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 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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August 22, 2012
The Burlington Restaurant, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire
Driving from Edinburgh to London can get a bit tedious and tiring. A slight detour via Yorkshire seems like a ridiculous idea if you’re trying to get from point A to B as quickly as possible, but quite a good idea if you want to take the scenic route. After all, the Yorkshire Dales are really quite a pretty sight and the rolling countryside rather pleasant. It just so happened that on our leisurely Sunday drive, we had the rather interesting fortune to encounter the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of weather where for 5 minutes there would be 10% visibility and then clear blue skies for an hour, then back again to an Armageddon style storm and so on. The Devonshire Arms is one of those sprawling country house hotels that seems steeped in time. Sprawling gardens that stretch on for acres and acres, happy couples walking about with their trusty spaniel, gardeners tending to their roses, an old listed building that now serves as a hotel and restaurant; you get the drift. What truly makes it steeped in time is that once inside, you realise that your visit to the restaurant is about 30 years too soon, given the average age of the punters there is that of your retired parents. Nevertheless, putting on our best ‘elderly’ face and trying ever so hard to squeeze into the stiff air of pretentious formality, we quietly sat down and made our way through a rather drab Sunday lunch.
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There were at least 3 different tasting menus, yet only 3 choices of starter, main and dessert – a combination I thought quite out of order especially on a Sunday lunch. Nevertheless after an amuse bouche of basil and grapefruit mojito, I started with an assiette of duck containing foie gras terrine, roast duck, cured duck, poached rhubarb and sorbet. This ever classic and undying combination went by rather easily and without much ado, as did Miss N’s Confit salmon, brown crab, picked crab, grapefruit, cucumber – pretty, yet a tad bit too delicate to be delicate instead of insipid.
With the mains, my braised lamb shoulder, celeriac puree, pied moutons, peas was severely underseasoned and under-sauced while N’s pork loin, coco beans, black pudding puree, asparagus and girolles was ever so slightly better.
A pre-dessert of mango mousse and granite, yoghurt ice cream and oat crumble was possibly the best thing on the menu. Luckily, my dessert of coffee and liquorice came with all the right intensities of flavour that it deserved with a multitude of textures that kept everything firmly in check. Sadly, the same didn’t apply to N’s dessert of apricot, rye, hazelnut and basil which was rather unpleasant – severely sour apricots and nothing else on the plate managing to dance well enough to maintain a steady rhythm.
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Mojito
Foie gras
Salmon
Lamb
Pork
Pre-dessert
Apricot
Coffee
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With the rain luckily having subsided, we were soon back on the trail with the glimmering sunset behind us and the road to London getting ever shorter. At least some things worked out!
Food: 6/10
Service: 6/10
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