There are always a couple of stellar institutions within the canon though, which I'm always on the lookout for. This 'week' as it were covered five restaurants; good going for a couple who had spent rather too much on eating out in the months preceding this.
Rather than targeting a spread of different restaurants, I feel that when presented with the opportunity to sample a variety of places, quality has to come before style. As such, one may end up going to five great French restaurants but I'd take that any month of the year over a variety of iffy places. As it was, our spread for the fortnight was two Indians and three French. Let comparisons commence...
Benares: Mayfair, Tuesday 22nd March
There is something about upmarket Indian food that just doesn't feel right. It's like turning up to a formal function wearing trainers. Most English people see Indian food as theirs, something that is as much a part of their culture as the pub, Coronation Street and a royal wedding. Indian food's place in English culture is one of unassuming simplicity: after drinking, after work or on a Friday night.
Most English people from anywhere north of London will tell you the best curries in the world come from Leeds or Bradford. Most Londoners who think they know good Indian food will tell you to go to Brick Lane. Londoners in the know will suggest Harrow or a trip to Southall. Some might just end the debate by telling you to save money you would've otherwise spent on food and actually go to India.
I personally believe the best Indian food exists in Berkeley Square. That's right, I am flouting the golden rules of English curry eating and telling you that for a truly impressive Indian food experience, you want to get the tube to Green Park and walk five minutes up Berkeley Street. I suppose this makes me an extremely fickle and untrustworthy curry-eating Englishman in that it smacks of outlandish pretence and stubborn egotism. But I don't care: this stuff was delightful.
The set menu at Benares was a simple affair: no choices with some fairly traditional Indian fare being trotted out. But what fare it was... Firstly, I was always going to be impressed with the place because they had gone for one meat and one fish, main and starter respectively. Secondly, I was already in a fine mood for the set menu since we'd been treated to the best poppadoms I'd ever tried to begin (left).These were small, crisp-like things (not dissimilar to Discos, the circular crisps from the nineties), served with a selection of chutneys. The mango and tomato were flawless, as were the texture and salty thud of the poppadoms themselves. These were exceptional.
Our starter was a fishcake of hake and garlic served with mushy peas (right). If Benares was doing its best to dispel the myths surrounding English curry-eating with its take on modern food, it was done with a knowing nod to what makes Indian food great. Mushy peas! These are people who know food. The peas themselves were a treat. Not soupy, unidentifiable green slop, but a more refined, crushed and distinctive pea flavour. The cakes themselves had notes of coriander, garlic and the hake within, but none overpowering any of the others. Sensational balance from the plate meant a real treat as a starter.
The main course certified my love for Benares even before I'd tried it. A tandoori chicken supreme with spinach kedgeree was exactly what I wanted to see coming my way. (Not the spinach part, I hate spinach.) Tandoori chicken has long-been a favourite dish of mine since my early days of having a curry with the family. Always mild enough for my refined (yes, not 'bland' - 'refined') palate yet subtly packed with flavour, it's something I treasure to this day as a valued side dish in most Indian restaurants I frequent. It was simply marvellous; the wing and breast of chicken were cooked to moist, succulent perfection and the sauce was amazing. I just could've done with a little more of it (left).Dessert was a bit of a non-event as with any typical eastern meal. Mango and pistachio kulfi (ice cream essentially) in the shape of cones was okay (at least the mango part was) but left no real impression. The good work had already been done though. Not only in the main areas of the meal but also in the small sections: the exquisite naan bread, the green rice and salad with the main course, the sauteed onions on the side of the fish cakes... This is great, great food no matter which way you look at it.
Atul Kochhar is a revered and exemplary chef. The first man to win a Michelin Star for Indian cookery at Tamarind, he has now taken his trade to Benares and it seems to be going rather well for him here too. I can't recommend it highly enough, particularly if three courses for £25 comes around again any time soon.
Benares
Brasserie Roux: St. James, Thursday 24th March
The ever-expanding empire of the Roux family is not necessarily a good thing. Their heritage in this country with the brilliantly opulent Le Gavroche and the outrageously expensive three Michelin-Starred Waterside Inn in Bray is a rich and important one. They even hosted a Michelin Star club dinner for some hundred contemporaries a few years back. These guys - and their name - mean a lot to British cooking.
However, the legendary brothers (and their sons) developed three other London franchises with their name on: most recently The Langham, not long before then Roux at Parliament Square and a long time before; this brasserie. It smacks more of trading on celebrity than emphasising quality eating. But I suppose none of that matters if the experience is up to snuff. What's wrong with offering something a little more down to earth for those who can't afford half a grand to head up to Bray?
The memory of our meal at Brasserie Roux lingers long in the memory. I am writing this review much later than would be tolerated if I weren't my own boss (on the plus side I didn't give myself a bonus this year), but the tastes, sights and emotions of the day still resonate as clearly as if I'd been there yesterday. I am able to recount the highs and lows of a truly unforgettable evening with ease. (Not to say other late reviews are inaccurate of course, but this one has been crying to come out for ages.)
Brasserie Roux remains one of the worst meals I have eaten all year. In fact, it's up there with Bentleys and Criterion. It was that bad. When I say I could remember the highs and the lows, the highs constituted leaving the restaurant with the knowledge I would never again return and the smug knowledge that Brasserie Roux now no longer exists. I can also find scant evidence that it remains in Heathrow Terminal 5, a venture which was launched in 2008.
The lows were all-encompassing. The room was too high, too yellow, too loud, too tacky and too unbearable to stay in any longer than one needed to. The place was in dire need of a renovation or perhaps a demolition. Either way my ire has been somewhat justified in the franchise moving out of town and apparently disappearing completely.
Albert Roux apparently used to eat in here a lot when the place was more prominent (the best part of ten years ago) and his name was mentioned on both the olive oil bottles and the water bottles. I don't understand why, other than to emphasise how truly dependent on his celebrity this place was. My feeling is that if he had any notion of what kind of dross they were serving up when I was there, the place would be shut down sharpish. Wait a minute...
The food was as uninspiringly poor as anything I can remember eating at a semi-credible restaurant. The best dish of the evening was a salad of chicken oysters with leaves, tomato and lemon. It was the sort of thing that, served at a friend's garden party, you'd find charming and pleasant. In a supposedly decent French restaurant it was touching par for the course. Chicken oysters are usually juicy, flavoursome and joyous. These were okay at best. Hints of the strong meatiness seeped through and when combined with the leaves and soft tomatoes on the plate it was not wholly unpleasant.
The pigs head terrine on the other side was horrible. Too cold, hard and condensed to have any kind of a flavour. It was the sort of thing you'd find offensive at a friend's garden party, never mind anywhere else. Utterly boring, poorly presented and poorly produced.
Main courses got ugly quickly. Some risotto of radicchio was devoid of flavour or any kind of bearable consistency. The red chicory lent only a curious purple colour to the rice and nothing outside of that. We finished it only in the knowledge that hunger was worse than this. But only just.
Our second main course was like something you'd cook in a university halls kitchen and be proud of it. Chicken Basquaise is apparently a traditional Basque dish of chicken stewed with peppers and tomato. Brasserie Roux opted to serve it with tagliatelle. It sounds like a winning combination, no? Sadly the chicken had been stewed until the whole shebang resembled airline food. All overcooked, mostly flavourless and most damning of all, something I'd wager most patrons in the dining room could have cooked for themselves better than this.
Main courses out of the way, we sat back and further observed the drearily lifeless high-ceilinged hall and wondered if we ought to order dessert. Through a combination of morbid, sadistic curiosity and hunger we decided that we had to try what was on offer. I don't know what we were expecting from a strawberry and chocolate génoise other than more disappointing food that looked like a pre-made cake slice from a Sainsbury's dessert aisle. No merit whatsoever in the layered chocolate cake with strawberry mousse.
The other dessert was our banker for the evening. In theory, having begun with a relatively okay starter, something approaching the same for an apple & rhubarb crumble might have meant we left feeling somewhat less robbed. After all, how hard is it to mess up a crumble with ice cream? I'll say only three things: there was no rhubarb in it, the staff told us there was when we pointed out the fact that there wasn't, and you could make a vastly more impressive crumble in your own kitchen.
As I said earlier, it's somewhat a vindication of everything I've just written that the place no longer exists. However it's a bit bittersweet for me since I really wanted to be able to tell you to never, ever go there to eat. If this franchise has been swept under the carpet, bravo to Albert. However, this meal was so bad his good name deserves to be dragged through the mud one last time.
What was Brasserie Roux
Koffman's at The Berkeley: Knightsbridge, Sunday 27th March
After a Thursday meal approaching a disaster, Sunday was the great day of redemption after a week which had started brilliantly and hit the skids halfway through. It was one of the first truly lovely days of the year, bright sunshine lashing across the blossoming trees on the south side of Hyde Park as we entered a restaurant I had been dying to try since it had opened last year.
Pierre Koffman holds the same kind of sway as Raymond Blanc and the Roux brothers when it comes to England's chefs. He's trained Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay among others. His CV and success rate are impressively packed with accolades, mostly surrounding Le Tante Claire, the former site of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.
His opening a new venue in the culinary hotbed that is The Berkeley Hotel was big news. In place of Ramsay's Boxwood Café, his new venture was bringing to London a flavour of Koffman's past and culinary upbringing. All told, this was a really exciting trip and one I was fairly thrilled to be taking. It also happened that it wasn't part of London Restaurant Week, we just went for the Sunday lunch set menu.
There are two things which have to be said for Koffman's. The room, despite being a basement, is a picture of modern comfort. It's airy, well-lit and entirely welcoming. It has the unfortunate hotel habit of being quite beige and dim in certain corners, but I really felt happy being there. The second noteworthy mention goes to the staff. For the duration of our lunch, they were pleasant, helpful, friendly and utterly engaging without being overbearing. It really does make such a difference.
We had gone for two dishes which suited the home-honed Gallic nature of the restaurant: cold pork terrine and tomato terrine. Despite sharing a name, the dishes were starkly different. The pork was meaty, bitty and solid. The tomato was moist, squidgy and distinctly layered. Unfortunately, they were both poor. The pork was a little too close to the rubbish we had suffered days earlier at Brasserie Roux: so cold as to diminish much of the flavour and when you fought your way through to the taste, it was closer to something off supermarket shelves than a renowned chef's childhood. The tomato was ruined by thick layers of soppy bread interrupting the otherwise pleasant tomato and mozzarella. Ill-conceived to say the least, it was a real shame.
Starters surely were a red herring. There was no way main courses were going to be as poor as them, particularly as we had chosen duck confit and braised hare. The hare was served with fresh pasta and came in the form of a cake, as far as I could tell (right). The pasta was lovely - fresh as described - which made the fact that the hare was dry and unpleasant even more upsetting. The meat was so heavily condensed it was impossible to pick out any of the rich, deep flavours which make game so lovely. A massive disappointment which we couldn't finish.The duck confit should have been great but wasn't. The duck was salty, dry and crisp on the outside which left no colour or texture inside. To say I was disappointed didn't do it justice. After the rubbish hare I'd hoped for a vast improvement and was given more rubbish. Served with cabbage and juniper berry sauce, the dish was overwhelmed by a dead-tasting duck which left the whole thing flat and heavy. It was hard to pick out even trace elements of the accompaniments.
Having been so sadly disappointed by four poor dishes, we opted not to eat dessert. We had had enough of the food at the restaurant (if not the restaurant itself) so we asked for the bill. In a final gesture of sweetness, the staff gave us some madelines which we gratefully ate. They were similar to the bread to start: a nice bookend to a horrible meal.
Koffman's at The Berkeley is doing some things right. The sides, the staff and the room are lovely. Unfortunately they're forgetting the food. On a wonderful Sunday we couldn't bring ourselves to finish what was on our plates, a fact made doubly worse by how wretchedly lovely the staff were. For what it's worth, we topped up the tip.
Having eschewed dessert at Koffman's, we walked down the road and tried some ice cream and a milkshake at Morelli's, the Italian ice cream franchise in Harrod's. Even though the prices are steep, it's worth stepping in for a small cup of vanilla if you're in the area. Properly rich, decadent stuff and despite setting us back a bit, a sundae for two made up for the disappointment of Koffman's.
Koffman's at The Berkeley
Morelli's
Quilon: St. James, Sunday 27th March
Yes, you've probably noticed: two meals in one day yet again. The day which began with the surprisingly poor lunch at Koffman's ended with another surprising meal near Victoria. Two Indian meals within a week was certainly not my style. I was especially cautious given how much I had loved Benares earlier that week. I was sure nothing could live up to that.
Quilon is a restaurant with a considerable and eminent history. Around twelve years old, it has held a Michelin Star for the last four years, no mean feat for an Indian restaurant. It is passionately marketed as a coastal South Indian restaurant, a curious selling point, but one which absolutely gives prominent significance to its own identity, something many Indian venues don't feel the need to address.
The set menu here was similar to Benares in that there weren't any choices but it was one deal for the whole event. However, this was a more varied, lengthy and adventurous menu; one which lent itself to sharing more than Benares too. As with Benares, something simple and unassuming kicked the evening off in unforgettable fashion: a mango lassi. A traditional Indian yoghurt-based beverage, this thing was mild, thick, sumptuously fruity and sweet at the same time. I don't know if I'll ever find a better one. The other half didn't agree, choosing a virgin apple mojito instead, which was heartily enjoyed.
Also like Benares, Quilon served their poppadoms as small crisps rather than the large efforts you see everywhere else. If there's one thing I'd learned this week, it's that small poppadoms are the way forward. Despite the fact that we had eaten a heavy (too heavy by half) lunch and a load of ice cream hours earlier, I was already feeling my appetite stirring again after these.
We were given two starters: pepper shirmps and mini vegetable dosa. These were similar to Benares in terms of quality but were some way apart in style. Less high-end dining, closer to the sort of down-to-earth Indian food the English are used to. But then again it wasn't. Shrimps aren't something one would normally associate with curry, and who ever heard of a dosa? The latter, it turns out, was a thin savoury pancake which had been folded into a cone, underneath which were the vegetables. Pleasantly spicy, perfectly cooked and totally original.
Despite the shrimps being cooked in a 'fiery masala', they were delicious. Battered and firm-fresh, the content was lovely, even though the sauce was a bit too spicy for me. Starters in general were a real treat and I was eagerly anticipating our main course. Unfortunately, before we got there we had to deal with the palate-cleanser of some thin, warm tomato soup which was spicy enough to irritate my throat as opposed to readying me for the next course.
The main course, as it turned out, was a combination of two main dishes and some sides. All were enjoyable, but in rather a rustic and bullish sense. The marinated and roasted tilapia served on banana leaves was an exquisitely fresh and vibrant fillet of fish.The light, white flesh was perfectly coated with its mild yet flavoursome tomato-y sauce.
Sadly for me, the Manglorean chicken (also called Kori Gassi) was far too spicy for me. The red colour of the sauce should have acted as a danger sign in this case. The chicken was perfectly cooked but the combination of chillis, peppercorns and cumin left me gasping for my lassi. Happily the waiting staff spotted my discomfort and brought over a small pot of yoghurt. Pure class.
The battered okra suffered from being okra. It sounds silly but the vegetable is nearly without merit. Always stringy, rarely flavoursome and usually useless. This was okay but that is the very best it deserves. Happily the Malabar paratha was much more appetising, staying true to the traditional south Indian origins of the place. Rather than serving naan bread, the paratha was thinner (as it usually is) but layered and cooked with ghee for a surprising and satisfying outcome. Lemon basmati rice was predictably delicious.
Dessert was some boring mango sorbet, but the appeal of Quilon had already hit home by this point. The caring authenticity and diligent enthusiasm with which their food is prepared and presented deserve all the praise coming to them. I didn't enjoy it as much as Benares, but I think that may be because Benares has geared their food more towards western fine dining than Quilon. It's better for me but may not be for you if you really love Indian food.
Quilon ensured a day which had begun badly finished very well. I wouldn't call it the best Indian food you can eat in London, but as a Michelin-starred restaurant, it's doing very well in staying true to its values and serving really good food.
Quilon
Le Cercle: Belgravia, Thursday 31st March
This was little more than an afterthought to the meals that had preceded it. We had been wowed by two stunning Indian meals and let down by two poor French efforts. The final meal (another French) should have been able to restore the balance somewhat. Le Cercle is an offshoot of the popular Michelin-Starred Club Gascon of Smithfield. I wasn't massively impressed by Gascon on the visit we took a year prior, but was happy enough to try their newest venture near Sloane Square.
Le Cercle as a venue is a bit of a strange one. It's the downstairs area of a converted townhouse which has been hollowed out to resemble a church hall covered in elegant drapes. You feel as if you're surrounded by ghosts who have come to attend a formal sixth form dance. Bizarre, but under the hazy spotlights, there is something of a modern charm to it.
We pretty much ate all we could from the two set menu choices on offer, which proved to be an interesting experience. The starters looked exciting: a spring salad with flowers and baby ravioli. They both looked good too (left). They turned out to be half-dishes that were easy on the eye, sadly. The salad was exceptionally fresh, combining the gladioli within to the cool tomatoes and firm peas to make a pretty special taste. However, it tailed off quickly, leaving more of a hint of something that could've been great instead of a fully-formed, truly satisfying starter.The ravioli (or baby ravioles as they were billed) did very little for me. They were swamped in a yellow carrot jus which left them with no room to breathe or express any interesting quality. They were filled with cauliflower which I thought was a daring choice, especially since it appeared to be uncooked. From something which sounded simple, then looked complex, this was a failure of a dish from conception through to execution.
Main courses looked likely to impress though. A departure from anything too fancy or nouvelle, haddock with mash and guinea fowl instantly galvanised my interest and I hoped for two dishes which followed through on their promise, unlike the starters. Sadly, both followed suit in that they were half-finished and insubstantial. The guinea fowl was well-cooked but lacked any kind of bite, an exercise in joyless posturing (right). It looked great and the puréed potato was lovely, but there was nowhere near enough of it.
The haddock was similar to the ravioli in that it was isolated in the middle of a huge plate, cut adrift of any notable taste or meaning (left). The fish was acceptable, the sauce vierge was tomato-like, but all else didn't matter. The mash had been formed into some sort of thin cake and the whole dish was a disjointed disappointment.Desserts came and we realised that, two-thirds of the way in, we were still hungry and rather grumpy. Our mood did not improve when we discovered that the 'mini tour de France' option was a selection of cheeses which we found pungent and unnecessary. The chocolate fondant was possibly the best thing we'd eaten all night, but again they seemed to be giving out half-portions. Tiny and frustrating - a perfect symbol of the evening.
I doubt I'll go back to Le Cercle. There is definitely some quality lurking within their tiny dishes, but it is this pretentious and over-ambitious (not to mention stingy) approach which cost them on this occasion. We left feeling under-nourished and unloved. Not the message any restaurant wants to leave its customers.
Le Cercle
A few weeks, plenty to see and do, plenty to talk about. Surprisingly, the Indian meals led the way and finished the event resoundingly on top. I expected brilliance from Koffman's and was horribly let down. Le Cercle was an unknown quantity which left me hugely unimpressed and Brasserie Roux is happily no more.
Focusing on the good parts of the event, Benares and Quilon remain firmly on my list of places to go back to. Both meals were impressive, generous, graciously served and enjoyable. Indian food and I have something of a tricky relationship, but this fortnight opened my eyes. French food was not knocked off its perch, but it certainly had a wobble.
