My first memory of Sketch was when it had newly opened and I ended up doing a brief stint in the Gallery kitchen. I had no clue who Pierre Gangaire was, but that he was some big shot French chef who had teamed up with Mourad Mazouz of Momo to open an uber-luxe, decadent space in the West End where the restaurant was an enormous art gallery, the waitresses very beautiful, the kitchen brand new, the toilets worth a trip just on their own and the prices exorbitant. Almost a decade later, Michelin’s usual palaver of leaked results stated that the upstairs restaurant, Lecture Room & Library had just won their second star, having dined there just a week before.
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October 19, 2012
Lecture room at Sketch
October 2, 2012
Hélène Darroze at the Connaught
My first memory of the Connaught was of wheeling a very noisy trolley full of ice cream and sorbet mixes from the Claridges to the Connaught to be churned at 4am. I was working the night shift at Gordon Ramsay Claridges and our ice cream machine had broken down, and the closest ally was Angela Hartnett’s kitchen at the Connaught. Nothing makes more noise than a metal trolley full of metal containers rattling down the West End at an ungodly hour – even the police found it rather amusing. Since then, the Ramsay empire has crumbled, Angela has found other avenues on her own and the Connaught is now under its new queen, Hélène Darroze, running her second 2 star Michelin restaurant. Whilst London may not be the food capital of the world, it does have some of the best lunch deals and on this occassion, £60 for 4 courses and 2 glasses of wine seemed to fit the bill quite nicely.
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August 25, 2012
Les Tablettes, Paris
It’s very rare that from the minute you enter a restaurant, your gut instinct goes to level 1 alert and one’s chef-dar starts beeping and not in a good way, and then from that moment on, as if on cue, the cascading effect of a monumental failure slowly starts to flow. Such was the case at Les Tablettes in Paris. It’s not as though one could blame a lack of custom in August, for the restaurant was full to the brim, for the poor service or the amateur food. Nope, it was just one of those nights that one wishes could be erased from one’s memory. So, to keep things brief and to the point, bullet points always help.
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August 24, 2012
L’Atelier Saint-Germain de Joel Robuchon, Paris
Titan, legend, godfather, celebrity…just a few titles that adorn the legacy of Joel Robuchon, a chef who really needs no introduction and who’s empire extends from Las Vegas to Tokyo with a total collection of 28 Michelin stars (4 restaurants having 3) . Needless to say, the man knows what he’s doing and has done so for a very long time! In this years 50 Best Restaurants guide, his restaurant in Saint-Germain, Paris, notched up to 12, and during the month of August, is one of the very few Michelin restaurants open for business. At first, the cheek-by-jowl seating arrangement at the counter seems a bit odd for a restaurant of this nature, but as the meal progresses, one realises that it’s actually quite a lot of fun, and the most remarkable thing is the unpretentious, gregarious and laid back service that goes with the evening.
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