You know Criterion, even if you think you don't. You've walked past it but might not have recognised it when you did. If you've ever walked through Piccadilly Circus, you will have seen it. It's situated in the huge building right off the main pedestrian area of the place. It's been there forever, gone through a few facelifts in its time (Marco Pierre White used to have a place there) and generally is as much a rightful part of the area as the Trocadero.
Unfortunately, it's about as useful as the Trocadero too, which is to say it looks faintly impressive, attracts interest with ease but delivers annoying fluff and nonsense. The dining room is grandiose and pleasant, but that's all you can say really. When the food gets put in front of you, it all melts away into a void of hollow west end faff.
The Sunday lunch the other half and I sampled was, for the most part, lousy. The one shimmering beacon of acceptability was the first course. Oysters were fresh and tasted as they should (left). The expert dissection across the table was indicative that these weren't to be derided, and the glorious plop that was sent my way was good enough for me. I ordered the foie gras with wood pigeon, atop brioche with some dressings. Now, this dish should be magnificent. What I got was not. I don't know how it's possible to make foie gras taste cheap and un-worldly but Criterion managed it. The pigeon wasn't bad in the event, but the sauce (apple and tomato relish) was far too sweet and detracted from the main events. I enjoyed the first bite, doubted the second and was indifferent to the rest.
Main courses were a pretty hilarious failure. At least they would've been to people that were watching us. And I don't know who would've been: the place wasn't exactly brimming. We went for pork shoulder with potatoes and veg along with the asparagus risotto with summer truffle. I wish I could've just left it at reading those two dishes on the menu and let my imagination feed me. They were both poor.
Great Sunday meat should come in the form of very simple, rich and tasty hunks of local fare. It should be earthy, warm, reminiscent of childhood and basically do everything that modern eating society demands of English food. If it's good. Like Quo Vadis, for example. That was good Sunday meat. This was a joke by comparison. Unspeakably dry, tasteless pork served with potatoes that had been salted, prepared and cooked to death. Each step in their journey to the plate had been a way to make them awful.
Asparagus and goat's curd risotto with summer truffle should be just about the best thing you can eat in late June. The two key ingredients are in season and this should be corking all over. Nothing about it was good. Not a single thing. From the over-filled plate to the over-cooked asparagus (which wasn't too fresh anyway) to the terrible texture, I hated it. This is classic evidence of a simple dish that has been ruined to the point of no merit at all. It wasn't even over-complicated, just bad. I asked where the summer truffle was, because it sure wasn't on the plate. The waitress was suitably confused by my request, but emerged with a small dish of something which I had to sprinkle over the food.
I had a slight issue with this, since adding one of the main ingredients to a dish is something the kitchen should do. And they shouldn't forget about it either. But hey, I had my truffle and that can improve any dish. Well, if it's fresh. If it has been freshly grated or flaked on to, or in to, the dish, punctuating it with sweet, spicy bursts of glorious flavour, then yes, it will do just fine. This, however, was not truffle. Maybe it had been truffle last summer, but it seemed to have been shoved in a cupboard and lain dormant for a season before becoming petrified and losing all of its flavour. This dish of toenails that I sprinkled all over the plate certified the lunch time disaster.
Dessert couldn't save the day. Serving something called 'deconstructed rhubarb crumble' is a bold and daring statement. You have to firstly justify serving something so pompous and secondly quantify why such a ridiculous name has been given to the dish. In case you're wondering, Criterion did neither. It could've worked if it had been billed as 'summer rhubarb', but oh no; this wasn't a deconstructed crumble - it was a waste of rhubarb. Under-cooked, poorly-flavoured and not dressed as it should've been, I didn't enjoy it much.
The other half went for a chocolate tart which they would have been really hard pressed to mess up. Try as they might, they got us back on to the plateau of averageness that we had been gasping for ever since our mains came out. It wasn't bad, but that's the best compliment you could give it.
So, don't bother with Criterion. I don't want to sound unnecessarily harsh, but when a restaurant attempts to confound all your expectations and let you down at every turn, you don't really want to champion much about them. Let's leave this magnificent hall to a venture more deserving of its glory.
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