In the world of food, the margins by which good and bad ideas are defined can be extraordinarily thin. You only have to read any seasoned reviewer venting about how a restaurant has trashed their menu with unnecessary ingredients to appreciate this. In the world of fine dining – or even good dining – anyone serving food has to get the specifics just right to deliver. This is the problem food critics suffer from. One tiny flaw in a book or a film can easily be lost in the work, but in food, you have to look out for everything.
Of course, sometimes restaurants make it remarkably easy for you by fouling up the whole thing completely. Not too long ago, I was in a hotel restaurant in Brighton where I was unfortunately subjected to some of the very worst food it has ever been my misfortune to eat. You occasionally get food which looks like it has been kept under a heat lamp for a while. This stuff tasted like it had been cooked under a lamp from start to finish. There are a few reasons I only focus on London eating with this blog, one of them being that I don't get around outside London enough to warrant a broad enough spread of reviews, but if I did I would be sure to give this particular restaurant the panning it deserves.
The other extreme is where everything is just about perfect and it all works. I feel a bit guilty writing a perfect review (there haven't been many), but it rarely happens so I suppose we don't need to worry about that. The rest of the time, we pick through everything to find flaws amongst great works, flies in the ointment, plastic in the dessert (which has actually happened to me) and so on…
As happens so often in life, I turn to the stunning Frasier to illustrate a point. The perversity of the critic is summed up perfectly by a quote from Kelsey Grammar's character: "what is the one thing better than an exquisite meal..? An exquisite meal with one tiny flaw we can pick at all night."
Back in July I had stopped in at the relatively new Clarendon in Notting Hill, which is branded as "Holland Park and Notting Hill's newest pub, cocktail lounge bar and restaurant." I was already wary of the place with a description like that; they were clearly running the gamete with their introduction. However, it was a Taste London offer, so a friend (whom I owed a meal) and I went in for dinner.
The evening was a cavalcade of small flaws which brought the whole thing down. The first problem with The Clarendon is that it suffers from the same malady as Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green: it doesn't know what it's trying to be. You can tell from the description above (from their website, I might add) that they're trying to cover all the bases, which does not work in general. What you usually get is typified with The Clarendon: a hollow hall of confused nothingness. Which is a real shame because their main room is quite pretty in an earthy way.
The starter I sampled was a double-mistake. Mixing chorizo with scallops is a bad idea. Particularly when the chorizo is as dry as jerky and the scallops have been more or less bunged on the plate with little work. I'm all for simplicity and letting ingredients speak for themselves, but when you're preparing food so clumsily it doesn't work.
We split a chateaubriand for the main course which looked impressive but didn't deliver. Served with a roasted head of garlic, a deluge of red wine sauce and some mushrooms, it should've been fantastic. Instead it was a waste of steak and just about everything else on the plate. Average quality meat, poorly seasoned sauces and very uninspired on all counts. And that really is a shame, considering you're shelling out £45 for this. (You do get two sides with the dish, which is a nice touch, but even then they weren't up to much.)
A passable if dry sticky toffee pudding later and we were ready to settle up the bill. This seemed to require the energy and attention of every single member of the waiting staff and maybe even the manager. I don't know if they'd ever seen a Taste London card before but they appeared pretty baffled by it. Fortunately, we sloped off only having to pay half what the food was worth: I'd have baulked at having to pay full price.
So, far from being a critic's dream, this was closer to a consumer's nightmare. Enticing offers, lengthy introductions and snazzy faux-traditional dining rooms are only good if you're backing it up with real quality on the plate. The Clarendon is falling away here and it is not going to stand the test of time unless it bucks its ideas up. They have a reasonable location, a lovely building and one of the nicest areas in London in which to ply their trade. It's now up to them to get busy making it fulfil its potential.
On to the business of the meal proper, there were soaring highs and average middles. The starters were two of those said highs. Despite the moderately decadent nature of the restaurant, sometimes there's a lot to be said for simple, seasonal quality. And our first starter was a model of such features. Egg yolk and pea ravioli (one of the former, two of the latter) along with chicken wings and asparagus sounds all over the place. It looked it too, slightly (left). However, the texture and formation of the pasta was perfect, and everything was cooked right. I struggled a little at first, but the final bite, combining all elements of the dish - the fresh peas with the smooth pureé, the in-season asparagus, the salty chicken and the silky yolk - showed how local, seasonal and elegant are a stunning distillation of tastes and ideas.
The second starter, however, was something absolutely opulently French. A richer-than-rich combination of strong, bold and brash flavours, our mousse of chicken with foie gras atop a slice of artichoke, decorated with truffles was heart-stopping in more than just the literal sense (right). The deliciously fluffy and smooth liver mousse was exceptional with the perfectly-cooked artichoke base. Within lurked two slabs of seared foie gras which you could actually pick out amongst the bolder flavours of the dish; no mean combination. Slivers of truffle adorned the dome of mousse along with a rich jus, which eventually slid the whole affair into a gorgeous first course.
Our main courses were leaning towards the slightly more decadent side of things once again. A rare steak with foie gras was just about what you expect: rich, moist, dressed well… and served with crisps (left). Surprising for sure but generally speaking it was good. You can't say a lot more than that, because the individual parts of the dish were less pronounced than the starters and it was less spectacular in general. However, the one area of the plate which pushed the dish into culinary overdrive was the truffled hollandaise sauce: exactly as wonderful as it sounds.
The roast saddle of rabbit with parmesan and potatoes was lovely (right). The rabbit was stunningly well-cooked and combined with the potatoes and other miscellaneous vegetables. I must admit I do love the nature of classic French food in this respect: vegetables are only there to make up the numbers. The strangest parts of the dish were the accompaniments to the rabbit. The potatoes had been strung out, knitted into the thinnest chips you've ever seen and were a deliciously crunchy contrast to the soft rabbit and smooth sauce. The parmesan was crisp-fried into what I can only describe as a hat, which topped off the dish in eccentric but satisfying fashion. It was a dish of the most fanciful comfort food you could wish to eat.
Puddings came in the form of one which was far too complicated and didn't live up to the evening's standards and one which was superb. The former was a dégustation aux framboises or an assortment of raspberries to you and me (left). This sounded impressive but eventually failed to deliver on two fronts. The soufflé was miniature and tasty, the sorbet was fresh and zingy, but the rest wasn't up to snuff. The mille-feuille of chocolate and raspberries was neither luxuriant enough to allow the chocolate to flourish, nor inventive enough to really taste the raspberries. The doughnut served with raspberry sauce was something of a nuisance. They might have been better just giving us a decent-sized raspberry soufflé with sorbet.
Soufflé, it turns out, is one of Le Gavroche's strengths. As well it might be, given how whole-heartedly true to France it is. The passion fruit and white chocolate soufflé made up for more or less any shortcomings with the raspberries (right). Served hot at the table with a fresh passion fruit sauce, then extravagantly topped with a sublime white chocolate ice cream, it was just about the best soufflé I have eaten.