Dinner: Top Ten, Perhaps Not

The problem with any award is that, while its nice to receive at the time, expectations are elevated.  Dinner is not only Heston Blumenthal's outpost in central London, but it is also now ranked ninth in the world by the San Pellegrino restaurant awards. That is higher even than the Fat Duck. So, with all that in mind, I was expecting a real treat. Frankly I imagined being blown away.

I am never a fan of restaurants in hotels - they always seem a bit like an extension of the lobby. Places that are perfectly fine for waiting, neutral, but not exactly somewhere to thrill. While Dinner does suffer a little from this, the porcelain jelly moulds on the walls bring just enough of a touch of Heston to the proceedings. 

The kitchen is open, allowing you to marvel at their pineapple roasting machine. Necessary for the creation of Tipsy Cake so we were told - a desert you need to order on being seated due to cooking times, we didn't bother.

To start we knew we were going to have the "meat fruit", chicken liver and foie gras parfait dressed up as a mandarin. But Strakattak and I were torn between two of the remaining starters: would it be the "rice and flesh" or the hay-smoked mackerel. We just couldn't decide.  Our waiter came up with a solution: he could do us a platter of all three. Sold!  Sadly, he failed to tell us that we wouldn't be getting three slightly smaller portions as a platter, rather three full size plates, with consequent cost.  Misleading and, if it all hadn't been so darn delicious, I might have complained about it.  As it was they were all wolfed down.

So rarely does a hyped-up dish deliver - the meat fruit does.  Tart "peel", rich chicken liver and foie gras parfait- looked wonderful, tasted better.

The rice and flesh was "aged rice" (to give it a pronounced nutty flavour), served al dente (undercooked?) as a risotto, with soft calf's tail, laden with saffron.  Not something I would rush back to, but nice to try.

 The mackerel came smoked but raw, with an anchovy heavy "Gentlman's relish".  Fresh, punchy, my kind of starter.   

Following the starters was always going to be hard.  I had the collar of pork with spelt, ham hock and Robert sauce.  The pork was incredibly tender, I suspect the use of sous vide, but the Robert sauce (a mustard sauce derived from the classic Espagnole sauce) was just a little too salty for me.  A plate of food I was happy devour, but not something I can say will stick in my mind. 

Strak had the ribeye, well-cooked, fine.  The triple cooked chips were, quite frankly, the best chips I have eaten. Ever.

The pork collar with Robert sauce 

To finish, I had the "brown bread ice cream", salted butter caramel and malted yeast syrup.  Yes it was malty. Yes I could see why it was called "brown bread" ice cream.  Yes it had salted caramel, a food sent from above.  But would I clamour for more?  No.  Remove the reference to brown bread and what you have is a malty ice cream with some salted caramel.  Nothing to get worked up about.  

Strak had the "chocolate bar" with passion fruit jam and ginger ice cream.  The ice cream was mind-blowing,  a hit of spicy ginger, the chocolate bar rich with passion fruit.  Cleverly presented, this was far more exciting than the headline-grabbing "brown bread" ice cream.  

 

Finally we were presented with a small pot of rich chocolate and tea ganache.  Served with a crisp biscuit studded with caraway seeds, I loved it.  It had enough going on to be a desert in its own right.  Caraway and chocolate, a great combination. 

So what to make of Dinner.  Yes there were high points.  The meat fruit lived up to all I had heard, the mackerel was a real treat, and that chocolate bar had a great balance of flavour.  Did I think it was deserving of its title of ninth best restaurant in the world?  No.  In fact I wouldn't even put it in my top ten in London.  Some of the dishes were really quite ordinary, dressed up in Heston hype.  Fun to try, but don't think I'll be back.

St John Bread and Wine: the last in the trilogy

My journey round Fergus Henderson's empire (of "Nose to Tail Eating" fame) started some three years ago with a trip to his original restaurant in Smithfields.  Before Fergus' intervention up and down the UK incredible parts of the animal, so common on the menu of any self-respecting "Gastropub" today, were being discarded. From sweetbreads to chitterlings. No. Unless it was a standard cut, we just weren't interested. Give me sirloin they cried, you can keep your belly! And then came "Nose to Tail Eating", a revolution in the very meaning of "delicacy".  After opening his original restaurant in 1994, FG then opened Bread and Wine in Spitalfields in 2003, and thereafter St John Hotel and Restaurant in 2011.

Despite living in the East End, I had only been to the Smithfields and Soho outlets, both of which I love.  And so, with Jubilee weekend upon us, what better reason than to complete the triumvirate of all things offal.  Needless to say our attempt to get a ring-side seat for the Jubilee float-past failed, stuck in the rain for almost two hours we were, with more chance of seeing the Pope than the Queen.  Thankfully, however, we had been to St John's Bread and Wine on the way and were, therefore, at least warm on the inside.

As with his other restaurants, the interior is stripped back white, utilitarian.  The menu is a little different, however.  Rather than being split in the usual way, this menu is divided by time: dishes available post 12:00pm, others available post 1:00pm, the desserts presumably available all the time.  As we weren't looking for anything too heavy, having gorged ourselves at God Save the Clam the night before, we decided to have a couple of post 12pm dishes as they seemed on the lighter side.  (I have to admit though, having seen the gigantic whole Cornish crabs being served, I did have some serious food envy).

I had the pig's head, rolled and pressed into cubes, breaded and fried. This came with delicious crunchy radish and a tarragon mayo.  The pig was juicy, gelatinous, as pig's head should be.  It was nicely offset by the mayo and radishes although a couple of leaves would have improved the dish for me by cutting through the fat from the head.

The Fashionista had the crab broth with cuttlefish and butter beans.  The liquor was intense and you were left thanking your lucky stars that the portion was small.  Delicious at this size, but more would have been too much.  Unfortunately the soup was served with a rather large bit of herby butter plonked in the middle.  This did little to improve things, the dish would have been better without.

All in, with some lovely sourdough bread (you would expect nothing less from St John, the bread is always second-to-none) and a coffee, the bill came in at a very reasonably £17 for the two of us.  Not massive portions, but enough to feel that you had had a very enjoyable lunch indeed.  Highly recommended.

Hereford Road: definitely not the St Johns of the West

This week the Fashionista had a visit from her second cousin once removed (or something like that- I get confused after cousin!) who was over from Singapore.  Traditional English food came the request- but of course, given the reputation that British food has around the world, I didn't want to take this guy for some simple pub fayre.  We tried to get a table at St Johns, that mecca for all things out-of-the-ordinary, but unfortunately they were fully booked.  Then we found Hereford Road, a restaurant out in Bayswater with links to St Johns (the chef at Hereford Road used to work there) and a plan was hatched.

We arrived to a rather confused waiter who appeared not to know that we had reserved a table- brushing this aside we were sat down in one of the red booths towards the back of the restaurant.  When you enter you pass the open plan kitchen and then head down some stairs at the rear to the seating area, all low lighting and soft colours.  The ceiling is made up of a large circular glass panel which I am sure must flood the restaurant with light during the day.

Having sat down and started to look through the menu, the first waiter returned again demanding to know where we had reserved.  On and on he pressed for details until it transpired that it was, in any case, not of consequence whether we had a reservation or not as the restaurant wasn't full - not the most friendly of welcomes.

For starters we decided to go for artichoke, smoked eel with horseradish and beetroot salad and duck's livers with runner beans and capers.  Ten minutes later, the waitress returned to say there were no longer any artichokes.  I changed my order to spatchcocked quail with radish and aioli.

Smoked eel and beetroot and horseradish salad

Quail with radish and aioli

The first course arrived after about twenty five minutes- eel was magnificent- firm and smokey with a hint of horseradish in the salad.  The ducks' livers were equally good- rich and full of flavour and the beans were cooked so that they had a nice bite- I had never had ducks' livers before but if they taste like this all the time I will be back for more.  The spatchcocked quail was okay but not particularly interesting and the aioli was just too intense to add anything to the dish.  The radish were nice.

Ducks' livers, runner beans and capers

For mains we ordered the rabbit, bacon and fennel stew, the pigeon with lentils and girolles and the smoked haddock with roasted cauliflower.  Other things on the menu included pork belly with mustard chard and a venison dish to share between two.

Now we had arrived at 8:15, been served our starters at around 8:50 and were waiting expectantly for our mains by around 9:05.  By 9:45 I was getting restless and decided to ask when we might expect the mains as we had now been waiting for almost forty five minutes.  The answer came- "you have not been waiting 45 minutes-I know because it says so on my till".  Now it may not have been forty five minutes, perhaps it was forty two, in any case enough time had elapsed for us all to notice and start talking about the lack of food in front of us. The waitress then said "the pigeon, it takes some time to cook". 

And so, another while later, the food arrived.  The wood pigeon (which had delayed proceedings) was served spatchcocked and was wonderfully rare, deep, delicious and velvety. 

The rabbit in the broth was slow cooked and fell off the bone and the fennel was tender.  The whole dish had, however, been over seasoned and was just a little too salty.

The smoked haddock was fresh (un-dyed like the unfortunate smoked haddock sold so often in supermarkets) and delicious and the cauliflower was, well, roasted cauliflower.

And then came another period of waiting- after twenty minutes the plates had still not been cleared- so we asked for the bill.  Cue another period of waiting (although not as long as the table next to us who had to wait for over twenty minutes after asking for the bill).  Then the card machine arrived, cue more waiting while the waitress tried to work out how to use the new system which had been installed.  By this time it was already after eleven- and so it took us almost three hours to order, eat two courses and leave, by which point we were just fed up of Hereford Road.

The food at Hereford Road was, in the main, very good, the portions extremely generous, and the prices very reasonable (£90 for three people for two courses sharing a bottle of wine), but the staff were simply not up to scratch. Now as I have said before, service is not something that normally bothers me.  I don't need airs and graces to enjoy a good dinner but when the staff accuse you of not having a reservation, suggest that you are lying as to the amount of time you have been waiting, and serve you a two course dinner in three hours, something is very very wrong.  Such a shame given the food on offer was rather tasty...