Room at the top
THREE weeks ago a carrot was listed as a dish on the Oak Room menu - but this being the sumptuous dining room at London's Le Méridien hotel in Piccadilly, where Marco Pierre White once created three-star dinners, it was no ordinary carrot.
Braised slowly in carrot juice and spices until soft and sweet prior to pan-frying, with a scooped-out middle filled with foie gras, and simply called "the carrot", the intriguing dish is one of the latest creations of Robert Reid, the chef who has been running the Oak Room kitchen since White gave up his three Michelin stars 10 months ago after announcing that he was leaving the kitchen to concentrate on expanding business interests.
"When I made this dish, all I wanted to do was turn round and say to Marco, ‘Hey, look at this.' But he's not here," confesses Reid. He felt the same way about the poached egg with tomato and basil that appears on the two-course set lunch menu - a dish that Reid first cooked in France, but which he has since refined for the Oak Room. It's simple: a very lightly poached egg on a fresh tomato concassé covered with a celeriac cream and decorated with tiny dots of roasted red pepper and caviare - and Reid is undoubtedly pleased with it.
But he's unsure if his customers will like it, too; and, although he and White still speak regularly, Reid clearly misses input from his former boss. This despite the fact that Reid has been the Oak Room's chef de cuisine since the beginning of White's tenure there in 1997. That's not to say he doesn't relish running the show. "I respect the person [whose opinion] I used to ask, but I now have a degree of freedom," he says.
However, Reid is not about to alter things radically. He has been cooking at three-star standard day-in, day-out for a long time (see panel). He knows which food works in a top restaurant, even though he took little of the acclaim that was heaped on White as the latter rose through the culinary ranks to become the youngest British chef ever to receive three Michelin stars, score top marks in the other main restaurant guides year after year and be voted, recently, Chef of the Decade by the AA.
Simple on the plate
Reid's respect for White, for whom he worked since 1995 (see panel, page 58), is evident in the fact that the Oak Room's menu is still full of classic White dishes - dishes such as the grilled lobster with herbs and garlic and béarnaise mousseline; or fillet of Aberdeen Angus à la ficelle with sauce remoulade (both very simple on the plate, a key part of the Marco legacy, says Reid).
Braised pig's trotter "Pierre Koffmann" with pomme purée and essence of morille; Bresse pigeon with thyme, braised cabbage and petit pain of foie gras; and, particular White favourites - ballottine of salmon with herbs and salad of crayfish with wild sorrel and caviare; and the caramelised pineapple with vanilla and spices and glace fromage blanc - are essential elements, too, says Reid.
"This restaurant is Marco's restaurant, and there will be dishes that are favourites of his that will stay on. I don't think there is a real difference between a Marco dish and one of mine. All I've done is taken what I've learnt from him and others and put it together, like a puzzle."
However, over the past few months, Reid has slipped some of his own dishes on to the menu. The gigot of Pauillac lamb printaniäre and jus gras with herbs; the fillet of sole with langoustines and sea scallops, embeurré of cabbage and jus de nage; and the grilled sea bass with fennel and beurre noisette, served on the bone.
Extraordinarily, for someone who's been cooking at such a high standard for so long, Reid seems eager for reassurance: he says he'd like to serve all the fish on the bone, but queries whether his customers would like it; he'd like the poached egg to become a fixture, but he's worried about serving a half-cooked egg.
His confidence has also been dented, it appears, by the reaction of the main guides to White's departure. "When Marco told me he was leaving, the first thing I said was, ‘We're going to get shafted in all the guides,'" says Reid. He battles to try to understand why the Which? Good Food Guide demoted the restaurant from an eight rating to a six in its 2001 edition, and the reason for the AA Restaurant Guide's downgrading of the eaterie from a five-rosette to three-rosette rating.
"I feel embarrassed. The food hasn't changed much, so I wonder if it isn't a political thing. Sometimes you end up wanting to keep changing, but there's a point where you find the right formula, and I think Marco more or less found that here."
He readily admits, however, that the formal dining style at the Oak Room - its space and tranquility - is not the modern way of eating. "People like to be huddled up with lots of noise. You get privacy in the noise. Here some people perhaps feel uncomfortable," he muses. And he hates the fact that the restaurant is so quiet - another reason, he suggests, for the guidebook demotions.
In a bid to generate busines and because diners were previously paying in part for White's reputation, Oak Room prices have been brought down drastically. Two courses from the set lunch menu are just £20 (it was previously £37 for a three-course set lunch) and with puddings at £5 and coffee and petits fours £3.50, average spend is now an affordable £30 including wine.
Wider market
A more dramatic reduction has been made in the evenings, when a three-course dinner without wine now costs £38 instead of £80, and the menu gourmand is down to £49 from £90. "The food is exactly the same as before, but we can draw on a wider market now," says Reid.
He shows as much enthusiasm for the job as ever. "I still love eating, tasting food. When I do something nice it turns me on, and since Marco left I'm beginning to enjoy it all in another way." He's determined to retrieve those stars, too. "Looking at what all the guides have written, I wouldn't bet on getting one - but I'd like to have two." n
