Only four restaurants this time, and two of those I'd been to before. Still, it all counts and in these times of financial hardship we mustn't quibble. I was excited by the prospect of one, enthused by another and happily looking forward to visiting one old favourite and a one-time winner from a couple of years back.
Le Vacherin: Chiswick, Friday 8th October
I've written about Le Vacherin before. I've eaten here some four or five times now and it's close to being my favourite restaurant in London. Never letting me or my fellow diners down, it's always delivered in so many ways, but particularly on the food which is always what matters most to me.
Mike, a good friend of mine and the other half all joined me for a Friday night feast which was prompted by our interest at their latest menu (it's changed fairly frequently and something always looks tantalising enough to suggest a visit). The place was pretty packed which wasn't surprising. What we went on to discover was that this hamstrung the evening somewhat.
We tried a variety of classics: scallops with black pudding to start were as glorious as ever and the chocolate fondant was lovely for dessert. However, the evening did leave me a little cold after all was said and done. The partridge I ordered was nowhere near the succulent gaminess I would've expected and there was no real sense of truffle on the plate, which there was apparently supposed to be. Steak, as ever, was delicious.
There needn't be more written about Le Vacherin on this visit, primarily because I don't want to write any more about how one of my favourite restaurants slightly let me down. I haven't been back since but I will do, there's no doubt about it. Somewhere as good as this deserves another couple of chances for sure.
Le Vacherin
The Square: Mayfair, Monday 11th October
As always with these kinds of event, there was one place I had earmarked from the beginning of the piece as a must-try venue. The Square is one of only a handful of London restaurants to hold two Michelin stars and as such I felt it was worth a day off work to go there.
The Square is every precise inch a modern Michelin-starred restaurant. Shiny but soft, welcoming but formal. I suppose you want a bit of intimidatory sheen when you take a day off work for a restaurant. One might wonder what the point was if it was just another badly decorated pretender to modern comfort.
There is much to admire about the food at The Square. Philip Howard is the main man behind the venture and he deserves all the respect coming his way. There are three London restaurants in his portfolio. Along with The Square, he holds a stake in both The Ledbury and Kitchen W8. Put simply, that's five Michelin stars across three restaurants: some rate of return.
Howard still cooks and oversees the kitchen at The Square, but the head chef is now Robert Weston, who appears to have been given the instruction to maintain the high standards of years gone by. A tall order, but for a Mayfair-situated, Philip Howard-run French institution, not an impossible one.
We ate six dishes - a proper two-person lunch - and generally speaking, expectations were met. I always feel a bit cheap and cheerful ordering from a set menu - event or no event - at a high end restaurant, but money talks as ever...
The first starter was a juicy and well-formed rich game terrine. Including duck, foie gras and grouse, it had most of the bases covered and the flavours were as bold as you want. The capers which seasoned the terrine were sometimes a bit too punchy though, but this was a little offset by the sweet damson chutney on the side. I'd always take a paté over a terrine (and always take a parfait over a paté), but this stuff was decent enough.
Our second starter leapt off the page as soon as I read it. A velouté of girolle mushrooms with truffle chantilly cream (the finest sweet, whipped cream) and something called Vacherin gougères on the side. Now, I know Vacherin is a cheese but I was interested to see what these gougères were. As it turns out, they are little pastry puffs with the cheese inside them. So, back to the dish... it was good but not amazing. I expected better to be honest - the soup was a little thin for me and the in-season girolles weren't quite as rich and satisfying as I thought they would be. Hints of truffles were all we got, but I like my truffles suggestively dancing on the tongue, not just hinting.
Main courses were where the fun got started. We opted for one meat and one fish and we enjoyed both. The meat was a cut of suckling pig - in a good restaurant you can't really go wrong with this - along with a crisped flake of shoulder, stuffing and assorted vegetables, jus and some quince acting as a chutney / apple sauce substitute (left). Perfectly cooked, it was tender, moist and salty-soft. Delicious stuff, even if it wasn't perhaps as stunning as the whole swine we put away at St John a few weeks prior.
Surprisingly, it was the fish which was the real star of the show for me. A fillet of halibut served with pumpkin purée, parmesan gnocchi and chanterelle mushrooms turned out to be delicate, flavoursome and beautifully combined. The issue I usually have with dishes like this is that they have never been particularly well thought through and the ingredients are too distinct from each other to make it a genuine 'dish'. In this case however, the fish was perfectly cooked: sweet, soft and wonderfully presented (right).
Dessert was a tale of one outstanding pudding and one that was also on the table. I'm not suggesting the chocolate mess with ice cream, coco cream and hundreds and thousands was not pleasant, sweet and quite lovely (left), but the show stealer was the cheesecake (right). Brillat-Savarin was the name attached to it and I'm pretty sure the great chef himself wouldn't be disappointed if he had made this cheesecake. Wonderfully soft, deliciously glazed with strawberry and outstandingly accompanied with ice cream and fruit. Most probably the best cheesecake I have eaten.So The Square might not have been perfect throughout, but it certainly showed enough flashes of brilliance to suggest it has earned its stripes as a two Michelin-starred restaurant. I'd love to go back for the a la carte when I can afford it and I would suggest you do too if you are able.
The Square
The Mercer: City Of London, Tuesday 12th October
After the heights scaled at The Square, we decided to have a go at somewhere I'd never heard of on the Tuesday: The Mercer. Situated in what may well be an old trader building on Cheapside, it's not doing much to stand out from the crowd in the area, because most restaurants in this area are exactly like that.
The food on the set menu - and on the menu in general, actually - is a summary of everything that's fashionable to eat in the city: pies, faggots, offal, game... Nothing to complain about but everything to be suspicious about. If anywhere in EC1 can do this sort of stuff well it's worth finding out about. I used to think 1 Lombard Street was the best thing on offer in the city before a re-visit left me irritated and cold, so maybe The Mercer could fill the hole?
Unfortunately no, but that's not to say the meal was a total let-down. Certain areas were indeed rather pleasant. The partridge as a main course was most enjoyable: served draped in bacon, topped with sage, above some turnips and some creamy sauce to finish... I put it away with gusto. The venison and ale stew was also pretty decent but I couldn't say as much for the rabbit pie, which was disappointingly bland.
Parts of the starters were respectable but for the most part they didn't wow any of us. Crispy oyster salad with ox tongue should be electrifying during autumn but was more a side event to something that never came. Devilled chicken livers on sourdough with girolles were okay but nothing more and the braised calf's liver faggot with bubble 'n squeak was the best of an average bunch. Very rich, slathered in gravy and dying to be eaten, it wasn't comfort food at its best, more high city fashion executed satisfactorily.
Dessert was a matter of one decent and two indifferent shrugs from the kitchen. The steamed sponge passed the first test of being better than something you get out of an upside-down pot in the supermarket but failed the second in that it wasn't as properly sweet and joyous as a sponge pud should be. Elsewhere, the trinity burnt cream with Baileys was in fact a lousy crème brûlée further ruined by the addition of Bailey's. The baked apple pie was so nondescript it fit right in with most of the rest of the fare on offer.
There isn't a lot to say about The Mercer because The Mercer isn't really trying to say an awful lot. I'd love to have said this restaurant is the future of the City with its bold British cuisine and strong flavours and ideas but alas... It turned out to be just another place where the best way to enjoy it is to order enough red wine that the food gets comped and you can have an indirect shouting match with the post work boys at the next table.
The Mercer
Roast: London Bridge, Friday 15th October
This was a re-enactment of sorts, given that I'd been here on the London Restaurant Week of 2009 and loved every bit of it. The other half had not been here previously so we thought it a good opportunity to sample.
We could only secure a late night booking on the Friday which was a trifle inconvenient. What it meant was that the place was seriously rammed and the atmosphere was a heady and heated scrum of post-work, pre-weekend diners.
The Festival was clearly good news for the restaurant because plenty of patrons were enjoying the event's set menu, augmented by a bustling and bright kitchen. So bright, in fact, that the heat lamps from it were illuminating our table.
Unfortunately, Roast was really rubbish in comparison to the meal I'd had there before. It was pretty poor on all fronts and much of it could unfortunately be compared to what I had back then. The first point is the pork belly, which I fawned over a couple of years ago. This time around it was crusty, hard and unpleasant. Where I couldn't finish it first time around through sheer indulgence, the second time it was through relentless monotony.
Also, the rhubarb crumble I tried on my first visit to Roast lingers long in the memory as one of my favourite versions of one of my favourite puddings. Alas, this time around the blackberry, apple and almond effort they threw in ramekins and doled out was way short of any such praise.
Elsewhere, the trout mousse to start was nice enough but ruined by burnt-to-a-crisp toast and the Gressingham duck breast was nothing to write home about. It's hard to mess up a duck breast (though it can be done) and whilst they didn't ruin it as such, I expect a hell of a lot finer than average when it comes to English food in season at Roast.
The other two dishes we tried were a chicken (also from Goosnargh) with lemon and thyme and a caramel pot for dessert. The latter was okay; good for a few spoonfuls before you started wondering if the effort and calories were worth it on your palate and figure. The chicken was - and I say this very truthfully - worse that I make at home. Dry, lifeless and exceptionally dull, we didn't bother finishing it.
Some years back, I lauded Roast as the ultimate in modern British eating, and the ingredients of a great eatery are still there. The location, image and philosophy of the place is top-notch. However, the food has clearly take a turn for the worst. That or my standards have sharply risen in the past year or so. It is probably a bit of both to be honest, but one thing I will say is this: I might have flown through the review but it shows just how much of a pain it is to revisit it after so many months, rather than the pleasure it might've been.
Roast
So, another event gone, another set sampled. Roast is clearly dead, dying or had a monumental off day. I hope for their sake it's the latter. Le Vacherin remains one of my favourite restaurants yet they were also clearly not at their best back in October. I will brave it again soon but I haven't since that fateful night. The Mercer should buck its ideas up if it wants to be relevant and add something to London's cuisine, whilst The Square is, simply put, a very fine two Michelin-starred restaurant.
It's easy to look back on all this with a dismissive wave of the hand some seven - seven! - months on, but I still remember all the food, the memories, the smells and sounds... It is enduring, rich and vital: the reason I eat, review and keep writing this damnable blog, even if nobody reads it. Roll on the next seven months.
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