Lunch(es) at The Ledbury: from excellent to better

(Visited July and August 2012)

The world hardly needs, let alone from us, an additional review of The Ledbury and Brett Graham, a restaurant and a chef that have (justly) received so much attention and accolades already. So here's just a memory, a celebration, of two great meals, ten days apart, that we had there in the Summer.

The first meal was chosen by us a la carte and was entirely fish (well, not the desserts), while the second was put together by the chef and focussed on meat. The dishes here look like the room and feel like the atmosphere, both elegant and unstuffy.




Here they like (for several dishes) the theatre of bringing the just cooked produce at your table before plating, like these roast scallops:



Already these whole chunky beasts on their seaweed bed would have been just fine as they were...But we are not in a barn, what do you think, so you get elegant plating and lovely brassicas as a bonus



Lobster with fennel and elderflower really tickles and surprises as a combination and is poetic to look at:



 The cooking of this salmon was just exemplary, dare we say maybe not supported by the flavour of the salmon, perhaps its quality high but not as stellar as that of the scallops



 By the way, the famous flame grilled mackerel (no picture due to the excess of them on the web) is really as simple as it looks, as good as they say, and a piece of genius as you hope. You cannot not try it.

This fish meal pleased us, made us feel good and happy with the world as an excellent meal should, it made us admire the chef's marvellous skills, but for some reason -probably more to do with us than with the dishes- it did not take our breath away, which is rationally inexplicable by looking back at these dishes.

But the meat meal did it. It almost made us switch to Tripadvisor mode and scream ohmygod this was the best meal of my life...

Seriously, the best or not, and what does the best mean anyway, it had that rare kind of consistently stunning quality and inexorable culinary logic.

Of all the delicacies above, genius is perhaps most apparent in one of the simplest, the fine green beans with powder of foie gras (i.e. frozen and grated), white peach and raw almonds. This is essentially a vegetarian dish with a non-vegetarian garnish. In this 'inversion' lies the greatness of this most suave offering.

Meat lovers will be happy too (excellent the pigeon with cherries) and so those with a sweet tooth: both the chocolate pave' with milk puree' and lovage ice cream, and the brown sugar tart with poached grapes and ginger ice cream looked and were memorable, a triumph of flavour balance.

Service here adds another gear to the already impressive machine that the Ledbury is. Really great and hard working professionals in the front room, with an evident degree of autonomy and capacity for initiative, a well drilled, well oiled, and pleasant team (Sam was in charge on both days, what a nice chap).

Not only were we happy because Graham attains extraordinary combinations of flavours while avoiding any infantile ostentation of techniques and 'molecularity'- the technique is all there, but it is at the service of the dish, it's behind it, it's not the dish: this is what we call mature cooking (in this, we were reminded of L20 in Chicago). We were happy also because this is 2* Michelin eating for the modern era: what a satisfaction to eat in a place whose every aspect, from service to cuisine, is at the pinnacle and yet does not subject you to tedious formalisms, conventions, obligations: hurray!

(Note: the photos are unedited, 'straight from the table', and AS ALWAYS, unlike some fellow bloggers, we paid for these meal)

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

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.


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