What's on the Menu? – A round-up of the latest restaurant reviews

19 April 2010 by
What's on the Menu? – A round-up of the latest restaurant reviews

The Daily Telegraph, 17 April
Jasper Gerard, accompanied by comedian Dom Joly, describes The Swan at Southrop, Gloucestershire, as being faultlessly tasteful with a too long, but good value, menu

I order foie gras with fried egg and toast, a simplified, less creamy version of the great Parisian dish but still with real intensity. Excellent. As Joly tells me about the busy morning he's had tweaking Michael Winner's Wikipedia entry, I set about my main course: roast chump of Southrop lamb with flageolet beans, bacon, rosemary and spinach. This is good cooking for a pub, though the lamb is fatty. Restaurants now seem to think local sourcing short-circuits any discussion about whether the food is any good. It doesn't quite. Joly, a hungry sort of chap, goes for char-grilled 28-day hung Cotswold rib-eye steak, beurre maître d'hôtel (which I'd call parsley butter, but I'm from Kent). It is joined, Joly observes, by "thrice cooked chips": "Only in the Cotswolds would they use the word ‘thrice'." When they arrive he's sniffy and finds the fries so chunky as to be a bit Dawn French. Nor does he like the faux rustic rough-hewn board his steak is served on. But he has no criticism of the beef which looks perkily, pinkily perfect. (Lunch for two, £108 for three courses. Rating: 7/10)

The Independent, 17 April
Tracey MacLeod enjoys The Royal Oak in Paley Street, Berkshire for being very good at what it does and eager to please

(Dominic) Chapman's menu takes great British produce as its starting point and wild ingredients as its inspiration - that day's menu included roast North Sea cod with samphire, cockles and mussels, Cornish lemon sole with morels and celery shoots, salad of smoked Somerset eel, and oxtail and kidney pie. But there's a cosseting generosity about Chapman's cooking which sets it apart from the austere Modern British school. What could be more indulgent than his take on the Scotch egg? Served hot, it yields a puff of steam as you cut through the carapace of panko breadcrumbs into the super-savoury sausagemeat, before puncturing the lightly cooked quail's egg in the centre. We began with fresh sourdough and one of those legendary Scotch eggs, which only missed out on greatness because of an unnecessary sprinkling of sea-salt. The simplest of starters presented an unadorned plateful of Scottish sea kale, pale and shimmering as braised celery, to be dipped into a hollandaise flavoured with blood orange. As delicately worked as the sea kale was simple, a superb lasagne interleaved silky pasta with a dice of rabbit and morels. (About £40 a head, before wine and service. (Rating: food 4/5, ambience 3/5, service 5/5)
The Royal Oak - review in full >> The Observer, 18 April
Jay Rayner says the arrival of Bistrot Bruno Loubet at the Zetter hotel, London EC1, has given heart to a previously listless restaurant

Sometimes, just the sound of dishes should do the job of explaining: guinea fowl boudin blanc with peas, ham and barley; snails and meatballs with royale de champignons; confit lamb shoulder, white bean and preserved lemon purée with green harissa; Valrhona chocolate tartlet, caramel and salted butter ice cream. Doesn't that tell you enough? Doesn't it? What, you want describing words, too? Oh, very well then. That first dish summed up everything about the food here. The fresh, spring-like stew of peas, ham and barley was rich and comforting and savoury. But what really made it was the boudin, the guinea fowl turned into the very lightest of mousses before being poached and caramelised. Bloody hell, but it was good. And close to miraculous for £7 in London. A similar trick was present in a dish of snails and tiny meatballs surrounding a warm set mousse heavy with essence of mushroom, the whole bound in a dark sauce. (Meal for two, including wine and service, £90)
Bistrot Bruno Loubet - review in full >>

The Sunday Times, 18 April
AA Gill finds Gordon Ramsay's latest incarnation of Petrus in London SW1 to be stuck in a time warp, from the badly designed space to a succession of unasked for amuses bouches

Puddings were the Mad Hatter's edible millinery, those faintly sweet things that defy appetite or enjoyment. Constructions that make you wonder who has the time or the patience to get up every morning, knowing they're going to have to construct these ridiculous meltables, whose fiddly complexity is in direct proportion to their lack of joy or pleasure. The best was a chocolate ball that collapsed when the sauce was poured on it. Pointless, and oddly depressing. Everything about this restaurant, this food, this service, is hopelessly passé, utterly has-been. So, so, completely, defunctly dead. It's sad that anybody could still want to create a room this inhospitable and offer an evening that implies such an utter lack of sensitivity or understanding or contemporary awareness, but such a deep and probing fascination with their own bottom. (Rating: food 1/5, atmosphere 1/5)
Petrus - review in full >>

By Janet Harmer

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