Wallace Restaurant at the Wallace Collection

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

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

 (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

Koffmann's (London)

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

The new Kikuchi: wow!

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

The Peat Inn

The day: Wednesday 27th January, Dinner.

The place: Peat Inn, Fife (Scotland)

The venue: The Peat inn

The food: Modern Scottish French

The drinks: Impressive, well constructed list

When the worst thing you can find to say about a restaurant is that they should have a larger parking lot, it means either that your critical faculties have sclerotised together with your arteries after too much foie gras, or that the place is really good…

In the middle of Fife, among pastures and fields of Brussel sprouts and potatotes, there’s this newly starred Inn led by Chef Geoffrey Smeddle - where you can also stay the night should you have indulged in a whiskey too many and lack the will to deal with the straight-angled turns of the narrow unlit countryside lanes and crossing deers.

You mull the menu sitting comfortably by the fireplace in the ante-room, and nibbling the first greeting from the chef:

Besides olives and nuts, it’s a smoked mackerel mousse on new potato. Amusing and intense.

After that, you are accompanied to one of the three warm, countryside elegant rooms

OK, after the parking lot, let us also say that the bread they serve at the Peat Inn (from a tray) has good intentions and looks, but doesn’t achieve the pinnacles of the art in terms of consistency. Forgiven, as we know we are too fussy about bread.

The amuse bouche proper,

A simple, almost spartan, parsnip and almond veloute’, is a delightful interlude that wants you to forget the canapes and prepares your mouth for what is to come: it serves its purpose exactly and does not aim at exhibiting any cheffy muscle. The scarce seasoning sets the tone, a lack of saltiness which we very much appreciate, and that we find is a feature of chefs with very sensitive palates.

And here we go. Several stunners await us, the best of which, a bisque, we showcase later. This pigeon salad

Warm salad of wood pigeon, apple and fennel, with prune and Armagnac puree

features a pigeon which is still partly alive, as you can see, and deliciously moist and tender, accompanied by a perfectly judged and punchy Armagnac and plum sauce, making a clean, fresh tasting, colourfully presented, cold dish.

We didn’t know that a hare could be cooked so well:

Roast loin and braised shoulder of hare, chestnuts, pancetta, roasted Jerusalem artichoke and sauce salmis.

There’s a double story in this complex dish, the noble, moist, tender, delicate loin, just falling apart, and the humbler, but powerfully flavoured shoulder. There are in fact many stories here, stories for example of multiple textures, not only in the meat but also in the crispy vegetables, and the chestnuts, and the sweet garlic, and more, in a criss cross of flavours. All magnificently carried by the salmis sauce (and by a great technique!), this was a very close contest for our ‘the high’ section below.

The desserts were no less memorable:

Delice of Amedei chocolate with rum’n’raisin icecream.

Really clever: you tuck in, and a perfectly liquid fondant comes out of this cold and perfectly formed chocolate cake: how is that possible? This is also quite a technical accomplishment. It turns out the 'cake' is a very dense mousse, not cooked but put in the mould to set, into which a rhum, cocoa and syrup 'cream' is inserted after opening and then closing a section. How the 'fondant' is not absorbed into the mousse is a mistery. And apart from the admiration for the total precision in this delicate operation, what ultimately counts is that it’s really a ‘delice’: what great chocolate! And what inebriating ice-cream (remember, we are as stern as with the bread on this front…).

Vanilla and almond rice pudding, caramelised pear sorbet and winter fruit compote

The compote is poured at your table from a pot (not the top performance by a waiter on this occasion :)). Nice textures, concentrated flavours supporting each other beautifully, in a kind of refined/rustic combination.

The low (naah, not really)

It was a very relative low, amid such peaks – but having to pick one, we would name one of our mains, the

John Dory, potato galette, pearl onions, savoy cabbage, champagne beurre blanc

It feels strange talking about low with such a magnificently fresh and perfectly cooked fish, with such accomplished condiments and garnishes, and amid multilayered flavours that delighted our palates. The problem for us was that the dish felt a little unbalanced, really too rich, not quite matching either in finesse or in presentation or in light-handedness all the others (your fault for setting such heavenly standards, chef!).

The high

Langoustine bisque, ricotta gnocchi, poached langoustines, and scallop tartare

What to say, when there’s a perfect dish it’s just a perfect dish. Lots of work behind it, many fine judgements, and a final product of total balance and apparent simplicity: the chunky tartared scallops, offering pleasurable chewability, the absolute intensity of the soup, with a hint of lemony and alcoholic sort of sharpness and an airy yet bodily consistency, the milky lusciousness of the ricotta, the freshness of it all, this is a dish of true finesse (for those of you who are curious, the ricotta comes from... Scotland!).

The Service

Truly excellent. Friendly and professional from everybody, with (we believe) wife Katherine's in control. The charming and unassuming head waiter advised us really well on wine, demonstrating a deep knowledge of the extensive and carefully constructed wine list.

The price

With a Loire Cabernet Franc at £30 or so, a coffee and free Scottish water carafe, this three course meal for two (+amuses) cost less than £120 (starters all around £12, mains £20+, desserts £9). A fair price even just considering the quality and quantity of the materials. And there is a set dinner menu at a very enticing £32, plus the 6 course tasting menu at £55. A pity we don't have time to go for lunch, as it is a total bargain at £16 for 3 courses!

Conclusion

That night, the meal conclusion summed up the cuisine style: champagne truffles and orange and honey Madeleines to scream about: few unassuming looking pieces, but the airiness of those madeleins, the flavours!

You know, those places where you eat well but where you don’t quite feel at home? Where you feel the staff is just going through the motions needed to get or maintain their Michelin star(s), but where there is a general sense of coldness, in the dishes and in the room? Well, the Peat Inn is the exact opposite. It’s a restaurant where, as soon as you enter, you feel treated like at home, generously, where calmness reigns and you forget any pressure in the world.

And, even more importantly, where you eat bloody well! At the Peat Inn we’ve always enjoyed refined, technical, studied and meticulous but substantial dishes, founded on great raw materials, a cuisine that it is hard not to like from whichever angle you judge it. The Chef says: ‘the perfect dish for me is one with a lot of work behind it, but which looks simple to the customer’. He succeeds. We love his elegant touches and his restraint. Try it.

Home

Gordon's

The day: Sunday 24^th January 2010, Lunch.

The place: Inverkeilor by Arbroath, Main Street

The venue: Gordon’s

The food: Modern Scottish French

The drinks: Wallet-friendly list

Lunan Bay is a well-known tourist spot on the Scottish East coast, between Dundee and Aberdeen. As you can see the Main Street of the nearby village of Inverkeilor is buzzing with activity this Sunday afternoon:

Off the deserted street, inside we cannot fail to notice we are the only two customers. But the atmosphere feels immediately warm thanks to Ms. Watson, who takes care of front room in this totally charming husband-wife-son 25 cover operation. Husband and son are jointly at the stove. The previous night was busier, we are told.

We had gone without any particular expectation, just wanting to tread beyond Dundee (which we’d never done) along the coast, to see the Angus region, to sample the famous Arbroath smokie, and – why not? - to try this venue. And we came out happy we had discovered another little gem in Scotland.

The room reminds us, for its warmth, exposed beams, fireplace, of some places in Trentino-Alto Adige.

There’s no amuse bouche, but there’s a really notable home-made bread, our favourite incipit:

Observe the variety: it’s three totally different types, milk bread, focaccia, and walnut. And it’s a basket! And it is not even an Italian restaurant! Lovely.

The bread soon becomes useful to accompany one of our starters,

Roast red pepper soup, plum tomato, balsamic crème fraiche soup

a cheerful, vibrantly coloured, intensely flavoured but light beginning.

If this is taunting, the other starter is a real knock-out

Parfait of Foie Gras and chicken liver with grape chutney and toasted brioche

Now this begins to be serious cooking indeed. The chicken liver, in that proportion, is inspired and really adds a dimension to the foie gras in this cleanly presented dish. Pleasant sweet acidity from the grape chutney, all suffused by an incredibly intense mushroom smell (unadvertised!).

With this dish we begin to fly. A duck will airlift us to heaven – more on that later, but check out this offering from the North sea

Pan-fried fillet of North sea hake with creamed greens, butternut squash and sauce Grenobloise

Cooked superbly by somebody who clearly knows how to treat fish, aptly garnished with capers, as beautifully tiny as intense, sitting on a bed of (for us) slightly too creamy – given the rest of the fats in the dish - but refinedly cut veggies. We are extreme in searching lightness, but to our taste this would have been perfect had it been slightly lighter.

Our meal is pleasantly interspersed by interesting and charming conversation with Ms Watson on the world of food, restaurants and critics. While we talk comes dessert time:

White chocolate and mango iced parfait with pineapple compote and orange crisp

Mango and white chocolate are a very good idea – but once again it’s all a matter of proportions: here the mango is just in the right amount to pierce into that chocolate richness.

On the other side of the table, in the meanwhile…

Cheeses: Strathdon blue, Blackwax Cheddar, Crowdie, Grimbister, Morangie.

What a wonderful assortment of cow milk flavours, redolent of peasant history and tradition. Man enthusiastically gobbled up even the blackwax (no discernible consequences – the Burgundy had finished him off anyway). And the beautiful oatcakes, in a crisper and a softer version. Great.

With our menu are included also coffee and petit four, which we forgot to take a photo of. Pity, as they looked beautiful.

The coffee is good (these guys really do things properly) and the petit impressive: cassis chocolate, hazelnut chocolate, vanilla tablet.

The high: the duck that flew us to heaven

Roast breast and noisette comfit shoulder of Gressingham duck with purple cabbage , white bean cassoulet and Pinot noir jus

Yes the duck was good and perfectly cooked, tender, tasty. Yes the ‘shoulder’ comfit was in a pot of treasure, enclosing the most concentrated flavours, with the rustic bean cassoulet. Yes that braised cabbage in the winey sauce was powerful…. But we were mesmerised by an unadvertised unusual sweet spice and slightly pungent flavour… it’s a vanilla and parsnip cream – fantastic! It lent magic to this multidimensional ensemble.

The low - not really

Hard to say. This is a Michelin star level experience (in our judgement, not Michelin’s), but one shouldn’t expect the paraphernalia of service and cellar and imposing cheese trolley that are often associated with that. It’s more rustic, it preserves a family cooking atmosphere. If you are fine with that, as we were, there are no lows.

The service

Well, Mrs Watson wasn’t put too much under strain on that day, but we imagine that even with a full 25 cover room she’d continue to be the charming host that she was with us.

The price

The three course lunch (plus coffe and petits) is great value at £27. We drank a good Burgundy for a bit over £30. At dinner you get a fuller treatment (though this one was generous enough for us!) for a significantly steeper £44.

Conclusion

Quite an amazing little restaurant, where everything, including the basic conception of the cuisine, is rustic, but with dishes burning with ambition (we like to think from the son, tempered by fatherly wisdom), and showing off accuracy, confidence, integrity, and inspired touches of creativity.

If you want to try something other than the usual suspects in Scotland, this a place where to go.

Home