in this case a shiny masterpiece of dark, smooth, muscular flavour. This was memorable stuff: hard to believe that such intensity and fullness can be conjured up in such a simple looking dish.

The truth is, of course, that it 's not simple...

To be fair, the partridge descended a few circles towards Earth, with the breast ever so slightly "overmuscular" and dry (taking perfection as a benchmark). It may have had to do with the cooking or with the hanging - we are reliably told that these little beasts, even when coming from the same batch, have different optimal hanging periods. BUT, apart from the excellent flavour of the meat, what made this dish stunning nonetheless was once again, you've guessed it, the sauce. There was a beguiling smokey flavour which after asking we believe came from an aged Armagnac. It was the key for the door to new dimensions, and you want the dish to last, and last, and last.

Accompanied by the usual well made chips, this was part of one of our many loooong enjoyable Sunday lunches in this unique venue that doesn't stop fascinating us. Even in the absence of our expert guides from the Italian Connection, the aforementioned Sandro and the sommelier Massimiliano, service was sweet and working as clockwork as always, in a nicely busy room.

Home

Dinner at Latium

2011-12-15T23:27:00.001Z

Ever dependable Maurizo Morelli delighted us with a fine Autumnal treat a couple of weeks ago at Latium. What is more Autumnal than white truffles?

They are simply irresistible, every time they were brought to a table the whole room would be infused with their aroma and we were sniffing like crazed bears. That the tagliolini are made masterfully (light, elastic), boiled exactly to that evanescent critical point, and that the condiment is judged to perfection makes this dish a heavenly experience.

The other primo piatto was a scallop raviolo with courgettes and clams

a whiff of of the sea (splendid clams) in the trademark light pasta that made an excellent counterpoint to the earthy flavours of the other dish.

This Pan fried fillet of red mullet, white onion sauce, sautéed green cauliflower with Taggiasche olives and sun dried tomatoes dressing was so joyous and sunny that it made our picture red...(we'll never learn)

You can see from the picture how accurately the skin has been made crispy. This dish was airy and light, full of intense Mediterranean flavours, in its genre a small masterpiece.

This

you've already seen here...

We finished with a ravishing pair of cannoli

To be precise: Sicilian cannoli filled with ricotta, candied fruit and chocolate, orange sauce. The crust is crunchy to the right point, the ricotta filling sweet, luscious and indulgent, the sweet and sour notes from the sauce are almost painfully intense.

And this Domori dark chocolate mousse, poached pear in red wine, Marsala sabayon and white chocolate sauce

was a feast: very clean, intense, bitter chocolate mellowed by the sweet sabayon and white chocolate sauce, with the moistily delicious poached pears.

The cost of all this is seventy pounds (plus the truffle supplement).

Now, what to say? For such first quality produce, cooked at this standard, this is breathtaking value. For example, you'd spend ninetytwo (plus an even bigger truffle supplement) at the celebrated and Michelin starred Zafferano. Yet we think that Needham (the Zafferano chef) for how serious a professional he is, just cannot compete with Maurizio in terms of understanding and mastering of Italian flavours. Not to mention that in the disappointing visit we reported, now a long time ago, we found a large bone in a fish, and this is a documented objective major mistake and not a matter of taste, a piece of sloppiness which we've never encountered in the dozens of times we've been at Latium. Yet the bloggers, inspectors and critics of this world seem to be blinded by atmosphere, location and glamour to what is actually in the plate. As far as we are concerned, we have no desire to be 'processed' by the Zafferanos of this world and to feel like cash cows, we'll happily leave that kind of place to others and we'll equally happily continue to be delighted by modest, talented, under-recognised Maurizio for many years to come!

Home

Lunch at Darroze: not spectacular food, but a feelgood place

2011-12-08T18:08:00.008Z

In case you are the self-conscious type, be advised that, in a full room, our table was the only one where men were not wearing a jacket. Fortunately, the dress code only imposes not wearing trainers and denims, so we just scraped through...

A pleasant lunch at Helen Darroze, because we were with nice friends, because the room and tables are really comfortable, because they spoil you with nibbles, and because the food is good.

But memorable, no, the food definitely wasn't. And the service, strangely, was all over the place (wrong wine orders, long waits between dishes, napkins left unfolded - sorry, if you forbid us from wearing our beloved denims then we insist you play by the rules).

Anyway, for £42 inclusive of two glasses of wine in a two-starred venue in the most expensive part of London, it would churlish indeed to complain.

Maybe the most impressive offering was a pan-roasted pluma of Iberico pork larded with Taggiasche olives, served with potato gnocchi, poivrade artichoke, and roasting jus, that showcased Darroze's strong, bold flavours, and her liking for Mediterranean ingredients.

This dish concentrated flavours and had a nice depth and variety, and a kind of solid elegance (note the expected perfect trimming and turning), too, the only negative point being the aggressive seasoning.

Other dishes were less convincing, such as a slightly underwhelming starter of warm salad of white coco beans from Bearn, served with pimientos del pequillo (those Mediterranean flavours again), rocket, roasted calamari, and gratinated razor clams: all these ingredients, and the £5 supplement, made one dream; but the end result, like our pictures, definitely did not attain the realm of dreams.

It was hard to see the point of all this. And, sad to say, the calamari was even verging on the tough side. She seems to be best when she's bold with flavours.

What makes this restaurant so ideal for spending a long, unrushed and relaxed afternoon with friends is that you really do get pampered here. Look, these are not your ordinary petit fours:

And only your sense of self-restraint places a limit to your choice from the trolley - while they put the pieces on an awkward holder with limited space, they always come back to see if you want more...

And they even give you some caneles to take home: be critical as you want about the food, but you are certain to be in a good mood when you come out: at least at lunch, a feelgood place rather than one for perfect food.

Home

Consorzio (Torino): pure simple pleasure

2011-12-01T16:51:00.001Z

Suffice it to say that, finding ourselves in Turin for two days, what we really were looking forward to - in a city graced by several Michelin blessed restaurants - was a dinner at Consorzio, a recently established trattoria in the 'Quadrilatero' area of Turin, where competition among this sort of simple, low-cost, modern or traditional trattorias, is intense.

Woman was particularly happy that dinner time had arrived, so that Man could finally stop going on and on and on in praise and in anticipation of their anchovies starter

Plump, succulent, fresh, the fried ones with a lovely and light crispiness and the cured one on luscious butter, in a dish that in presentation and execution typifies the 'tradition & modernity' style that is the hallmark of this place.

This is Piemonte, the land of raw beef. Here you get a raw beef trio of delicacies from Scottona (heifer under 16 months of age) beef of Fassona breed.

We have a 'battuta al coltello' (tartare) that melts, melts on and caresses your palate with its just-right texture (cut neither too thin, nor too coarse), a more assertive salsiccia and an ever so delicate piece of thigh. A simply perfect dish.

We could not resist a third starter of 'Cardi gobbi', a thistle-like vegetable typical of here, served with potato puree, a goat cheese fondue, and a quite inspired touch of home-made bottarga (fish roe):

This was as delicious as ever judging with the emotion, with intriguing flavour combinations, even if, from a mean-spirited critical viewpoint, the dish perhaps still needs some adjustments in proportions and preparation to become perfect.

Ah, well but there were more specials on the night, so how could we say no to a fourth starter of a cold meat terrine with a devilish mandarin mustard?

So decadently satisfying, with the sprightly tangyness of the (very!) hot mandarin cutting through the fat of the terrine... very good.

For primi, since as luck would have it that night they had the Piemonte King, i.e. the Tartufo (truffle) d'Alba (they don't get it supplied regularly), by which we mean this baby:

So one choice was easy: tagliolini al tartufo

What to say? To say that the pasta was elastic and well-made without being overly eggy, that it was a touch too buttery, to utter these mundane praises or faint criticisms seems ridiculous compared to the Heaven where those magic 7 grams of really fresh, high quality truffle (putting to shame the moulding rubbish you are sometimes served elsewhere) flies you.

We were very tempted by their adventurous Ravioli di cervella (brains), but opted instead for the more conservative pasta alla chitarra with cime di rapa (broccoli sprouts)

Unexpectedly for us the home-made pasta had no eggs, and thus a typically resilient bite. A very rich sauce exalted the excellent broccoli, and a touch of long ripened cherry tomatoes from Campania added a special twist (though there need to be more in the dish to make a real impression, e.g these many would be ok with us :)

A main of crispy chicken

accompanied by sauteed 'cicoria' on our request, was definitely not your KFC variety: cooked with great skill, the meat buttery and with a superb flavour, protected by its crispy layer, we could have eaten tons of it.

Desserts, desserts...

This chocolate and hazelnut torte

was a good start, but...we are freaks with pannacotta, and incredibly it is so rare to find a properly made one even in Michelin starred venues. But this one

is another perfect dish. Just the amount of thickener that prevents it from collapsing, so that its full creaminess is preserved, a high quality milk, and a gentle accompaniment of three different jams (one of which from the typical Chinotto oranges). Delicious.

And since Woman had been spotted eyeing the dessert on another table, here magically comes an homage of "bombette":

The scream of "don't bite" arrived too late for Man, while judicious Woman gulped hers in one bite, and can still remember the extasy of the runny custard and the flaky pastry - gorgeous!

The prices are extremely kind; without the truffle (which at 4 Euro per gram was anyway faaaar less expensive than elsewhere, at equal quality) a three course meal for two comes to less than 100 euros with water, coffee and an excellent 27 Euro Barbera d'Asti (that would have set you back 70 pounds in London). Ah, and since we were arriving from Scotland, we were treated to a tasting of this amazing Japanese fellow:

Well, we're not whisky experts but the depth of smoky, orangey notes and infinite persistency we experienced was sublime.

Fired up by the fearsome (for us fading middle-agers...) energy of the two young founders Pietro (Vergano) and Andrea (Verra),

this is for us the hottest ticket in town as far as 'trattorie' go. Propelled by stratospheric raw materials, the simply prepared dishes here are pure delight and a discovery journey trough Italian ingredients. In fact, not only Italian: on the night we visited there were on offer oysters from Brittany and cheeses from... England. Talk of open-mindedness.

Is it all a dreamworld of perfection? Of course it isn't, the more elaborate the dishes the higher the chance of finding (if you are really mean) some minor cooking imperfection or imbalance in flavours. But this is if you are really mean, as we said. Because eating at Consorzio is pure joy, to which one should abandon oneself, and it is hard to think of other places where one finds such an assortment of high quality produce.

A special mention also for the wine list (done by Pietro), absolutely original, full of surprises, and clearly a labour of love.

Ah: they also have the best espressos we've had in Turin (and we've had many, and many good ones). Well done guys - you'll go far.

Home

Viajante (London): inspiring

2011-11-24T19:09:00.002Z

Great bread. And not only that. We normally hate no-choice menus, such as you get at Viajante. They seem to epitomise a chef's arrogance; they say to the customer: it's not about you - it's about me, me, me, the chef. See our experience at Roganic.

So we only came here on the recommendation of a (very) expert friend whom we trust.

But it is indeed worth the trek even for those of you from more luxurious parts of London (not us) to this, let's say, more colourful one.

Nuno Mendes' cuisine is often referred to as avante-garde. It is in fact more complex than that, weaving an undoubtedly modern narrative that is deeply rooted in tradition.

Our lunch had it all (apart from choice): technique, balance, power, amusement, tradition, innovation, generosity. Not a single dish disappointed or wasn't interesting.

An unpretentiously presented butternut squash, milk skin and lardo was deceptively simple and the most intriguing dish of the day (as it s so hard to impress with a mainly vegetarian dish).

And a bread porridge with egg, sweetcorn and girolles, redolent of tradition, was a moving as well as well executed dish.

We went for the six course menu, which is a great bargain at £50, but the dishes are in fact many more, so much so that we won't go into details. Look at them, they tasted as good as they looked, from the initial amouse bouches (crab croquette, 'Thai explosiion', Amaranth with sorrel), in which the incredibly clear and hyperdimensional flavours attest that this chef means business,

to the cod loin with a stew of tripe, parsley and potatoes, to the intense, ravishing Maldonado pork cheek with cereals and garlic

to a suavely refreshing and light pickled and raw cucumber with reduced milk sorbet

to a concluding Mandarin Dondurma. We neither, it's a Turkish ice-cream.

And it's impossible to forget the petit fours, notably the truly mushroom tasting 'chococolate porcini', a final piece of fun and taste.

Service staff and the hostess were young and sweet and took their jobs very seriously but with a smile.

We went to Viajante fearing gimmicks, and we found instead very solid cuisine with some flavours from the past, some flavours from around the world, some flavours from the sheer imaginative power of the chef, all of them impeccably layered and assembled. It's modern, it's complex, it's good, it's different: go!

Home

A triumph of Grouse

2011-11-17T23:42:00.002Z

Fewer and fewer of the beautiful birds on restaurants' plates, the glorious period that begun on the 12th of August, the opening of the grouse shooting season, is nearing the end.

We have tried many fantastic interpretations of grouse this year: these are the best ones.

Alas, we failed to take the photo of the truly superlative one by the great old man in London, as the last time we went armed with our camera they had run out. But more vivid than a picture, the deep, deep flavour of Koffmann's grouse will stay in our memory till next year. His grouse is something that transcends any intellectual evaluation, it strikes at your taste emotion and you just stop caring any longer about the hours of high techniques and patient preparations that have gone into it: all you want to do is to abandon yourself completely to the sheer pleasure of eating it, to drown in it and forget all the rest!

Martin Wishart's interpretation contrasts markedly with Koffmann's, the latter sheer power, no holds barred, the former with the hair less let down, more of an elegant and sensual beautiful lady or gentleman than an exhuberant youth, delicious in a different way. He had two versions, one accompanied by a foie gras

and the other by a boudin

The waiter was astonished that we preferred to forgo one portion of the nobler foie gras (to which we were entitled by our choice of menu) in order to try also the more rustic boudin, but we don't care for the aristocracy of produce and just look for true flavours. We were not disappointed, both were packed with them and technically flawless.

While the chef's touch is exhibited unashamedly in Wishart's dishes, the class of Geoff Smeddle at the Peat Inn is more restrained, developing only slowly while you enjoy and understand the dish and all its hidden subtleties and details,

the meat presented simply and openly, the beautiful colours - visual testimony to a perfect cooking - in evidence, supported by a muscular jus, and notable because of the so welcome abundance of a vegetable element (in this case Puy lentils as the core) so typical of his style. Geoff has a unique knack of making you feel as if you are eating at the same time a rustic and a superfine dining dish (this one also comes accompanied on the side by neatly presented innards on a crusty bread).

Look how very different this presentation at Galvin La Chapelle,

which while accomplished was a little more austere, a little more rigid, maybe a little less joyous, what do you think? The piece on the left packed a punch of flavour as good as any other sample, while the one on the right divided us, Man finding it slightly more stringy, somehow less convincing than the best ones, while Woman was happy. We agreed that the jus was shiny class, and just so there is no doubt, let us make it clear that even with our modest criticism this is stratospheric level of cooking.

Let's conclude with an Italian version...if you have followed us for a while you know we are great admirers of Maurizio Morelli's skills at Latium. Grouse is not something one finds in Italy, so there's not a traditional Italian way of preparing it, and Maurizio here was unconstrained by the weight of tradition that sometimes tends to shackle Italian chefs in the UK.

Here you will notice, unique among those presented, the symmetric and 'full dish' type of composition that Maurizio likes, and, like at the Peat Inn, a love of vegetables (and blueberries!) that we share (here there was a lovely baked pumpkin, as well a Savoy cabbage, in a red wine and bluberry jus). The cooking was perfect, and the gentleness and the balance of flavours shone as usual even with an assertive grouse.

By the way, did we mention we love grouse?

Home

Fraser (Dundee)

2011-11-10T23:45:00.000Z

menu: 19:13
salad: 19:21
soup: 19:29
scallops and duck: 20:01
fish e featherblade: 21:13
puddings: 21:59

It's not that we spent the entire evening obsessively looking at our watches. But if you use a camera in a restaurant the pictures will unfailingly punctuate how long you've been bloody waiting for each dish, looking around with increasing perplexity at the apparent lack of concern of the staff.

If you look at the progression above, you will notice that the first items were almost shoved down our throats, then pacing assumed a semblance of normality, and then the kitchen obviously ground to a halt, with one and a half hours between the starter and the main. It took us over three hours to complete a regular dinner.

Fraser is a semi-professional operation in the well-to-do Dundee neighborhood of Broughty Ferry, which opens only two days a week, to allow Father to pursue his passion (it looks like, but we didn't ask, various family members are in the front of house).

All ingredients taste impeccably sourced. These scallops in particular felt fresh and also cooked well:

And the searing of another simple starter of Barbary duck

sealed in all the juicy flavours.

These starters came after a gastronomically pointless (but nevertheless welcome by us vegetable lovers) salad, and also after a soup that was a concentrate of tomato and basil flavour.

A main of feather-blade and fillet came in monumental quantity but here the cooking skill faltered badly, the wine jus watery, the carrots sad, the meat dry, which made finishing this beautiful piece of beef a bit of a slog.

But by God the wild seabass was a beautiful piece of fish that would have been a portion for the whole table in London, its presentation was colorful with a ginger beurre blanc lifting the dish just rightly.

The desserts, a Port poached per with cinnamon ice-cream and a ginger ice-cream with rhubarb poached in vanilla syrup were pleasantly asserive.

We'd describe the cooking here a that of a very talented amateur - which means better and more personal than that of many mediocre or soulless professional kitchens we've encountered. And as we said the ingredients are impeccable. The downfall is one of lack of professional organisation and service.

But let's end on a high note: there are some very, very well priced wines here. We had a Gevrey Chambertin with a mark-up one million miles from those of London and Edinburgh.

Fraser could be a very good neighbourhood restaurant if it allowed you to go for a shorter meal, and if didn't force you to such epic waits and strange pacing if you go for a full one. For us personally, once we've driven an hour to arrive there, it would be hard to resist the temptation to drive another twenty minutes for the superior cuisine at Gordon's.

Home

Galvin La Chapelle (London)

2011-10-31T10:53:00.001Z

This is the type of place where they begin with 'A little champagne to start?' Normally we find this pushy upselling deeply irritating, but here the service staff have sufficient natural charm and are sufficiently un-stuck-up that we didn't feel all that pushed after all.

Moreover, the Maitre d' on the day was from Aberdeen and we ended up discussing the cheapest way to get to Scotland - which identified us as cheap bastards and put paid to any hopes of selling us expensive drinks.

We went for an a la carte and a prix-fix menu. While waiting we were entertained by the kitchen theater, in full view from our table, and had the chance to slowly take in the enormous, complex, almost overwhelming space of the room.

Two starters of terrines were both pleasantly moist and rich and dense in flavour. One (of game), from the fixed price menu, was more basic and offered a more obvious, saltier, punch (the side raisin puree was remarkable, however). The other, of guinea fowl, ham hock and foie gras, played on softer, more subtle and complex notes, the red onion marmalade oozing luscious sweetness. Both were impressive in their own way.

A well executed grouse was suitably potent and flew quite high, though perhaps not as high as others (for flavour and texture) we've tried this year, here, here and here.

A simple dish of lamb, green beans, carrots and a rich fondant potato from the prix fix had deep flavour enclosed in a meat that didn't yield so easily, and supported by a classy jus; all in all a stunning dish when considered as part of a £25 menu.

The famous rhum baba' with chantilly cream (vanilla) certainly did not disappoint with its big alcohol cut and ethereal dough.

The prix fix dessert presented a tough choice between Tarte Tatin and a well presented and well kept cheese (Chaource). No prizes to guess what we chose:

Service was extremely well organised, relaxed and, as we said, charming: a very smooth machine. Compared to their cousins at Windows, while also formally attired they tend to create a less formal atmosphere.

This place reminds us a little bit, for the style of cuisine, of Koffmann's, although, to our taste, not quite at the same stupendous level. We wouldn't say it is an ultimate destination or worth regular long trips, but it is worth trying once if you are far, and worth returning if you are close. Here kitchen, Front of House and ambiance combine seamlessly to yield a pleasant, relaxing experience. We spent around £150 including very well made coffees, water, an a la carte and a prix fix menu, and a wine in the forties. Having ended on the high note of excellent espressos and petit four, we are indeed tempted to return for the tasting menu.

Home

Archontico Papadopoulou (Kornos, Cypurs)

2011-10-25T20:14:00.000Z

Forget the autumnal gloom, here's is our second installment from our late Summer Cyprus holiday.

Moving up one notch in refinement from the wonderful, basic Ladas taverna, tonight we drive up to the village of Kornos, a stone's throw away in the woody inland from Limassol or Larnaca, to try a new and ambitious opening. The restaurant is set in a fascinating mansion over a century old, which housed the Papadopoulos family and shop.

The charming hostess – the current generation of the Papadopoulos – gives us a tour of the mansion showing us many interesting objects found during the restoration and the rediscovery of the place: vases and other crafts, photographs and...but look, Man is already in the cellar, almost fainting at the musty sweetness of the perfume of Commandaria emanating from a very old, huge vase – we are told this is the oldest remnant of Commandaria in the island!!

Man has to be dragged away forcibly before he falls in. This is an emotional beginning.

The bread with sesame was fresh, fragrant, well-made, and also pleasant was a sort of gazpacho served as an amuse bouche.

We were very curious to try one of the pasta dishes – we learned it is traditional in this part of Cyprus. We opted for ravioli, which were accompanied by other irregular bits and pieces of pasta -as in the old family kitchens, where nothing was to be thrown away. The pasta was well-made, and it was covered in a pleasant, yogurty-feeling sauce, creamy and quite light. The filling of the ravioli was intriguing, presenting our palates with flavours that are unusual to us, just a little on the salty side for our taste.

A dominant theme of the evening were the sweet-salty contrasts. As in a main of pork cutlet,

which had been marinated probably in honey to great effect, so much so that although the dish presented several faults to the fussy tasters (the meat was overcooked and hence slightly hard and dry, the tomatoes were on the contrary undercooked and frankly not too good), ultimately a sense of deep satisfaction prevailed, so spot on and beguiling was the taste.

In the other main, an old recipe of pork cubes stewed with beetroot,

the coriander was not a mere side detail but it became a protagonist, lavished in large amounts and thus suffusing everything with fiery freshness. This lifted the rich, spicy, sumptuously greasy dish, certainly not one for the lily-livered, but a real dish from the heart and the tradition.

The same powerful role was played by the coriander in a very different offering as a starter, a huge mixed salad where once again sweet and salty played with each other in a myriad of variations.

We concluded with a dessert consisting of a sort of millefeuille which alternated phyllo pastry and the sweet Anari cheese, very typical of Cyprus (it is produced together with Halloumi, which more special to Cyprus than Feta - or so we are told), worked in a fluffy cream.

It was a fitting conclusion, together with the best Cyprus coffees we've had in the island,

to a sweet dinner.
This is a place run with obvious passion and a clear sense of mission, that of reviving the Cypriot culinary heritage. They have basically all worthwhile Cypriot wines - which can be extremely pleasant, hic - on the list (some 150 of them) and even a fully dedicated Commandaria bar – where you'll find samples that would be hard to get in any other part of the island.

Although there is some elegance and formality in the ambience, don't set your mood on 'fine dining' or look for too much finesse of presentation as if you were in a continental Michelin star venue, because then you'd be disappointed. Just enjoy the warm hospitality, the beautiful setting and especially abandon yourselves to the rich flavours that this cuisine brilliantly recreates from the tableau of the Cypriot tradition.

We paid less than 100 Euros including a bottle of local rose' (called Poze') in the low twenties, which makes this lovely...well let's call it 'trattoria' in the best Italian sense, good value too. Had we had more time, we would have loved to return to try more dishes. And more wines.

Home

Pommard Les Petits Noizons 2005

2011-10-21T19:20:00.000Z

Bought at a forgotten price at the excellent Majestic a couple of years ago and just rediscovered, with great pleasure, in a dark corner of our cellar (or, more prosaically, wine fridge), but safe in the knowledge that this Burgundy from Domaine de la Vougeraie would set us back around £100 in a standard UK restaurant and we certainly did not pay near that much, we enjoyed this Pommard, though to our somewhat untrained palates and eyes felt as if if could have stayed in the bottle for a few more years

The colour is quite dark for a Burgundy, we smell earthy notes and cherries. On the palate, there is something big and important but unfinished going on, quite a lot of acidity, and tannins that feel still a bit unruly to us.

That said, it was bloody good.

Home

Ladas Fish Taverna (between Limassol and Larnaca, Cyprus)

2011-10-14T18:41:00.000Z

This is the first of a couple posts about a holiday in Cyprus. We'll spare you the trite landscapes and, even worse, the sight of us in swimming suites, but you've got to look at the food!

No, the above beauty (his name is Spyros) is not on the menu. We met him in...a fish taverna.

Who'd have said it's so bloody hard for the tourist to find good fish in Cyprus, despite the thousand fish tavernas that adorn the coast? We mean really good fish, interesting, seriously fresh and unfarmed; something that makes you remember you're in a small island surrounded by warm waters and a bewildering variety of enticing marine offerings.

But instead you can consider yourselves lucky if you land a fresh but banal farmed sea bass or bream.

We're not claiming that's the only worthwhile place, but after several disappointments Andreas Ladas simple, charming fish taverna, set on the stretch of the coastal road between the taverna-littered fishing village of Zygi (in our opinion, AVOID) and Larnaca, became for us the venue where we we found what we were looking for (do NOT confuse this one with the one by the same name in Limassol). There we found the freshest snappers, mullets, barracudas (pike-like in appearance, mightily tasty), and their numerous cousins, all described to to us by the charismatic Andreas in person. It was our University of Fish for a week.

We stumbled on it by chance, wondering in, one hot mid-morning, and finding Spyros the pelican as the only occupant of the premises. As he was in a cage, we immediately thought the owner must be a mean animal mistreater and that we'd find the poor animal on the menu in the evening.

But no, Spyros may in fact be one of the luckiest pelicans in the world: retrieved on the beach injured and unable to fly, he found a comfortable home in the taverna, normally kept free to fly on the rare occasions when he feels like it, well nourished with tons of fish (reassuring the customer that the fish that is no longer superfresh still has a good use), and able to interact with customers. He's in fact quite a primadonna, showing an interesting range of expressions.

Of the various dinners we had at Ladas taverna, we took pictures of one where we chose to have a grilled snapper, preceded by the usual mix of salads and dips - the basic version of an amuse bouche...

We say 'usual', but in fact the quality of the humous, the taramosalata, and the chips was distinctly above average.

As soon as you taste the chips you realise that - rather unusually in our taverna experience - they are 'real', not frozen, hand-cut and cooked in good oil. The humous tastes mostly of good tahini and not of the standard bland concoction, and true is also the flavour of the taramosalata. And the zingy beetroots are a pleasure.

Before the main course, we always had squid or cattlefish, very fresh, grilled to perfection, and enhanced by herbs and good olive oil, those basic yet thrilling flavour combinations that have survived centuries of Mediterranean civilisation...

And here's the big event of the evening

Intensely delicious as only very fresh and properly cooked fish can be, this snapper was in no way inferior in texture and delicacy of taste to 'nobler' types such as bass and bream. This is an experience that it would be impossible to replicate where we live, and thus it alone was worth the trip. It reminded us of Barbara in Sardinia, although here it is a far more rustic setting.

You'll find Ladas taverna on the coastal Road between Limassol and Larnaca, near Maroni village. Fresh wild fish was 45 euros per kilo, squid and cattlefish 35 per kilo, the salad and dips10 all inclusive, and the nice, refreshing and perfumed white Cypriot wines are available at very reasonable markups. This means that you can have one the best simple fish meals of your life, with a good wine, for less than 40 euros per head!

When you enter you can choose the exact fish you want from the display, an option that in our opinion is better than going for the standard fish meze - even here you need to exercise some judgement when selecting the fish... Even better, make friends with Andreas, and he will guide you well! Perhaps he will also tell you the story of why there is a taverna by the same name in Limassol, in the same spot where his father used to have his, and which you should avoid...

Home

63 Tay Street (Perth): well worth the while

2011-10-06T21:50:00.001Z

En route to a walk in the Perthshire Highlands, we needed some calorie intake - an excellent opportunity to stop at one of our favourite addresses, overlooking the Tay river in Perth.

Chef Palliser's cuisine is not always the most prettily presented, nor the service the most refined, and a three course menu (plus amuse bouche and an intermediate palate cleanser) at £35 is bound to face some constraints, but this is a case of substance over style, it's goodness with the hair let down. He definitely has that touch and ability in extracting flavours from the raw materials that marks out the talented from the run of the mill.

This starter of smoked roast wood pigeon with remoulade and cherry jus

was intensely satisfying and balanced, the crisp and unsoggy salad for once serving a purpose in the dish rather than being a mere add-on, and the pigeon of good quality.

And this sea-land combination packed a real punch:

It's an Ayrshire pork belly with Scottish (where else?) langoustine in a ceps sauce. The produce is excellent and skillfully cooked. The addition of the egg creates yet another protein dimension in a dish where a lot is going on already, but everything holds together beautifully. And we had similar thoughts regarding this:

An admittedly rather confused mass consisting of an Angus beef shin with pearl barley risotto, Summer truffles, girolles and Parmesan. Once again, much, much flavour (literally) compressed and bursting on your palate, even though for us the Parmesan was one step too far in an already rich, creamy, moist dish.

We also had a refined starter of line-caught Scottish mackerel, a fresh, intriguing dish with fennel and smoky aubergine.

We said we needed calories. At some point we implored the waitress to bring us more bread, on the grounds of our carbohydrate need derived from our Italian genetic makeup. The waitress patiently said: 'I know, I know...', and kindly contented us. On this and other occasions the service was most kind, and smiling, although those looking for formal precision will find some points to pick...

The dessert section did not disappoint either on the calorie front nor, more fundamentally, on that of taste.

The above is a rhubarb crumble with vanilla custard and cinnamon salty icecream: simple, well-made, rich, and interesting.

But the next one was a different level of creativity: layered chocolate cappuccino, hazelnut fudge doughnuts.

Layer upon layer of pure pleasure in the "cappuccino", and well, you coffee and chocoholics know what we are talking about.

63 Tay Street is not the place where you will be indulged or pampered - but it serves good and interesting dishes, delivering powerful flavours, at prices that approach rock bottom for this quality.

Home

The Greenhouse (London): an enticing trial lunch

2011-09-28T11:42:00.001Z

On arrival, despite visiting on a budget offer, we are given all the customary extras - very elegant, very pleasant, very welcoming.

When we ask whether they mind if we take photos of the food, the maitre d' almost laughs: why should I mind? We'd like to send the tape of this scene, occurred in what is otherwise a pretty formal setting, to the many stuck-up venues that consider themselves and their food so sacred that its images cannot be handled by mere mortals.

So let's take a photo of the bread

It has a 'professional boulangerie feel', very standard but perfect looking, and it's undoubtedly very well-made (we didn't ask whether it was bought in).

We decided to have a "trial lunch" at this illustrious and historical Mayfair venue that has seen several chefs at the helm - they must have a Michelin star or two, they really must, but we can't be arsed to check - show us the food first :) - based on an amazing offer with this site, that afforded a three course meal and a coffee for less than what a single main costs in most fine dining places in London (the regular lunch menu, anyway, is also good value at £29 for three courses). Of course at this price we expect the selection to be limited and the dishes to be simpler, and that's why we prefer to consider this visit as a mere trial, to get an indication of the style of Chef Antonin Bonnet's cuisine.

There is, anyway, an art in designing a budget fine-dining menu.

A tiny matter. A wine waiter or junior sommelier attempts to persuade us to buy a bottle of Barbera that is almost 50% more expensive than the more moderately priced (£36) Loire we had selected. Now, apart from the fact that a sommelier should be able to spot two cheap bastards like us, who would never upgrade so much on their stated request unless already fully drunk, we also consider it slightly bad form to attempt this upselling feat and jarring with the previous impression of hospitality.

After this, however, everything was smooth, including the impeccable topping up of the wine by the aforementioned waiter.

Very soft, enveloping textures in the first dish, Spaghetti squash and hen egg, hazelnuts, bristly ox tongue, apple balsamic vinegar (nothing else) with pleasant contrasts and balance between acidity and sweetness.

The strongly flavored sardines, glazed with birch syrup, do give pleasure, matched by an equally decisive jus (chicken?), accompanied by an aubergine caviar and girolles mushrooms; a good ensemble although the aubergine caviar was overdelivering on labour and underdelivering on flavour.

More delicate but with neat flavours, and simply beautiful, was a dish of grey mullet with artichoke puree and dolce-forte sauce which once again created that acidic counterpoint:

A rich, sumptuous featherblade was enhanced by a shiny and powerful Guinness sauce and accompanied by smoked new potatoes, buttery and soft. This would have been a fantastic dish had it been completed by some other vegetable element; as it was, it was pleasant and powerful but slightly one-dimensional both texturally and taste-wise, and tending to become monotonous - more a dish to gobble up rather than one to slowly enjoy

A Guanaja chocolate dessert came as a ganache, it was light and delicious, with crunchy chocolate "medals" and a very very intense blackcurrant coulis that really shone through.

The cheeses featured a Morbier and three others that we have in the meanwhile forgotten in the orgy of intervening restaurant outings... Perhaps you can recognise them from the photo. They were excellent if, according to us, served at a very slightly sub-optimal temperature. A suggestion that seemd to greatly demoralise the maitre d' who clearly cared, and made Man feel guilty for having made it. Let's say that our mouths were too warm.

All in all an impressive display of precise cooking and creative, sometimes subtle combinations within a tight budget. While, for all the politeness and attentiveness, the whole atmosphere felt somehow a little cold for our liking (they certainly tend to cater for a clientele that is very different from low class us, as the mind-boggling wine list attests, and these are impalpable feelings anyway), we are very enticed to go back for the whole hog. That, however, will imply a serious dent in the wallet, even compared with restaurants of similar level of cuisine.

The petit fours, pure class, certainly do invite you to return,

and ever more so does an excellent espresso, served with a spark of originality - had it been slightly 'shorter' (less diluted) it would have competed for one of the best espressos of the year, and we don't take such issues lightly...

The Peat Inn (Fife)

2011-09-22T08:20:00.005Z

We've been more than a few times at the Peat Inn, first reviewed here.

To understand why this is one the most appealing restaurants we know, look, for example, from our last Summer visit, at the neatness of presentation of this Lobster Thermidore (a starter): the plate is clean, the precious juices and moisture all contained within the shell. The cooking is the most precise we've encountered in our Thermidore eating career: the sauce not overpowering but merely supporting the soft, delicate, succulent meat. The dark chips layered on the right provide a touch of textural variety. This is what we would call restrained class (it isn't nice to make comparisons, but we have to say that this offering is on a different level of cuisine even compared to our very good recent Scottish experiences at Ondine and The Honours), which in the end defines this restaurant.

The other starter was a stunner, too, but very different, going for a wider palette of flavours and colours. Here we have a pea and ham pannacotta with a ham hock bon bon and a quail egg.

There are so many layers of flavour and textures and details and ingredients in this simple looking dish that it's hard to tell. So we won't tell but merely assure you the result is amazing - to save time just be amazed, enjoy the colours, and try to imagine!

We also had our first Grouse of the season, here in the rich and powerful sauce that this meat wants. On a 'gameiness scale' we would say this was in the middle, quite gentle and hence, we think, acceptable also to more delicate palates - it's a matter of personal preferences but we could cope with more extreme versions and uses of the innards...(so far in the season the gold medal belongs to this guy). In terms of cooking, look at the brown outside, memory of flavour-giving high heat, and at the pink inside, and you get an idea of the satisfaction for the game-lover.

A dish of veal cooked in two ways (roasted rump and braised shin) is not only very accomplished,

but it also hides a lovely, lovely tomato sauce in the middle, redolent of Italian flavours, that we of course very much appreciated...Look also at all the small details in the dish - as ever, the more you look the more you discover - rarely here a dish of X is a mere dish of X, it's more like a minute construction around a core.

We would have wanted to choose the entire dessert list, so enticing it read, but we limited ourselves to these two:

A beautiful Eton Mess, with its crunchy, bright white meringue in which once again neatness of presentation (Chef Smeddle, who definitely has a bent for neatness, clearly cannot tolerate a mess even in an Eaton Mess...) and balance reigned supreme,

and a creamed vanilla rice pudding with peach compote, frosted hazelnuts and a peach sorbet (which can be served either cold or warm - the rice pudding, that is :) ). Imagine comfort food at its most refined, richly velvety yet elegant and light; this is it!

While Scotland is graced with several truly excellent restaurants, where highly talented chefs ably handle the marvellous Scottish produce, for us none of them quite matches the unique combination of charm, comfort, great cuisine and class-without-stiffness in service that one can enjoy at the Peat Inn. It is just our kind of high-end restaurant with a human face, not to mention the best value for money (no doubt a base but not unimportant dimension...) all round. That's why we'll be back here again, and again, and again, and we hope that even higher recognitions will be added to an already impressive record.

Home

Wallace Restaurant at the Wallace Collection

2011-09-15T21:05:00.018Z

Woman spent an hour of the Sunday morning in the basement rooms showing some intricate works by the goldsmith Kevin Coates. Man, suffering from back-ache, unable to stoop to look at the details of the miniatures, irritated and very worried at the thought of Woman exposed to all that gold, took a stroll in the upper galleries looking at the portraits of rather ugly gentlemen and ladies and at terrifying armoury, and couldn't wait to sit down in the comfortably pillowed, deep metal chairs of the fantastically bright (courtesy of a glass window) and spacious dining room at the Wallace collection.

There is something about satisfying first your eyes and then your palate, about eating surrounded by beauty...

We had a very decent duck terrine, accompanied by a lovely sweet sauce, clearly the work of a competent chef.

The combination of remoulade, Bayonne ham and cucumber pickles, while simple, worked and showed attention to flavour balance, and in all honesty the combination of sweetness, sourness, saltiness and umami was a pleasure on the palate.

The papillote butternut squash kept all its flavour, although we were suffering form carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms.

Luckily there was some creamy pearl barley accompanying plump courgettes, lavishly stuffed with black olives.

To finish, three cheeses, in more than acceptable conditions and generously accompanied by apples, grapes and walnuts - from a list of seven or eight we chose an Epoisse, a Livarot and a Comte D’Estive.

And a rather floury but overall good cherry clafoutis (no stones in the cherries!)

All this, plus two glasses of wine at £7.50 each and coffees, for £93. Some good pricing here. The cheeses are £10 for three piece, or £15 for five , or £7 for one. There is a set lunch of two or three courses at £22 and £25. We will not say that you can have the best fine dining lunch of your life at the Wallace, and with L'Autre Pied and Roganics so close for a Sunday lunch that's where you should head to if you are only interested only in the food. But you can be a happy eater, you can be thoroughly content and relaxed, at the Wallace. There is competence and professionalism behind those dishes, and the environment is truly uplifting.

Home

The Honours (Edinburgh)

2011-09-08T20:27:00.012Z

It looks like Martin Wishart didn't spare any expenses in his new 'bistro' in central Edinburgh, the atmosphere one of very spacious luxury rather than intimately rustic

They clearly need to make it back with the bread, good but only served in three thin slices each, and not replaced if you finish it...

Scottish Nationalists will have an apoplectic attack at the only type of oyster being served in this Scottish restaurant being 'Cornish assured'

We heard that there was no competition in the blind tasting. Very good they certainly were: the plumpest, sea-infused oysters of our (admittedly limited, but not non-existent) experience. But we are told by reliable sources that you can find equally good ones in Scotland, so....

Woman: Let's have the lobster Thermidore. Man: Nah, we are having it every week here in Scotland! Woman: Come on! Man: Ok....

It was a good choice: served without the shell, notable for the excellent cooking, the herbs recruited in quantity to add freshness, and the balance and kick of the sauce. In one word: delicious (though we've recently had an even better one...stay tuned).

Man: let's have the tuna tartare. Woman: Nah, this is the tame yellowfin, you know I'm used to the wonderful bluefin Sicilian tuna. Man: you mean, like feckless environmental yobs that don't give a toss about sustainability? Woman, contrite: Ok, let's see what chef Paul Tamburrini manages to do with the yellowfin.

It was a good choice: a simple 'assembly' dish with very well-defined, fresh, harmonious flavours (avocado cream, ginger and soya butter sauce).

Woman: let's have the veal sweetbreads. Man: Nah, we can have them in Italy or the lovely ones with Pecorino cheese they do at Latium. Woman: Come on, don't be chauvinistic! Man: Ok.

It was a good choice. In fact, it was a great choice. Simply resting on a bed of moist spinach and accompanied by a portentous reduction, it was the cooking that made this the dish of the day, having achieved that perfectly light crispiness on the outside and that supreme softness inside.

Man: Let's have the Presa steak of acorn fed Iberico pork. Woman: Nah, we can have this sort of thing in Spain. Man: Yes we could, however we never do, come on! Woman: Ok.

It was a good choice. They can really cook well here at the Honours, clearly a taut and well-run kitchen. This one felt like it was grilled, let's see, at about 650 degrees, you know, it had that unmistakable texture...(OK,we read it on the menu, where they feel compelled to give you this information as if many people might change their mind about the order if it was cooked at 600 or 670 instead). We asked for medium rare and we were rewarded with the succulence that comes with it. Iberico pork is in general wonderful, but Man found this one good but not the best Iberico pork, and in terms of flavour he preferred the one at Hedone the previous week. Just for the sake of giving you a full spectrum of opinions, Woman disagreed. They agreed however that the the thick wine sauce was 'deluscious', and the tomatoes welcome (though to our taste they could have been cooked quite a little more and acquire that melting deliciousness).

Just one dessert, to increase our Summer exploration of the classics, another peach Melba, like at Koffmann's the previous week (yes, we eat out a lot).

The ice-cream (made with a Carpigiani machine, as the very detailed menu says) was as good as one finds even in Italy, and the peach (Italian, so says the once again very detailed menu...) intense - this was yellow, while the Koffmann's one was white. It is definitely not your classic Peach Melba, but still a very good ending to a very good meal. The presentation is perhaps more bistro that fine dining (compare it with the one at Koffmann's bistro, but that's OK.

The service has some key members from the Michelin starred Leith operation, so you get the benefit of a level of service far superior to what you'd expect in a bistro (the other waiters, very nice but displaying inexperience to various extent, looked in fact like they do greatly benefit from their more experienced colleagues - one lovely young lady was literally trembling when taking the dishes away: sweet but painful to watch). A special mention for the manager Steven Spear, a Wishart faithful, whose bright and easy charm (and voice!) cannot fail to strike the customer.

As you can see, we had six good choices out of six, and indeed we have the feeling that we could have chosen anything from the menu and been equally satisfied. This is a very polished operation. Remember, it's a bistro, so don't go expecting the intricate dishes of Martin Wishart that probably take six days to prepare, and you won't be disappointed. The one negative aspect is a certain sense of lack of generosity (no amuse bouche, very little bread, no petit fours, expensive coffee - which we did not have, very little vegetables in most dishes so you need to order side ones), a rather enthusiastic pricing (we spent £111, of which £38 drinks, before a tip - for £120 or so you can fine-dine elsewhere not too far), right on the borderline of what we would consider excessive, bearing in mind what is in the plate, the lack of extras and the basic mise en place. On the other hand they have set lunches on weekdays that look a steal. If you can, you should perhaps focus on those.

Home

Hedone (London): top produce does the job, sometimes

2011-09-01T06:59:00.008Z

(Note added December 2011: A second visit was distinctly less impressive than reflected in the review below. Between excellent dishes, the already noted amateurish mistakes were magnified to the point that a dish was tasting positively vile and verging on inedible (a salty cockle broth garnishing a turbot). When asked by the manager how it was, we told her how it was. The chef stormed out of the kitchen to confront us and assert that we were wrong. Unfortunately we were obviously right, saltiness is just that thing that anybody can spot...it was probably just hurt pride on his part that prevented him from admitting the mistake - a rather unpromising attitude for future developments. At those prices and with that attitude, we will not risk Hedone again for a long while).

Long cut through London from E1 to W4, for what? Well, for a good cause we hope. We look at the lunch menu, which offers 3, 4 or 5 courses (with two choices only for mains and desserts). Everything is enticing, so we ask for everything.

We are a little disappointed though that a lamb, which has been judged by this guy the best he's ever eaten, isn't on the menu. As it happens, this illustrious gourmet happens to be sitting right at the next table (we know it but he doesn't, ah the joys of anonymity) and we become green with envy when we see chef Mikael Jonsson himself step out from the full open view kitchen area to personally bring the sought-after lamb to the next table! But this and other special treats are well deserved: our gourmet neighbour has been at Hedone six times in two weeks, a feat that we could never match, has written a glowing review, and has scored the cuisine at 2* level. Do we agree?

Let's be frank: with such a high bar set, no.

With us, excellent bread such as the one on show today is always a winner: nice crust, texture and flavour, even if of only one type, which is a slight disappointment. Some at least minimal variety is important with bread.

An umami flan, topped by seaweed coulis (we think), suavely unctuous, offers unusual and crystal clear flavours, a striking opening to the meal, a work of simple genius. It was preceded by an also striking nibble of a sable' buckwheat biscuit in which Berkswell cheese flavour comes through intensely, subtly accompanied by a blackcurrant powder.

A gazpacho is bursting with vegetable flavour and vibrant colour (good produce and good judgement in proportions and seasoning do the job), served spectacularly in a transparent bowl, and the dill seed sorbet worked very well indeed at all levels, flavour, temperature and consistency.

A simply grilled mackerel with Japanese flavours was incredibly soft and succulent, perfectly seasoned and accompanied by the tenderest of green leaves. A dish of great simplicity and effectiveness.

So far so good. But the the cooking was not perfect across the board. A wild salmon was reduced to a squashy texture by slow cooking. You can see from the photo some signs of the massacre. A nicely crispy skin or at least some firmness of flesh would better serve the splendid beast which died for us. Yet the peas were very good.

Conversely, we found too much firmness in a thickly cut pork of superb quality and exploding flavour, due to being a little overdone (great potato mash with just a hint of mustard (we think) and Grelot onions though, and the simple jus was perfect! And the crispiness of the skin!).

And, no matter how good and fresh the scallops were in another dish (and they were again fantastic), just steaming them (admittedly very precisely) with no contrast or complement for their natural potent umami and sweetness seems a bit like raising the white flag as an ambitious cook. Cuisine has been developed to enhance the natural flavour of the raw materials, after all. Isn't this is what cooks do?

For desserts, a texturally very pleasant, smooth almond blanc manger provided a nice contrast to the acidity of an apricot, but perhaps the acidity itself was too much for balance.

On the other hand the Hedone chocolate bar (72%) was minimalistically but chewily gratifying.

We always order espresso coffee with some hesitation. Especially when, like here, most of the personnel is French... But it was of excellent quality and reasonably well executed.

We paid £183 with a £44 wine and water, which may seem steep but isn't, really. Not only will you find here some of the best quality produce around, but the dishes are generously portioned and allow you to enjoy them in several morsels (accumulating flavours and impressions) instead of disappearing in just one or two .

Chef Jonsson seems a remarkable kind of chef, with his unusual pedigree of former gourmet and his 'obsession' with raw materials. He is very clever in keeping it simple, staying within his comfort zone of cooking, and focussing on sourcing. For what we've seen he would not excel at complex preparations, not having an assured hand in cooking, nor always stunning ideas on layering flavours. Hedone is already one of the best addresses in London - provided you are not in search of intricate dishes or complex culinary ideas or ambitious presentation, but of a potently good meal of dishes that are not pretentious yet do have some subtlety. Their only pretention, really, is great ingredients that are encouraged to speak mostly for themselves.

Home

PS to Koffmann's

2011-08-29T19:41:00.000Z

Just a small addendum to our Koffmann's review. We went for Sunday lunch yesterday and we had the grouse: heavenly! We can hardly think of another place in London where one can have a more delicious one: if you have the chance to be there (and if you like gamey stuff, as it is potently flavoured, as one expects from a dish at Koffmann's), a must-try.

Addendum to the addendum (added 24/12/2011): some pictures of game at Koffmann's are here.

Home

Koffmann's (London)

2011-08-23T19:10:00.003Z

We would like to keep this brief - although we probably will not succeed - because there isn't much to say about Koffmann's at the Berkley Hotel: It is simply a place where you eat darn well and where you can be truly happy. We could finish here.

But of course we won't.

Freed from the constrictions of three Michelin star cooking (for he held 3* at the famous Tante Claire), the old man (just a manner of speaking, Pierre...), often - believe it or not - behind the stoves himself, with his brilliant team serves you dishes that, while backed by an immense culinary knowledge, are there not to comply with the formal fussiness and strictures of multistarred Michelin dining, nor to show you how clever, funny, artistic, inspired, etc. the chef is, but simply to please you, the customer. You are the centre of the experience at Koffmann's, you are the king and the chef cooks for you, not for himself.

This is not at all to say that food here is boring or drab. To the contrary, there is sometimes a gentle humour, like in this Squid Bolognese

where the squid has been meticulously sliced and reduced to tagliatelle, while the tentacles have been made into a ragout. Splendid savoury flavour and splendid, concentrated tomato sauce (only criticism: verging on the salty side).

The classic Scallops with ink:

are the embodiment of simplicity and elegance. Cooked until the exact second when they had to be removed from the heat, this is a triumph of sweet, salty and umami balance. Some people overdo it with scallops in excessively complicated preparations, others underdo it (in the next review we'll provide an example). This is the just middle. This is wisdom.

In passing, can we say that the Koffmann breads are for us the best in London? For a French restaurant, of course, for who can beat good Italian breads? :) Strong in structure and in flavour, they have a lovely homemade feel, though of course they are technically perfect - and the "melting" quality of the flaky roll is lusciously decadent

We've been here several times, and of course we've tried the legendary pig's trotters, which are extraordinary as they say (although certainly not to everybody's taste because of the fatty gelatinous texture with not too much to contrast it, something that irks some people). In the colder months we also never miss the profoundly satisfying game pithiviers. But this report is from Summer (besides, you can find the trotters photographed and reviewed everywhere), so this time we go for something lighter. A clever seafood paella with some of the freshest and best molluscs you can find in London and lovely moisture with intense flavour.

And then a roast monkfish with lentils

The fish of excellent quality (by the way, all seafood is wild here) and cooked as you would expect, the lentils concentrating masses of flavour.

Among the desserts, we can never miss the stupendous Pistachio souffle':

It was partially destroyed by an otherwise superbly talented new member of staff who hadn't yet mastered the art of inserting the ice-cream in the souffle'... but this dessert is beyond destruction, it is indescribably good, really, go and try it.

The chef being an encyclopedia of French cuisine, this venue is also a splendid opportunity to sample some classics. This time we tried a Peach Melba,

exactly as you would expect it: a beautifully poached (white) juicy peach, vanilla icecream and raspberry puree, simple, light, elegant, delicious.

One word for the service. Over time we've seen various people come and go, but we've always felt very well treated by each and every team. The current team is particularly sweet, from the maitre d' down to the last waiter. On this occasion we were also very well advised by a confident, knowledgeable (and also enviably tanned) Sicilian sommelier.

We had three starters (the unpictured one was a gazpacho), two main courses, two desserts, a £32 wine, a £8.50 dessert wine, tap water, and we spent less than £150. How did we do it? Well, there's a fantastic value lunch menu of three courses at £26, and we had one of those. And unless you plump for the reeeeally expensive dishes from the a la carte (Dover sole and Lobster will set you back £40 and more each, but now that we are in Scotland of course we do not need to have expensive seafood in London any more...), the dishes for choice are really not that expensive considering that you are in one of the most luxurious parts of London. The nice, interesting wine list, including carafes and by the glass, also offers wines for all pockets, from cheap bastards like us to Russian tycoons.

As feared, we didn't keep it brief in the end... For us, a meal at Koffman's represents the pure joy of eating simple (mind you, relatively speaking!) dishes prepared by a master. Many say this is bistro style, but it isn't quite that really - there is far more subtlety. His joy in cooking is evident, you can see and taste it, he must have transmitted it to his assistants. Unless you go there looking for 3* food or a revival of La Tante Claire, you too will be joyous, and your palate (if not you coronaries, unless you choose the lighter dishes, as we did...) will say a big thank you.

Home

Craig Millar @ 16 West End (St Monans, Fife): beauty, but flavours?

2011-08-20T08:43:00.003Z

Sometimes good conversation at a restaurant distracts from the pure enjoyment of sublime food. Other times, food needs just that bit of distraction, as, while pleasant enough, it would not be able to stand too severe a critical analysis.

The latter is how we felt while eating with friends at the reincarnation of the old Seafood restaurant in St Monans (the sister restaurant in St Andrews still stands). Reincarnation mainly in name, as the chef, Craig Millar, is the same, and so is the style of cuisine.

The short seafood based menu is appealing. The dishes look good and are well presented, some exceptionally so.

At the taste test, however, the experience was mixed. The gazpacho amouse bouche that kicked off proceedings was delicious (and softer on the palate, as often in the UK, than a 'real' Spanish one); however an intense Thai mussel broth

featured less than ideally plump mussels, and verged on the over-seasoned.

And a very fresh, perfectly cooked and picture perfect stone bass

failed to reach great heights in terms of flavour - the culprit being perhaps the raw material, which we believe was farmed (we didn't ask), or otherwise had lost intensity along the way in some mysterious fashion.

The cooking, too, slightly wobbled at times; as in a risotto with scallops, well below the threshold of underseasoning (something of which we hardly if ever complain, poor sensitive palates that we are),

where the risotto did not really qualify as a risotto, and the scallops, cut and dispersed over the dish in a valiant effort to look as a larger quantity, were on the overcooked side. The truffle slices were close to inedible. Summer truffles, while never sublime like white Alba, can be seriously good - yet these ones had the characteristic cardboard consistency that makes you wonder what the point is of them in a dish, except for having the word 'truffle' on the menu.

A final pannacotta was acceptable to Man as it was at least as wobbly as the cooking and was accompanied by pleasantly acidic and fruity notes, but Woman is much, much harder to satisfy on that front...

The smiling service offered hints of confusion, pressure (YOU ARE NOT HAVING ANY INTERMEDIATE COURSE?), indifference (no questions on how we liked the food), a bill delivered to us unrequested (while a perfunctory 'take your time' was proffered, the hint that at 10.30pm we had overstayed our welcome was obvious), and a second copy of the bill delivered a second time by a different person! We really had to go...

Despite the faults, we cannot say we ate poorly overall. Craig Millar has talent in our view; just look at how beautiful his dishes are and you can perceive the very serious professional as well as the artistic bent of mind behind them. But at £40 for three courses and £45 for four we felt the meal wasn't really good value given the ordinary quality of the produce (the real downfall of the evening), and the lack of generosity in the portions and in the absence of petit fours (with tea and coffee taken by half of the table).

Go for the great view and for acceptably good and pretty food if you fancy it. But in the next village along the coast, Sangster's offers in our opinion far better value, not to mention the best of them all, The Peat Inn, on which a new report is long overdue.

Home

Galvin at Windows (London): a perfect lunch

2011-08-13T17:49:00.006Z

We used to have the '£100 rule', because we maintained it was possible to fine-dine in London for around that figure (for two and with an acceptable wine). Then, defeated by inflation, we gave up. But on a beautiful Summer afternoon, we seem to have gone back in time: the £45 three course lunch at Galvin at Windows, inclusive of water, wine and coffee, took us by surprise with dishes that went well beyond what one expects in such value lunches. Please follow us to the 28th floor of the Hilton on Park Lane.

An amuse of cold clear tomato 'consomme' with peas (and the very attentive service) are immediately striking. Not to mention the all important bread, which - we agreed with an Italian waiter - was excellent (the waiter said it was made in-house, though other sources conflict).

After the amuses, a table by the window becomes free, and although we are sitting at a perfectly nice table 'in the second row', well-spaced from the others, some offers just cannot be refused....(but to stress the point: the room is laid out really nicely, and one can be happy wherever she is seated).

For starters, we had a delicate but flavoursome, dense San Marzano tomato gazpacho (with garlic in Anglosaxon rather than Mediterranean quantity), very fresh. Only the mozzarella did not offer much flavour. And a superb flamed mackerel, one of those simple looking dishes that take your breath away for the precision of the flavours (the side microveggie were stunning).

A duck main dish is elegantly presented and prepared,

a shiny cherry jus supporting the main produce robustly and intriguingly.

But the cooking (in butter) of a cod was out of this world, making it translucent, moist and tender (skin wisely removed). The seasoning was bold. We often complain about dishes being over-salted. This dish is a lesson on the fact that it is not just a matter of sheer quantity of salt, and that much depends on the overall balance. The egg and the chicken jus somehow combined with the cod to provide a strong sensory attack that nonetheless remained, even for us, on the right side of the threshold.

We were looking forward with some trepidation (given our fussines with this specific dessert) to a Tonka bean pannacotta. But the specimen passed muster with flying colours, having achieved a delicious creamy consistency. And for something lighter, the vanilla poached and roasted apricots with apricot cream and pineapple sorbet were sweetly refreshing:

Just like sometimes restaurants can have a night off, sometimes they pull off the perfect meal, when everything feels smooth and there is not one single fault, and a review reduces to a mere sequence of accolades. And even the weather helps.

oh, and this view is the reason why, according to Wikipedia, Her Majesty the Queen objected to the construction of the Hilton Hotel - nobody likes to have her garden overlooked:

Of course, this type of experience does not occur by chance - behind certain results there is immense preparation and fantastic teams both in the front room and in the kitchen. When a restaurant is well organised and there is true leadership, it can work well whether the boss is present or not. On this occasion, the bosses were neither in the front room nor in the kitchen, yet the two great teams obviously included people that one day will be bosses, because they managed to serve a large, quite full room entirely smoothly. Well done, guys.

After the meal, we strolled to our favourite destination after a lunch in Mayfair

We were coming with eyes trained to demand perfection in the dishes, and unforgiving of even the minutest sloppiness. We would like to pay a final tribute to Andre Garret and his team: their dishes met more stringent standards of precise execution than some of the works at the Royal Academy!

Home

Number One (Edinburgh): classic class

2011-08-06T07:52:00.004Z

One of those unending Scottish Summer nights...this one above is the Balmoral in Edinburgh, whose basement restaurant tempts us tonight.

We are soon offered some delicious nibbles, including the often present haggis bon bon (we had the same at Martin Wishart for example) but...what is this? In an otherwise tender and tasty loin of rabbit cylinder Man finds a bone, and a piece of shell will appear in an otherwise perfect amuse bouche of crab with gazpacho and iced melon.

These prep mistakes indicate that something is not settled in the kitchen, and a confirmation of this will come later, with an unusual delay between first and second course. A young Italian waiter comes to us and apologises, and when, curious, we ask him what the problem is he explains 'You know, in Michelin starred restaurants like this one it is normal to apologise if a dish arrives late'. You don't say.

Let us get done with a last complaint: a dish of scallops, while perfectly cooked felt a little ungenerous and somewhat uninspiring, compared to other fantastic scallop dishes we've had in Scotland.

Ok, with these minor faults out of the way, we can state the main character of the evening: it was a real feast of super-produce in classical, balanced, striking dishes.

A Nicoise of rabbit

graciously deconstructed many elements, including a very apt pungent anchovy.

The two mains, a lamb and a beef fillet, could only be commented with screams of pleasure.

The juses do not appear very smooth but they are really elegant and full of flavour, and the depth of the beef and the lamb is memorable. All other components in the dish (sweetbread,...) exhalt its core. Very classical, focussed, rather straightforwardly presented yet stylish cooking.

The dessert section deserves a special mention. There is a chef patissiere of talent here, because both a Baileys cream, coffee granite, caramelised nuts and chocolate croquant and Slow cooked cherries with goat cheese sorbet and fennel and honey mousse were very articulated, well thought out exemplars of the art and science of pastry making.

At the end of the meal the Sommelier (a really charming and professional fellow) comes pushing, with some effort, a giant trolley of dessert wines: 'can I tempt you...'. 'You can certainly tempt us, but we'll not yield to the temptation'. And we retire in the bar area to sip our filter coffees (good) with very good petit fours to conclude a relaxed and very pleasant evening. And not even too heavy on your wallet considering the luxury surroundings: three courses at £62 is one the best values in the Michelin starred firmament in Edinburgh. If you enjoy classical French cuisine with a Scottish slant, definitely recommended.

Home

Roganic (London): interesting but

2011-07-30T07:24:00.011Z

One really wants to love this place. The front of house team (Jonathon, Sandia and the others) are absolutely charming and enthusiastic. They genuinely believe in the project and they genuinely want you to be happy at Roganic, Simon Rogan's (of l'Enclume fame) very recent London opening with Ben Spalding at the helm.

The very fact that it's hard to describe all the dishes one by one demonstrates the complexity and uniqueness of the culinary experience: many ingredients, many unusual ingredients, many original ideas. Many dishes in tiny portions that articulate an itinerary to the special Rogan world. It's partly a forced itinerary though, as you can only choose between a 6 and a 10 course menu (we'll return to this issue at the end).

Some of these ideas strike us as less successful than others. A pear in a spelt dish is described by the waiter as 'caramelised', whereas the menu says 'burnt'. Unfortunately the menu is correct, and we wonder why anybody who hasn't some sort of ideological culinary point to prove would want to spoil a perfectly good, crunchy, delicate, spelt and grains 'risotto' with a hideous bitter burnt taste - perfect, though, if you love free radicals :)

Other dishes were more impressive, like the famous heritage potatoes with onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel where the harmony of flavours and textures reigns supreme.

An amuse of rosemary and chickpea wafer with aioli, chervil and flowers was also extremely well conceived and executed, and the combination of the salty notes of a Kentish mackerel with elderflower honey, and beautiful green vegetables, was delicious and a joy to behold.

But other times the execution was perplexing, like the monkfish with chicken salt and chard, in which the cooking of the fish was not up to what one expects from a kitchen of this level (the fish was unanimously judged dry at the table), and which contained a really excessive amount of salt. Lovely chicken and cockle reduction though (small friendly advice for the waiter: if you don't remember what is in a dish, just say so, don't invent - we had to check again with the boss Jonathon to confirm the composition of the sauce).

We liked our slow cooked hogget, with an accompanying sweetbread adding interest, though a friend at the table found his not as pleasurable as one expects from slow cooked meat.

We again touched highs with a dessert of excellent Sweet ciceley, strawberry, buttermilk and intense verbena and after that a beautiful and very aromatic "fir tree" foam.

The breads are made inhouse, and are good (pumpernickel, spelt, and potato and buttermilk). But the coffees must, must be improved! And the petit four too (rather dry muffin like Victoria sponge).

So ups and downs overall. But this is not so much the point, as some snags within one month of opening are not the end of the world. For us, the main problem was that while we were always interested, intrigued, amused and even educated, and we really rooted for them, we found it hard to fall in love with the whole concept. Perhaps it is the fact that when you have in the dish only a morsel of the main ingredient (and of the accompanying ones) it is difficult to develop a relationship with it. There was a slight sense of evanescence and lack of substance in pretty compositions which, we repeat, provoked in us interest, and pleasure too, but not the wows of the great powerful dishes that stay with you.

This is is obviously a subjective judgement, it's our taste and we know that many food-lovers disagree. Roganic definitely brings novelty to the London food scene, and we are happy to have tried the experience. What a boring world would it be if there weren't people like Rogan around.

But we also wonder if the formula that works at l'Enclume is such a great idea in London. The space here is not one for special occasions, the room small and reverberating noise, with the chairs not too comfy (Woman finding hers positively uncomfortable). How many people want to repeatedly spend three hours for a 10 course meal with no choice? Many people would just like to go to a restaurant after work and be able to choose a few dishes.

We think they are beginning to see the problem here. They started with just the 10 course at dinner, and now they have added a 6 course option (£80 and £55 respectively). They go out of their way to inform you that if you want some changes they'll try to accommodate them (a return with friends at another table was served, we were informed, mostly different dishes from those on the menu). If you become a regular you might even go for a Saturday lunch and have only a couple of dishes. They emphasise that the menu is always different (yet many of our dishes look almost identical to ones we had seen on other reports). They are adamant that they don't want to change who they are and what they stand for; yet they are already changing and we think they will have to change even more. We wish them good luck because, let us say it once again, they are really a great team that deserves success. We won't contribute much to it soon, but we'd like to be back in a year or so, it is a unique place after all.

Home

On Gauthier: a couple more words

2011-07-27T08:44:00.000Z

We wrote quite scathing comments on our last experience at Gauthier. We were angry and disappointed. However, we have now communicated with a very civilised Alexis Gauthier, who apologised but also made us consider certain aspects of what we wrote (and we ourselves considered more). Since not all chefs react in this kind manner to negative comments (how many times have we escaped by skin of our teeth some angry and crazed knife-wielding cook...), we think this reaction goes to his credit and so it is only fair to report it.

Secondly, although we hinted in our review that we had been there other times before with good experiences (otherwise why return?), this was in the long spell when we had interrupted blogging, so we only wrote public reviews on our last and only negative experience. While the report for that bad night is completely accurate, that report alone does not paint a full and balanced picture of our overall experience at Gauthier. We apologise for that.

Third, Gauthier asks us if £35 for three courses is really such a bad deal in London, as we had ranted. Our answer is that no, it is not a bad deal. Although there are indeed some fantastic deals around for excellent cuisine (e.g., not to go too far, Arbutus), prices at Gauthier are perfectly competitive for London. And we add that they happily offer filtered water for free, which is the decent thing to do but is very rarely done. What we meant was that we would not pay for that particular experience.

It might be appropriate to clarify that we always pay for all our meals and we have never had, nor will we ever have until we make public comments, free meals anywhere, be they offered by way of apology or appreciation for regular custom, or else. In particular, to be blunt, we are not writing this because we have been sweetened: if we go back to Gauthier, we'll pay. However we confess to having accepted small attentions every now and then, like any regular customer in any place: Alexis, please prepare some nibbles. :)

To conclude: as we state in our blurb, we respect the professionals we 'criticise'; and who are we to criticise serious professionals anyway? We are not professional critics. We simply aim to report our experiences, the experiences of passionate, normal bill paying customers, and we are always happy to rectify or rebalance our perspective if it seems fair to do so.

Home

Gordon's (Inverkeilor): Always pleasant

2011-07-24T02:23:00.003Z

Very enjoyable lunch at Gordon' s, on the Scottish coast between Dundee and Aberdeen.

In spite of our driving them crazy with our changes of mind (it's four of us, no it's six, there is a vegetarian, no sorry she has turned carnivorous - and by the way do you mind a baby with a pram...), they accommodated us perfectly in their warm dining room.

We were the only guests for the Sunday lunch (simpler menu at lunch but priced fantastically at £28 for three courses and coffee with petit fours) on a frighteningly rainy Summer day (it can get busier in the evenings so book ahead).

Excellent, excellent raw materials like this hake

cooked very sympathetically (hake can get massacred because of its high moisture and needs some skill), resting on deliciously crispy samphire and joyously presented.

And this salmon,

a miniature of deliciousness.

At the end we had some cheeses whose Scottish names we'll never be able to remember (though we do remember they were in perfect conditions and served at proper temperature). But the star was this Valrohna Chocolate parfait:

with vanilla white chocolate ice cream in which the intensity of the flavours was magnified by the wonderful Morello cherries. The chocolate parfait had actually the velvety consistency of the perfect tiramisu' (just to give you the idea) - a great end to the meal.

Once again, lunch at this charming Husband-Wife-Son operation (Son is the Chef) is one of the best ideas you might have if you are at driving distance (for dinner, the higher prices invite comparison with some tough competition, especially if you look in the Fife direction, and while the quality is high, the foodie in you will become just that much more critical - still warmly recommended, though).

Home

Harvey Nichols 4th floor chocolate counter, Edinburgh

2011-07-21T04:22:00.002Z

Everything looked so appealing at first...

A sushi-style belt for sweets and bubblies, what a nice idea.

There's an upmarket feel about this place, sitting on the fourth floor of the Edinburgh Harvey Nichols store on Princes Street.

(you can't actually pick the items by yourself like in a sushi place - here they are for display only).

And a nice view of Edinburgh tops outside, beyond the adjacent Harvey Nichols Restaurant.

Then we notice that the chocolate and pear cake is not made inhouse but by... Bindi? We mean, Bindi, really? Bindi the brand of the "granny's tart" that you find in any bar in Italy? Of the run of the mill tiramisu that any cheap Italian trattoria is sure to have in their display fridge next to the bar counter? That Bindi? In Harvey Nichols Chocolate Lounge? Ooooh, very disappointing.^*

We scale down expectations and orders. And yet this ice-cream

is even worse than our revised expectations. Sickeningly sweet chocolate, artificial flavour. We have to leave part of it - a very rare event for us.

And the better part of this chocolate paste were the industrially made bagels

OK, done it, been there, now we now it: good bye. We regret not having had desserts at the excellent Ondine, where we had lunched on the same day.

^*Woman really couldn't get over the sight of a Bindi cake, so she did a little bit of research. Bindi is now a huge company, exporting all over the world, to what looks like a massive market. It sells itself as a high quality patissiere, but the childhood memories are such that we cannot bring ourselves to try it - mind you, it is not positively bad, it is just your totally ordinary run of the mill mass market dessert stuff. We would have been prepared to try it again, if only we had managed to locate some ingredient list, but alas searching high and low we haven't been able to find it for any of its huge list of products. Quite a different approach from that of these guys...

Home

Ondine, Edinburgh's Seafood Heaven

2011-07-14T07:54:00.000Z

Standing in front of the restaurant, you have the unappealing Missoni hotel restaurant menu just to the right, and a Pizza Express just to the left: it shouldn't be too hard to resist either temptation and instead climb the stairs that lead to the airy, bright, modern room of Ondine, with a display of oysters and its appealing U-shaped bar area in a dominating position, and minimalist but comfortable table setup, the high chair backs a delight for the long Man's back.
Many classics, no longer often seen any more around except in old fashioned venues, are on the menu. A mussle mouclade
that belies the conviction of many Italians that mussles (how plump, tasty, fresh!) don't go with creamy or curried sauces.

And how much more classic can you get than with a Lobster Thermidor^*:
just a shade, but really a shade, overcooked for us, and otherwise extracting murmurs of delight, the fresh herbs not skimped upon providing a pleasant background .

And the same did our Dublin Bay prawns, that came in generous amount and once again top quality, this time with faultless cooking:

It's very simple: if in Edinburgh you are in the mood for seafood, unfussily but competently prepared, served generously, and of top quality, go to Ondine. The service is smooth and the prices are reasonable: £34 for the lobster, same cost as for a mixed crustacean large plate, around £20 for mains such as the Dublin Bay prawns, around £10-12 for starters such as a lovely, ungreasy squid tempura like this

or the mussle dish, or a squid risotto that we want to try next time. Because there will be a next time!

^*Here is how the great man did it (the Sauce creme being a bechamelle with added cream):

Split the lobster in half lengthways, season and gently grill, then remove the flesh from the shell and cut into fairly thick slices on the slant. Place some Sauce Creme finished with a little English mustard in the bottom of the two half shells, replace the slices of lobster neatly on top and coat with the sauce. Glaze lightly in a hot oven or under the salamander. (from Auguste Escoffier "The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery")

Home

Albarino Namorio Rias Baixas

2011-07-12T07:08:00.001Z

And since we are talking about wine...

just another plug for an excellent little Summery white:

very perfumed, fruity of Summer fruits like peaches and apricots, and a touch of clean minerality. Utterly pleasant.

And once again obtained at a kind price in a Scottish restaurant (£21 for a wine that costs you over £10 in the shops), Gordon's - more on our lunch there in due course.

Home

Cloudy Bay Chardonnay 2006

2011-07-10T02:39:00.000Z

If you like wine you must have tried it.

Don't you just love it? We smell and taste citrus, citrus and citrus, that's the easy part, but also other fruits (grapefruit?) and several shades of toasty and oaky notes. It's elegant; it's fresh; it's a pleasure.

And - an additional sweet note - we drank it at Sangster's at an incredibly low markup for a UK restaurant (£37 for a wine that costs £20-25 in the shops).

(Cloudy Bay please contact us to get the address for the cheque.)

Home

Sangster's, Elie (Fife)

2011-07-05T19:23:00.001Z

Charming, small, one-man band, are the words that spring to mind: in the kitchen there's only him, Mr Bruce Sangster. We really mean only him - chopping away, prepping away, sizzling away ... a lonely hero at the stove! He finds it more effort to look after the supposed help ('these youngsters are frightened by the long hours') than help himself. The amazing thing is not so much that he manages to run a kitchen alone, but that he does so at Michelin star level! (Coming from a private corporate cooking background no doubt helps with organisational skills).

Bruce is not only well-organised, but also clearly talented: while relatively simple his dishes always have some intriguing component, with sometimes quite daring and original combinations of flavours.

Among the highlights, the above scallops come with a pungent Thai sauce and (like all other produce we had on the evening ) are top quality.

And this Halibut was cooked just right, so different from out recent experience at Gauthier:
The shellfish jus was for licking!

But most of all we were ravished by this salmon, first marinated and then cooked at low temperature,

where the balance of layered flavours and textures was perfect: acidity from the crispy cauliflower, sweetness from the beetroot and the miso (a recurrent oriental theme).

This is a very logical, solid cuisine; everything in the plate has a function. None of those annoying embellishments in minuscule amounts that contribute zero to taste and that are so often encountered in fine dining places nowadays.

More often than not, it's a one-woman band also in the front of house...very charming service, but be prepared for some waits while other tables are being entertained. Your turn will come...

A three course meal, inclusive of two amuse bouches and a pre-dessert sets you back just £40. As the short wine list is also very well priced, you are in for a treat at Sangster's.

Home

The new Kikuchi: wow!

2011-06-26T21:45:00.017Z

The charming Kikuchi (on which we reported here) has had a facelift! From a slightly old-fashioned room to a slick, contemporary black-dominated environment (and the toilets also are now very stylish, too - pity the makeover did not include any electronic Toto WC :) ).

We found the food as good as ever, the impeccable sushi of course

but also a special of airy tempura

(sucking those prawn heads was a task reserved for Man only, though) and especially a special of grilled fatty tuna ,

a concentrate of plump, oily smokiness.

Just send this all down with some cold, fat, thick noodles:
And we declare an addiction to their aubergine with sweet miso!

Coming just after a disappointing dinner at Gauthier, we found this evening as joyful and relaxing as ever. Out of the media and blogger circus (ehm) Kikuchi is a little gem, a secret which we like to share only with our seven readers. Here you can have a feast for less than £100 for two.

Home

Gauthier Soho: A disappointing experience

2011-06-26T21:24:00.013Z

(Please read also the subsequent commentary here)
At the end of our dinner at Gauthier we were not happy, we were not satisfied, despite the fact that the truffle risotto (above) was luscious and intense as usual (with a £15 supplement it had better be).

This looks like the typical example of a restaurant that is being harmed by its own success. They are trying to fit too many diners in a space that might be charming and lovely, but in this way is rendered cramped and claustrophobic. On that night it was also unbearably noisy.

As a consequence, service suffers. While after so many years together we still enjoy our conversation...we could not ignore the disconcertingly long pauses between courses. Nor the fact that our dirty plates were left on our table for an eternity, just like in a crowded trattoria, much unlike a Michelin starred venue.

And any sauce tends to pool on one side of the plate: the sloping table - due to the sloping floor - that at the beginning of the evening looked rather charming, now adds to the air of decay. Here is an exhibit (veal sweetbread) if you want to exercise with your spirit level

In the past we used to appreciate Gauthier's understated and precise cuisine, but this time the pressure was felt by the kitchen, too. While an amuse of 'buillabasse' was creative and good (with the components of the traditional dish served dry and separate, as little miniatures), and no sloping sauces here,

there were cooking slips, which pinnacled with an overcooked seabass featuring a very unpleasantly soggy skin.

At dinner you can have 3,4, and 5 courses for £35, £45 and £55, respectively. Consider that 5 courses at Gauthier count more or less as three normal courses. Personally, we don't think our experience justifies these prices and when in London we'll be looking elsewhere in the future (beside our eternal Italian favourite which we never fail to visit, of course!).

Home

Martin Wishart: the best in Edinburgh at the mo

2011-06-18T18:53:00.015Z

Martin Wishart, one of three Michelin starred restaurants in the Edinburgh gastro-strip in Leith, is producing at the moment some of the most accomplished cooking in the UK.

Our last two lunches there, last year and a few days ago, were phenomenal. The control and intensity of flavours shone in dishes of remarkable intricacy. As in this very Mediterranean FILLETS OF RED MULLET WITH ISLE OF MULL DIVED SCALLOP with
braised fennel, artichoke, crisp aubergine, confit shallot and tomato vinaigrette

or this Moreish CHAR GRILLED PRESA OF ACORN FED IBERICO PORK with minted peas and runner beans, pop corn of pork skin with a sour cherry sauce

(the one in the back is not a scallop but a potato sublimely crispy on the edges and moist inside).

Wishart has long been an enthusiast for mixing land and sea, and he succeeds spectacularly, like in this breathtaking starter of LANGOUSTINE TORTELLINI AND PIGS TROTTER with Soubise spinach and langoustine cappuccino.

in which the powerful flavours were resting against each each other with monumental grace. Or like in this more ethereal
LOCH FYNE CRAB “MARIE ROSE” AND VEAL TARTARE with white radish and Basque pepper

which however presented the interesting geometrical problem of how to remove one stick without destroying the rest of the structure.

At the start of our meal, we were intrigued by an amuse bouche of scallop with ink, that harked back to, and yet was so different from, a Pierre Koffman's classic that we love.

While in Koffman's version the play is all netween sweet and salty, here there is also an exciting acidic dimension generated by the foam of ??? - well, wish we could remember, surely there was some vinegar.

Everything is frighteningly meticulous here, including the service. When we were taking one of the photos, a waiter anxiously sprinted towards us begging us to let him fill our glass (which we had declined a minute before) because 'it would look like a service error'!

The only other frightening aspect here are the prices of water (£5.50 for 0.75 l), of coffee & petit four (£6), and the steep markups on wine (around here however you'll not be frowned upon if you ask for a jug of tap water). However, since you can have what is essentially a full 2* meal for £65 (or a tasting menu at £70, or £60 at luch for a slightly reduced one), with top raw material prepared at the highest level of fine cuisine, it's a fright one easily gets over.

Home

Piazza Duomo (Alba)

2011-06-04T17:20:00.010Z

We started with this:

and ended with this:

Not your usual salad, not your usual pannacotta...

For these are Enrico Crippa's interpretations of these humble dishes in his restaurant, Piazza Duomo in Alba.

They taste as good as they look. What was in between was equally, in fact even more, ravishing, in a spectacular 'traditional' tasting menu (there is also a more innovative one) which elaborates with great imagination, precision and a touch of magic on some classic Piemonte flavours and dishes.

Here are the traditional Agnolotti:

Prices are at the lower end of what you'd expect from a 2* restaurant currently producing, with a couple of others, the very best of Italian cuisine.

Crippa is assisted by a very capable and lovable front of house team. The wine list offers a long, truly excellent selection at all prices, even ones so low that such numbers simply do not not appear in London restaurants...We know, as we asked the sommelier to guide us on some wine around the 100 euro mark to match the food. But, to our surprise when we got the bill, we think he misunderstood 100 with 30 - or he just decided on the basis of our modest appearance that we could not afford an expensive wine...

It can be a great drinking, as well as eating, experience at Piazza Duomo (markups are generally well below 100% except for the very bottom of the list). We were moved indeed by this lunch.

PS: sorry for the long absence. Under time pressure, we stopped blogging, and mostly even taking photographs in restaurants. But we intend to come back with some suitably 'downsized' reports such as this one!

Gelateria da Bepi

2010-05-02T15:10:00.010Z

It must be the best ice cream in the world

First of all, a look from outside:

Inside, generations two and three of truly passionate ice-cream makers, with their ware lovingly displayed:

It all started some fifty years ago (well, 70 if you count when the family started making ice-creams). Here is a picture of yesterdays:

The fifteen vans are long gone, but the passion is very much still here, together with memorabilia from the past.

Here icecream is made every day. Leftovers are just thrown away – a waste, you might argue, but with no freezers to speak of, it might be environmentally friendly after all – and under the very strong assumption that there is any left over.

The business concept couldn’t be simpler: genuine ingredients and a lot of passion. Fullstop.

The list of ingredients is very short: granulated sugar, longlife milk, and carob seed flour (an ancient firming agent – carob is common in Sicily, where we like to think that icecream reached perfection). The rest, the freshest fruit, so that the icecream you’ll find depends on what was fresh at the market that morning.

Most of the space in the lab is taken by the daily supplies of fruit and vegetables. And then you have the vanilla pods, the cocoa, walnuts, pistachio nuts, you name it, they have it. The icecream is made in these three machines every afternoon, ready to start serving from 7pm until 1 in the morning:

The machine on the left is still the one Bepi used. And all three of them use a technology no longer employed, as it is more expensive as it takes longer for icecream to be ready,and there is no automatic spout, but here they assure us the slower process adds to the quality of the finished product - the machine in action is in the video below.

With no added colorings, flavourings, bases nor other tricks, your pistachio ice cream will not have the green emerald colour you are used to:

From left to right and top to bottom: stracciatella (cream and chocolate bits) on pistachio, and almonds on blood orange – terrific. If you wonder about the plastic cup: it was on the boss’ order, ‘you must see what you are eating’. And the flavour is one you have hardly ever found in icecream.

Next time you are in Padova, this is a must!

Home

Trattoria Le Cave (Padova)

2010-03-31T19:33:00.021Z

The day: 19 March 2010, Dinner.

The place: Via delle Cave 51, Padova, Italy

The venue: Trattoria Le Cave

The food: Unreconstructed Seafood Italian

The drinks: Simple but interesting wine list

We discover it in the most serendipitous of ways. We are in Padova for work, living in a completely nondescript neighborghood at the edge of the city. A walk around reveals this very simple looking but, to us, mysteriously enticing venue specialising in seafood. We reason that in an off-neighborhood like this, either they kill their customers with bad fish or they satisfy them to induce them to spread the word to non-residents, and to come back themselves.

And indeed, this is one of those stereotypical Italian restaurants of which unfortunately one sees less and less around: a cuisine based on immaculate ingredients simply but correctly cooked (as opposed to the more frequent category: mediocre ingredients pretentiously and/or faultily cooked). A trattoria, if you will, but one in which (unlike in more chic places) your are seated at a table with a proper tablecloth.

No menu, just the manager standing at the table and asking us what we'd like. Normally this would put us off, but as we said, this place strangely inspires confidence - and to be fair there is a menu outside the restaurant, and after a quick scan we had decided it looked honest. So we ask our attentive manager to prepare a mixed starter of raw and cooked seafood.

'Do you want to go the whole hog? Because I warn you: if you do, you won't have space for anything else'
'Well, no, we want to have space left for a grilled fish afterwards'
'OK, I'll take something out then, leave it with me'.

While we wait we munch some complimentary vegetables accompanied by a nice home-made mustard vinaigrette

From then on it was a real feast for the seafood lover. From tuna and swordfish carpaccio

(with good olive oil!).

Raw langoustines (stunning):

Raw local scallop (you can tell you are not in a fine dining restaurant here...but actually the coral which you don't usually get served is pleasant and, less sweet than the rest, it creates an interesting contrast)

We had also asked for a local speciality, the 'granseola' (crab):

and, while we are used to our great local Anstruther crabs, we must say this was a true delicacy. Very different and more 'dramatic' in shape, too, as you can see. For those of you with a naturalistic interest, here's a look at the picturesque back:

And the cooked part begins...

all super-fresh and nicely cooked, no hint of that rubberiness which is the most dreaded feature for this type of item.

And this, this dish of grilled cannolicchi (razor clams) and "mini scallops" (we forgot to note down the local name) was a stunner:

And we finish the 'starter' (ehm) with a cooked scallop each:

At this point we supposedly had space left for a grilled seabass, with a couple of grilled squids thrown in for good measure:

Thebass was ever so slightly overcooked but very fragrant, pleasant. The squids just perfect. It was accompanied by unadvertised roast potatoes

which while not helping our waistline surely did appeal to our tastebuds. Oh, yes, they did.

We did not have space for dessert, but we were offered one of several home-produced digestives (we opted for a delicious liquorice based one).

And here goes another old fashioned classic, talcum powder, viava' and a good brush, the indespensable tools to remove whatever juice or sauce has unfailingly found the way onto your shirt...

All in all, a very good, straight seafood triumph. It does not come cheap (€165 inclusive of a mid-priced and reasonably priced wine), but good fish never does.

And what you get here is that generosity, welcoming hospitality and straigth honesty that alas is no longer as common as it used to be. How many restaurateurs can you imagine offering you so much fish that you won't have room for the more remunerative desserts?

It was obvious from the word go that our delightful host was there to make sure we went out happy: and we sure did.

Don't come here if you don't like seafood because it is literally all they do: but if you do, do!

Home

Tortel di patate

2010-03-21T16:58:00.014Z

Tortel di patate is a traditional dish from Trentino, a 'potato cake' made with grated potatoes which provides a carbohydrate base to accompany the main dish. There are many versions: those that add flour to the grated potatoes, those that add eggs, those that cook it in the oven, those that cook it in the pan, those that make it thick, those that make it thin.

We tried a modern, very light, very thin and almost greaseless interpretation at our Trentino fave Osteria Fior di Roccia. The purist take is: potatoes. The right potatoes, of course, so that once grated they will produce enough starch to keep the grated mass together, but not so much as to make a gluey mess. Good potatoes, very little oil to sear the cake in the pan, and a lot of skill. Full stop.

Here is the result:

Now, what more could you want?

The main character first:

which on this occasion we try with venison stew and the stunner of the dish, 'marmellata di corniole' (cornelian cherry jam):

The trio, the starchy-sweet and ever so slightly burnt potatoes, the acidic corniole, and the unctuous, dense and gamey venison, are one of those perfect combinations one only occasionally encounters in gastronomy. Pure delight.

And fun, preparing each tortino slice with the desired proportions!

All accompanied by a remarkable little wine:

From a local producer, a blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, jammy and dense due to a proportion of dried grapes, balanced, with some elegance and interesting, unusual flavours.

Home

Hirschen Oberkirch (Luzern, Switzerland)

2010-03-14T10:10:00.001Z

It's around Luzern but you don't want to travel there, so no details.

After our gastronomically undistinguished boat trip from the North of England to Amsterdam and another sandwich-fuelled few hundred mile drive to Switzerland, en route to Italy, we are looking forward to a gastronomic break at a place recommended by the Jeunes Restaurateurs d'Europe association.

They promote 'passion and talent', so our expectations are high.

And it's also part of the 'Hirschen' brand which we recently extolled...

The rustic small room, behind a bar area, is promising.

Then we look at the scandalous bread (of the supermarket slice variety), we have a moment of doubt, but we resume the optimistic mood. It's Sunday night, after all.

An amuse also appears:

Boiled veal marinated in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Simple, slightly 'thrown on the plate', but at least pleasant. We keep being optimistic.

We are looking mesmerised at the dense menu in German, resigned, given the language wall between us and the waitress, to order food at random.

But then suddenly the chef appears (we recognise him from the JRE website photo), even though dressed in 'civilian clothes', says hello in English, and sits decisevely at our table.

He asks us what we want to eat. What do you recommend? He asks if we want traditional or gourmet. In unison: gourmet. How many dishes? We have been sitting all day, not many, just two, three. And yes, sure, we want dessert. You have free hand, chef, just cook for us what you want!

So what you are going to see is the absolute best this cuisine is capable of producing.

Dish number 1:

It's a pan-fried Zander fish (pike-perch) with celery, wild rice and peppers. Ok, the fish is fresh, and it is also cooked well, but...is this a 'gourmet dish'? The artless cheesy pool and the little mountain of naked (and steamed) celery bits tell the tale, we think.

We begin to notice that not only does the chef not wear chef clothes, he is also never in the kitchen, just chatting at the bar. We had also noticed that he was not sure what amuse bouche we had been given.

In other words, we begin to notice that the chef, assuming he is a chef, doesn't give a shit.

Dish number two:

It's roast lamb with potatoes and greens, a very young and smiley cook emerging from the kitchen announces in Italian. The lamb is of good quality, slightly tough, the sauce not very intense. It's an unambitious dish which however is not throughly unplesant to eat. The vegetables are just boiled vegetables, with a watery taste. The potatoes fare better, but to be frank the hurdle was not that high...

At this point we are regretting asking for the dessert. And we are getting more and more edgy, as this dessert is taking quite a while. Uh, but what is that, the young cook now leaves the kitchen. Uhm... We ask the waitress whethere there is any more coming. She checks with the 'chef' (c'mon, be serious), and she comes back that no, that's it. Just to remind you: we had given free hand to the chef, and we had asked for a dessert.

The dessert never came.

A very modest dinner by the advertised 'gourmet' standards. No talent and even less passion, so we just do not understand how the JRE association can endorse this venue.

One thing which wasn't modest was the price. Including a Swiss red wine at 59 CHF (a blend of Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noire, Gamay recommended by the 'chef' which was the one bright spot of the evening) and a tiny mineral water at CHF 6.5, we paid CHF 195.50. That's over £120, totally ridiculous for a 2 course dinner of this modest quality.

The JRE should be ashamed of themselves.

Home

The boat rocks...

2010-03-10T09:50:00.001Z

Wafer thin cabin walls that make it impossible to ignnore the clumsy love making of the impetuous adolescent couple on the right, or the engrossing middle of the night discussion on the virtues of multi sotrey car parks in Amsterdam from the two blokes on the left. A sport bar with a lonely customer staring into emptyness, his clutching hand warming the beer. The nightclub? Just sad...

So our expectations upon entering the "Seven seas Restaurant" of the Newcastle to Amsterdam boat, grandly named the Queen of Scandinavia (or was it the Princess of Sweden?), on an "all you can eat buffet basis couldn't be lower. And yet:

an attractive bread display

An unexpected shellfish counter

various passable salads

a very wide selection of fish-based finger food bites, a carvery counter, plenty of dessert counters, cheese and biscuits:

£25 per head if you book before you board. It's not gourmet food, let's be clear, just edible and pleasantly presented material: but, if you really have to go, it must be the best thing within the confines of the boat!

Eating well in Germany

2010-03-05T16:46:00.011Z

Yes, eating well in Germany happens easily. A couple of years ago we sampled fine cuisine and had a wonderful experience in Bad Mergentheim.

Then last year and this one we found ourselves spending a few cold February days days for work in a small town in Bavaria, Parsberg (located between Regensburg and Nuremberg).

Where you can't miss the Hirschen Hotel

which not only is spoilingly comfortable and relaxing but, even more crucially for us, serves warmly satisfying Bavarian home cooking.

They do their own butchering - you can see their butcher and delicatessen shop on the left of the entrance - and even brew their own beer.

We are not great beer appreciators but we must say that on this occasion, in this below zero temperature, with this food, a few litres of sweetish, dense Weizenbier (beer with malted wheat - more than 50%) went through us very pleasantly.

There were, of course, the unmissable sausages and krauts and potatoes

everything of high quality, the veggies and the meat, and cooked as they ought to be cooked.

But also other items on the menu

Grandma serves the succulent pork, kartoffel and krauts from a tray:

She tells you you must absolutely try the beautiful sauce (at least this is what we think she said, as we don't speak a word of German):

and whatever she said it was indeed intense, not too heavy and ideal to elevate the rest of the very good ingredients.

We said it was below zero, we needed calories to survive, so what better to finish than homemade apple fritters?

(the compoted berries, plums and assorted fruit were also top notch).

It's so beautiful to eat traditional food cooked simply and properly and with care in the choice of materials, with flavours that tell a story and go far back in time.

There's also great generosity at Hirschen, we haven't told you about the enormous variety and quantities of pickles, nuts, seeds, jams, charcuterie, cheeses and of the wonderful teutonic breads, all available to the guest who goes for the buffet lunch or dinner or who takes breakfast.

Even coffee was almost OK: what more can we say?

Tomino at Latium, and much more

2010-02-26T15:41:00.003Z

This was a personal 'amuse bouche' before the many delicious dishes we enjoyed recently at our London fave Latium

It's a 'tomino' resting on wild mushrooms trifolati (i.e. sauteed), with pancetta and Norcia black truffle. Tomino is a delicate tasting cheese from Piemonte. It marries joyously with the saltiness of the pancetta and the notes of the noble products from the earth.

These simple delicacies of Italian cuisine are all about ingredients, all about balance: stuff always in plenty of supply at Latium.

That night we were showered with truffles...look at these tagliolini

...and here's one of the great Italian classics:

Ossobuco, in this interpretation beautifully presented in its own sauce, polenta and baby onions, the potent flavour invading your palate as the meat gently yields (the ossobuco is from Cumbria), before you finally tuck into the luscious bone marrow - pure pleasure!

A Herdwick lamb

was paired with perfectly cooked artichokes of metallic intensity, an Anglo-Italian culinary marriage made in Heaven.

And, finally, even Man who lacks a sweet tooth just goes crazy for Morelli's baba' with Zabaione, Pistachio ice cream and hazelnuts

with the full interplay of all the consistencies you might want, from the crunchy hazelnuts in their liquid sauce, souped up by the beautifully springy and spongy baba', drowned in creamy zabaione and topped with a seriously good pistachio ice cream

And what about his Red wine poached pear, water chocolate mousse and almond buscuit.

only apparently more restrained than the Baba': distinctly clean notes in the deep chocolate mousse, the wine soaked pear cooked to the exactly right consistency, with the almond biscuit adding the third texture and rounding all off.

We are always so happy at Latium - Morelli's dishes are simply good and win hands down on so many of the more elaborate, sometimes pretentious and always pricier offerings in the capital. In its category, Latium is just unbeatable.

Home

The end of fine dining in Trentino?

2010-02-23T04:26:00.001Z

The new year has wreaked havoc in the Trento fine dining scene, with three chefs, all previously starred, having to leave their restaurants.

No more fine dining (and local cuisine instead) at Chiesa. Chef Peter Brunel is going (not clear whether entirely of his own will) and more tradionally oriented young local chefs are coming in.

And the even finer chef Markus Baumgartner was sacked by the owners of Maso Franch, also making space for more traditional cuisine.

And there are rumours circling the other starred venue Lo Scrigno as well.

But, more tragically for us, the Lunelli family (producers of the Ferrari bubbly and Surgiva water) has said goodbye to Walter Miori (and his wife Franca) of Locanda Margon. With great elegance, they informed the press before the chef and the staff, who were the last to know. A nice world, indeed.

At least we now suspect we understand the otherwise inexplicable loss of the star by Miori after fourteen years - could it be by chance the case that the Lunelli have quietly whispered to Michelin about the impending sacking of the chef, in order to spare the the embarrassment of awarding a star to a no longer resident chef? How malicious we are.

We are fond lovers of Trentino's regional delights (think of the Osteria or the 2 Camini) but this debacle of fine dining is worrying and puzzling: why are people willing to spend hundreds of euros on frivolous gadgets but not on the noble culinary products of artisan skill and research?

Time will tell whether this is a local phenomenon (perhaps the Trentini are just too much in love their Lucanica susages and their 'carne salada', to the detriment of other delights), or just the beginning of a general trend in Italy towards traditional, more 'popular' and lower budget cusine.