I must begin my first review of 2011 with a message of apology for any readers at my lax updating of the blog last year. That I have to begin 2011 with a review almost five months late is pretty shambolic, but I must remind that this is not my day job (yet). Professional and personal commitments have limited my input in recent months, but there is a lot of business still to cover from 2010, including some excellent shopping, the longest I've ever spent in a restaurant and perhaps the best meal I've eaten. Anyway: happy new year!
On the last day of July, the other half and I went to see Toy Story 3 in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. It remains the best film I saw all year and became an instant favourite. We went for a morning showing, finished by lunch time where we headed to Knightsbridge for lunch and it felt like we'd blown through an entire evening by mid-afternoon.
Apsleys – a Heinz Beck Restaurant, to give the place its full name, is a fairly recent addition to The Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge. When we visited, it had only been open for about a year. I must just express my distaste for the name of the place before we go on though: what is the point of such disjointed, long-winded labelling? There are several better names you could call the place, but we must make do with what we have.
The other half and I strolled into The Lanesborough right in the middle of a power cut. At least an intermittent one. Others might have taken this as a sign from above and wandered off, but we persevered and made our way into a rather impressive dining room. Gently lit with the natural sky's light coming in from well-placed windows in the ceiling, the sandstone-coloured walls and ostentatious pillars weren't as imposing or overly Romanesque as they might be in a less high-profile restaurant.
Heinz Beck's franchise arrived in London with considerable prestige. The owner of three Michelin stars for his famed La Pergola in Rome, he specialises in Mediterranean flavours and does a fine job working with them. Branded as simply an Italian restaurant, I felt the place already had a tough billing to support: upmarket Italian food is not easy to deliver at a high standard. Still, never one to avoid a chance to scoff down some food and scoff at it, I delved in with regular gusto.
We started things with a little bread and oil: just what one needs at an Italian restaurant (left). I have to say I was impressed with this as a start. The variation was immense, and the bread in general was delicious. A mixture of dry, soft, salty and sweet was on offer and I think we tried most variations over the course of the meal. The highlight for me was the paper-thin affair pictured. I've no idea what it is called (research has yielded nothing), but it was deliciously crisp and unlike any bread I've eaten to date.
Moving through to slightly more complex matters of the menu, we agreed that we could not justify splashing out £60-£70 per person on the a la carte (especially for lunch), so the £28 set menu sufficed. Still, we got some lovely pre-starters with the deal (right). Full marks for presentation, and parts of the assorted parmesan dumpling and smoked salmon were rather worth the effort as opposed to a pre-meal inconvenience.
The starters were excellent. Some thick and creamy pea soup with ricotta gnudi was precisely what I wanted to eat on a summer afternoon (left). A mixture of Mediterranean and English - what could be more English than pea soup? - and presented quite exquisitely, I slurped, guzzled and swooned.
On the other side, we had the interestingly named fagottelli pasta, coloured by black squid ink and served with fish and peppers. A lengthy description that rivalled even the restaurant's name couldn't distract me from wanting to try this, even for curiosity's sake, so in we plunged. It was an astonishingly vibrant and lively dish (right). Fagottelli, it turns out, is like a sort of silky and ribbony ravioli. Delicious smooth textures combining with a hint of good old Italian roughness make it a wonderfully contrasting foodstuff. The sauce was right on the money: fresh, potent and delicately balanced.
Main courses were less impressive than the starters, firstly due to presentation, secondly due to taste. Quail with dried fruit and wild mushrooms sounded delicious but looked like a right mess (left). As we all know, combinations are essential to great food. However, the painful tendency of modern chefs to simply get together the ingredients and chuck them onto the plate is not good enough. The quail was nice, but there was no need for the ham, the various bits of dried fruit that were scattered across the plate or the haphazard nature of the dish. However, it did not taste as messy as it appeared. Ultimately, meat this good will always come through. It's just a shame it looked so naff.
Looking far classier was a superbly colourful risotto of peach, veal and celery (right). Now this was an interesting dish to me because I'd never heard of this combination of ingredients. The construction of the dish was incredible: all the textures were perfect. One problem with risotto is that it can often be very claggy and stodgy, with distinctive flavours hard to pick out. It can also look like porridge, gruel and more or less anything but special or appealing. This particular risotto was an explosion of colour and form, but sadly lacking in the tastes that I expected from such beauty. No real punch from the veal, not enough spice from the apricot and not much of anything from the celery. Almost there, but annoyingly a dish which should've been better.
One thing I did appreciate about this set deal at Aspleys was that they didn't hold back with the extras. We were served both pre- and post-dessert courses at the end of the meal. The former was a mix of raspberries and strawberry with some nougat (left). Yet again rather pretty and far from inconsequential. The after-dessert was a typical array of petit-fours which looked lovely and were a sweet and comfortable finisher (right).
By the time we'd got around to the main dessert (before the amazingly artistic post-dessert), we were already fairly full so we shared a peach zabaione, which is very close to the French sabayon; a sauce made from egg yolks and sweet wine (left). The dish, yet again, looked a picture. (This is why, incidentally, I've been keen to show pictures of everything we ate during this meal: the presentation is amongst the best I've ever seen.) It was a refreshing, fruity dessert where the addition of fresh peach and peach sorbet lent a real sharp quality to sit alongside the smooth cream. A lovely finish to proceedings.
Aspleys (I refuse to type that ridiculous name again) was a great set lunch. The waiting staff were humble, polite and attentive, the food looked fantastic and was generally rather tasty and the deal was good value for money. For the room, the staff and the presentation it's worth trying. The food is almost there and I would be tempted by the a la carte menu some time in the coming months. Heinz Beck has pedigree alright, and there is ample evidence that it's shining through in a fairly special dining room overlooking Hyde Park.
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