Bluebird – Chelsea, Sunday 14th February, 2010

You give a guy a break… Any hardened followers among you may remember I stopped in at Bluebird with Mike last summer, which I touched on during my Good Steak / Bad Steak piece. Being one of the more affordable Valentine’s Day menus on offer, I decided to risk it again on that not-so-special-yet-so-franchised day of the year.

The menu wasn’t massively adventurous, but had enough on it to peak our attention, and a few dishes leapt out at us pretty promptly. We decided we just had to have the Beef Wellington for mains, but then made the interesting choice of trying the vegetarian lasagne alongside it. (For all my meat-loving tendencies, I cannot resist mushrooms and truffles.)

We began with a seafood salad not dissimilar to the crayfish effort Mike and I had tried previously. It was fresh, crisp and served with a tangy sauce. It wasn’t top-end but it was pretty good. A ballotine of foie gras was the other, and was actually very good. I suppose one advantage of eating so very much liver pâté is that you can begin to differentiate between the varieties out there.

Main courses were a strange affair. It turned out the Wellington was hardly worth bothering with. Ironically, Mike and I had tried to make our own version of this classic some time ago and it had turned out a relative disaster. This wasn’t much better. Chunks of mushy herbs and unpronounced truffles packed in around a pasty pastry surround left the beef essentially redundant. Not a dish I’d care to repeat, in my kitchen or this place. Fortunately the lasagne was more satisfying, served with fresh green salad.

Dessert was a chocolate assortment for two. It was quite sweet (in every sense) with its chocolate mousse, fondant and flakes and sauces. Very much of the occasion, and quietly enjoyed.

The evening wasn’t a success, but it wasn't quite a total bust. The Kings Road Gastrodome (which houses Bluebird and several other venues and functions) is a large, somewhat confusing building which makes for a rather hollow dinner venue. The combination of this plus the overpriced, tacky nature of Valentine’s Day (£55 set menu) made for a rather muted evening, certainly not one I will be framing and putting on my mantelpiece any time soon.

Bluebird