Those of
you who know me well will be aware that I regard any restaurant outside the
Circle line with a certain suspicion, but there may be occasions when you
desire a meal outside
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Restaurant |
Fat Duck |
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Food
rating |
8/10 |
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Address |
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Phone
Number |
016977
46234 |
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Open |
All
week dinner only |
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Price |
£65
a head with wine |
Heston now has a building opposite
the restaurant in which there is a prep kitchen, as well as a new
“experimental” kitchen, with various devices more usually seen in a lab e.g. a
centrifuge and a distillation unit. There
are 22 chefs working here, not a bad ratio for a 42 cover restaurant. The tasting menu began with a “breath
freshener” of an egg white infused with green tea and vodka and lime, which is
briefly dipped into a container of liquid nitrogen. This causes the egg yolk to form a very
delicate meringue coating, which needs to be eaten within seconds before it
cracks; this actually works quite well, with the meringue being extremely
delicate. An oyster was served next in its shell with a passion fruit jelly,
lavender and horseradish. This sounds a pretty bizarre combination but worked
better than I expected, the passion fruit in particular offsetting the strong
taste of the oyster. Next nibble was a
grain mustard ice cream, which had excellent texture and indeed tasted properly
of grain mustard, served in with a juice of red cabbage, which I am not sure
added greatly to the experience. Next
was a “homage to Alain Chapel” and for me the best dish of the whole meal: a jelly
of quail was topped a with wonderfully silky parfait of foie
gras, some langoustine cream adding a further
dimension. Here the ingredients worked
beautifully together and the technique was flawless, the quail jelly having
lovely texture and having enough quail flavour to
offset the richness of the foie gras
(10/10). Dishes like this make me wish Heston would cook more classical combinations.
Next was snail porridge, which while the three
snails tasted fine, and the ham and shaved fennel gave some extra interest, was
not in the same league as the previous course.
Next was roast foie gras
in an almond fluid gel, with cherry and chamomile. This was nicely made, but I’m not sure what
the cherry, for example, really added here.
Sardine on toast sorbet was preceded by a little film of oak, the idea
being to sensitise your tongue to the oak prior to
the rest of the dish. Well, the sardine
element worked well, served with mackerel that was reconstituted without bones,
served with marinated daikon, and I felt this
combination was a good one. Salmon
poached with liquorice was slow cooked and was
lukewarm, which I do find disconcerting – I’m happy with salmon raw or cooked,
but I just don’t think it tastes at its best lukewarm. This was served with the last of the summer
green asparagus, pink grapefruit and olive oil.
The final savoury dish was a poached breast of
A white chocolate disc with caviar seemed to me just
a bad idea; both ingredients on their own would be better than served together
in this way. Better was an ice cream
cornet (using a very old recipe from 19th century cook Mrs Marshall). A
pine sherbet fountain is part of the “nostalgia cuisine” that Heston is fond of.
This is more than can be said of mango and Douglas fir puree, with a bavarois of lychee and mango and
a blackcurrant sorbet. The sorbet was
technically excellent, the bavarois very good, but
the fir was one tree too many for me.
Carrot and orange tuile was delicate and had
good flavour, while a beetroot jelly was in fact
stunning, with perfect texture. Here is
an innovation that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Smoked bacon and egg ice cream does indeed taste of what it is supposed
to, and tea jelly and pain perdu are a clever
accompaniment to this. . There is now a more classical section of the
menu, which involved a very fine langoustine ravioli (8/10) though also a
rather dry sole Veronique, which had been through the same reconstitution
process as the mackerel, but here did not work so well. This aside, the menu showed a high degree of
technical execution, and some genuinely clever ideas like the beetroot
jelly. I am glad that these classical
dishes are available, as it shows what the kitchen can do in a way comparable
with other places, as well as not involving any trees whatsoever in the food,
which would be a relief to some. Service
was flawless, with a newish mature d’ previously at
Le Manoir and a sommelier who worked at the Capital
Hotel in the past. I should also say
that bread, both white and brown slices, had excellent taste and texture. I do feel that Heston’s
cooking has got better each time I have visited here. A greater emphasis on seasonal ingredients
would be welcome amongst all the experimentation, and would help show off all
the dishes to their very best.
Here is the version from my
notes in 2003, which is perhaps interesting to compare to see how the cooking
has moved on. The service has certainly
tightened up considerably now.
We went for the tasting menu,
which has several additional surprise elements.
The first amuse guele was a lime and green tea
“sour” which we were advised to “eat quickly before it separates”: this was
dominated by the lime flavour but had reasonable
texture (5/10). This was followed by a
grain mustard sorbet with red cabbage “gazpacho” – which was nothing more than
red cabbage juice. The mustard sorbet
had good texture served on a bed of tiny diced cucumber; the sorbet resonated
with mustard flavour: this worked very well, but the
red cabbage juice did nothing (6/10). Next was a gelee
of three layers: langoustine, quail and pea – this had smooth texture and
excellent concentration of flavour, the elements of
the dish working well with the others (7/10).
Stella had maybe the best dish of the day, a simple glass of warm puy lentils with finely diced carrot and apple in a
balsamic vinaigrette on a bed of pea puree, which worked very well indeed
(8/10). Bread appeared only now, a
choice of slices of either home-made sourdough or brown bread, crusty and with
good flavour, though lacking in salt to my taste. The
first official part of the meal was a divers scallop, roasted and served with a
single wild mushroom (announced as a morel though it was clearly no such
thing), a single black grape, a solitary white sultana and cauliflower
puree. The scallop was gently cooked and
was of very high quality, the cauliflower puree had considerable intensity
(7/10). I then had foie
gras on a salad leaf with two crab biscuits
(6/10). Stella had cauliflower risotto
topped with a thin round of chocolate gelee and
cauliflower carpaccio topped with cauliflower crisps,
the dish being dusted with cocoa at the table (7/10).
Our main course was sea bass
with wild mushrooms, sweet peppers, baby onions topped with finely chopped
chives and a vanilla and rosemary veloute (which did
not really taste of rosemary). This was
the only real problem I had with the whole meal, the primary issue being that
the sea bass was significantly overcooked.
Vanilla with fish seems a trendy thing at present - I encountered this a
couple of times recently in German 3 star places, and my view is that it is a
less than ideal combination.
Notwithstanding my personal preference, the problem here was that the
vanilla was too intense, smothering the other flavours
in the dish. Hence I give this dish just
4/10, given its technical errors.
Desserts also had some surprise elements. A pomme puree
topped with lime gelee was brought on a spoon by the
waiter and fed to you directly: the puree was OK but this seems like a
pretentious “El Bulli” like way to serve. Next was parsnip cereal with parsnip infused
milk – sort of a breakfast idea that I actually felt worked OK. A more debatable offering was white chocolate
discs served with caviar – sorry but there is no way that chocolate and salt
are a viable combination in my view.
Mango and Douglas fir mousse with blackberry sorbet (with a beetroot
crisp) and a beetroot gelee was a disappointment, the
mango flavour being obscured so much as to render the
dish strangely tasteless (4/10). Next
was a plate of basil and fennel bavarois in a sweet
pastry tart, with cubes of beetroot jelly coated in sugar. A lollipop of sweet red pepper also appeared,
served on a cocktail stick. Much better
was the main dessert. Here a chocolate
sorbet had excellent flavour and texture, placed on a
little biscuit. A dark chocolate mousse
was served on top of hazelnut fondant made with “cracking candy” – which has a
remarkable fizzing effect in the mouth.
Here I felt the flavours were fine and the
execution good (8/10). Coffee was £3.95
and was only fair (5/10). Petit fours
were chewing tobacco chocolate and a bacon tuile – I
have to say that I won’t be rushing to make either of these ideas in my
kitchen. The service was variable
throughout: I had the option of wines to match the tasting menu, and yet the
waiter on two occasions failed to bring the wines in time – on one occasion it
was literally as I finished the dish; they also did a “needle in the haystack”
routine at finding our umbrella when we left.
Certainly very innovative cooking, much of which works well, but I was
concerned by the overcooked sea-bass, which was a basic technical error. The price is hardly a bargain either. The wine list was excellent, with a wide
selection of wines by the glass and some excellent producers, though the
mark-ups are as steep as in
Last visited
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Restaurant |
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Food
rating |
8/10 |
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Address |
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Phone
Number |
01647
432367 |
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Open |
All
week |
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Price |
£75
a head with wine |
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Web
site |
My favourite spot for a weekend away in the
country. It is in a remarkably tranquil
setting near the
Last visited October 2004.
The gardens here are lovely, with a fine formal
garden and a lovely terrace to sit out in the summer. This extends up the hill into a “wild garden”
and then into a walled kitchen garden containing vegetables, herbs and the
flowers used in the hotel. Service was
very capable throughout. The dining room
has two parts, and even in the smaller room the service did not falter. The menu of a half a dozen choices for each
course is appealing enough. Here are
notes based on two meals here over a summer weekend in 2000. Medallions of lobster were of the non-chewy
variety so rarely found in restaurant dining rooms, served with a basil crème fraiche and some essence of tomato (7/10). Ballotine of wild
salmon had excellent texture and flavour, decorated with a rosette of smoked
salmon that was clearly home-smoked with full flavour. Similarly a piece of ahi
tuna was lightly seared and served with a chilli sauce. All these starters worked well.
Consistency of cooking continued through a
poached breast of free-range chicken (whether one of the ones near the garden I
am unsure) served with excellent asparagus and a chive-flavoured light creamy
sauce. Seafood was also handled well,
with a lasagne of Hebridean scallops garnished with
parsley and a clam butter sauce. The
cheese board was in good condition, with high quality Stilton and ripe
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Restaurant |
Hambleton Hall |
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Food
rating |
9/10 |
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Address |
Hambleton LE15 8TH |
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Phone
Number |
01572
756991 |
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Open |
All
week |
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Price |
£90
a head with wine |
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Web
site |
A wonderful place for a weekend away in the
country. If the weather is good you can
have drinks on the terrace overlooking the beautiful gardens and Rutland
Water. The wine list is extensive and
has an especially wide selection from
My starter was a simple but excellent set of
fried morels and asparagus - the morels were in perfect condition, the
asparagus excellent, both sitting in a simple sauce which had been fluffed up
by a hand liquidiser just before serving.
This was very fine - 8/10. Stella
had an excellent ravioli of crab, with ravioli having excellent texture, the
crab delicate and tender, offered with some shredded and lightly stir-fried
ginger, topped with shreds of deep-fried leeks.. Unlike at various recent meals in
For main course I had a wild salmon, which was
timed to perfection, moist and full of flavour, served with some beautifully
cooked new potatoes and in a butter and chive sauce (easily 7/10). Stella had some excellent turbot, sitting on
a bed of home-made noodles and spinach, surrounded by morels, other wild
mushrooms, diced tomato and sitting in a pool of slightly too lemony butter
sauce (7/10). All other components of
the dish were very well timed. Cheeses
were offered on a large board, and they had perhaps tried to offer too many
choices, as a few were a little past their best and a tad dry e.g. the Colston Basset Stilton. Still, a good board (3/5, 5/10
overall) and most cheeses in decent condition.
Ones tried as well as the Stilton were Epoisses
(in perfect condition), a
For dessert I had a magnificent passion fruit
soufflé, offered with a perfect passion fruit ice cream on the side in a little
tuile. The
soufflé was divine, the texture could not be faulted and the passion fruit
flavour came through beautifully. I
don’t know to mark this other than 9/10.
Stella had caramelised apple tart, comprising very finely sliced apples
on a good, rich pastry, sitting in a pool of caramel sauce, the top of which
had been browned with a blow-torch rather than caramelised in the cooking. In the centre of the tart was a scoop of
perfect vanilla ice cream surrounded by five blackberries, which added some
welcome tartness to the dish (7/10).
Coffee was not quite as good as one would expect, though still very
decent (5/10). The large espresso was
pleasingly generous in measure. Petit
fours were: a Chinese gooseberry, a baby lemon tart, raspberry tart, tuile and a mini chocolate log, and were all of a very high
standard - 8/10 overall, with the raspberry tart 10/10.
I have been going to Le Manoir for a long time
(indeed, we had our wedding reception there) and it is nice to see it return to
form after a (relatively) poor patch in the mid-late 90s. The place is like a well-oiled machine now,
producing top-notch food on one recent visit even though neither the head chef
nor Raymond Blanc were there. As well as
the fine setting, the service is exemplary, and the quality of ingredients
superb. The attention to detail shown
towards the incidentals (coffee, bread) is a characteristic of a restaurant
that is striving for the best. The only
problem is the bill - £285 for two, with half a bottle of wine (plus two
glasses of house wine) and only one pre-meal alcoholic drink, with the cheese
course at a little matter of £17 (one person only). This must be the most expensive place in the
These days there is a large car park with a separate driveway, as well
as the gravel drive down to the front of house, as this is a large-scale
operation. The gardens are as immaculate
as ever, and on this perfect summer’s day we had drinks on the lawn. The manor house itself has attractive
climbers – wisteria, clematis and others, growing up its elderly walls. The pace is certainly leisurely: we arrived
before
We sat in the conservatory today, which suffered from an air-conditioning
unit that was taking it easy, and eventually the staff gave up and opened the
windows to avoid completely suffocating.
The conservatory has been extended since I last came here, and has dark
wood floors, lots of natural light supplemented by directed spotlights hanging
from a metal frame, and canvas blinds.
Each table has cream tablecloth and napkins, while the chairs are
covered in the same cream-coloured cloth.
Crockery is Villeroy and Boch. Each table had a display of kolanchoe, with salt and pepper in an open wooden
dish. Various large plants give some
colour to the conservatory, in addition to the view over the gardens. Service was extremely capable, with bread and
wine topped up faultlessly, and the
The nibbles were first rate – a perfect salt cod (10/10), a little goats
cheese on tapenade (9/10) an excellent escabeche (8/10), a delicate crab tartelette
(9/10) and a tomato and olive tart with melting pastry (10/10) as well as an
anchovy stick (8/10). Instead of nuts on
the table, there is a dish of little bread-based biscuits (8/10). When we were seated at the table we were
greeted by a further complimentary dish: a superb gazpacho
with very intense tomato flavour (though maybe it could have had a little more
pepper to give some bite) that had small-diced aubergine and courgettes. I had a fine terrine of suckling pig, the
jelly very clear and with excellent carrots to supplement the meat (9/10 for the
amuse guele).
Breads are very good here, though the dazzling country bread I had a few
months back was missing. Today’s
offerings were bacon bread, beer bread, wholemeal, raisin, rye, pecan and
baguette. The breads are made fresh and
are of a very high standard, served cold but with very full flavour, great
texture and the right degree of saltiness (breads are 10/10).
Stella’s starter was a confit of salmon,
shaped into a parcel sitting on flakes of salted cod, atop a layer of mouli, an Indian vegetable that has some resemblance to
horseradish and so gave an excellent foil to the salmon, as well as a little
slices of cucumber. Around the edge of
the plate were baby cauliflowers and an artistic smear of horseradish sauce
that was very, perhaps too, subtle.
Still, the wild salmon had great depth of flavour and the vegetables
were perfect (10/10). I had macaroni in
a truffle jus, the macaroni heaped into the centre of the plate with a pile of
superb asparagus and courgette pieces.
Around the central pasta tubes were three beautifully cooked
langoustines, while there were generous shavings of black truffle on top of the
pasta. The flaw in this dish was the
pasta itself, which was distinctly harder than it should have been. Otherwise the vegetables were again
magnificent, and the langoustines very tender (9/10).
Stella had roast monkfish, which can so often be chewy but here was
delicate and full of flavour, served on a rectangular plate in two pieces,
framed at either end of the plate by a scallop on a ring of courgette, atop a
led of potato puree. The monkfish was
accompanied by a magnificent watercress puree, the whole sitting in some of the
roasting juices and a beurre meuniere,
supplemented by further diced vegetables.
The scallops were exquisite, sweet and delicate, of the highest quality,
perfectly timed. This was very
impressive cooking, with the elements of the dish working well with each other,
while to make watercress taste this good takes talent (10/10). I had poached breast of Landes
chicken, topped with a sliver of truffle and served with a slice of perfect
pan-fried foie gras. The chicken rested on a nage
of vegetables – peas, baby broad beans, asparagus, carrots, green cabbage, baby
turnips and broad beans, with a simple white wine sauce. The chicken was delicate and had that taste
of chicken that seems to elude most of its brethren these days, while the
vegetables were again stunning (9/10).
The cheeses were all French, and I tried Picodon
de l’Aideche goat, Rouelle du Tarn, Brie de Meaux, a
slightly below par Reblochon (not quite ripe), an
excellent Tomme de Vache
and a good Bleu de Bresse. Apart from the Reblochon
these were very good indeed, in excellent condition (8/10). A trivial service slip was that they forgot
to offer any bread with the cheese, but this was soon remedied. This is the most expensive cheese-board in
I went for a familiar classic for dessert, the ice creams and sorbets
arranged on a palette biscuit, with a spun sugar brush. I just went for a chocolate ice cream and
passion fruit sorbet rather than the wider choice, and both were utterly
perfect. The passion fruit sorbet had
perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, faultless texture and intense
flavour, while the chocolate ice cream had great velvety richness combined with
smooth texture; the biscuit palette was also lovely (10/10). Stella had a caramel dish with caramel ice
cream (fine texture) resting on a superb tuile, with
a magnificent crème caramel of striking delicacy; so far so good. On one end of the dish was an apple tarte tatin, which had a caramel
topping but had apple that had not been fully caramelised inside. The kitchen used a dessert apple that had
descended into a mush, which did not help matters. The tatin
element was really only 4/10, though everything else was around 9/10. Overall 8/10 for this dish.
The
coffee here is very fine indeed, an example to others. Dark roast arrabica
beans are brewed to perfection in both the filter and espresso versions. Accompanying the coffee were petit fours: a
pistachio sponge topped with strawberry (10/10), a frozen chocolate with almond
ice cream inside (9/10), orange jelly (8/10), a choux bun with rum-flavoured
crème patissiere (10/10), a lemon meringue pie topped
with redcurrant (10/10) and a perfect chocolate truffle (10/10). Overall I’d give these petit fours 10/10;
hardly anywhere in the
The bill, hardly small, is left with the credit card slip open. Moreover, if you ask for a copy of the menu,
you are told you may buy one for £7.50.
This is just sheer greed, and leaves a sour taste in the mouth after
such fine cooking. Last visited August
2004.
A lovely setting for lunch on a summer’s day,
overlooking the river in the pretty
Desserts are the high point at the Waterside,
and they did not disappoint tonight.
Roasted wild cherries were served with a Kirsch sorbet on a biscuit tuile, and were superb (10/10). The only problem is the price (of course
female diners aren’t allowed to see prices, and I must admit I cam over all
faint, so maybe this archaic practice has some logic). With a half bottle of white and a half bottle
of red, one £20 and one £25, and a half bottle of Novembre
dessert wine for £40, plus an orange juice and a glass of champagne (£14
together) just note the price. The
drinks were £99 in all, not counting water, but the bill still came to £365 for
two. Cheese alone was £15.50 each. It is certainly a mystery to me while
Michelin gives this three stars but Le Manoir Au Quat Saison two stars.
Service was a little slipshod at times by these elevated standards e.g.
we asked for some sparkling mineral water from the sommelier but he forgot, and
we had to ask for the bill three times.
Perhaps they were having trouble fitting it on to one sheet of paper. Last visited May 2001.