There's nothing quite like justifying spending money you shouldn't really be spending. The excuses we use to justify the outgoings can get so ridiculous: "I didn't have three courses last week so I can have dessert now", "The saving means the cost is worth it", "This week is the anniversary of when we first went to the cinema together". Whatever spin we try to put on it, the ends are rarely justified and we end up spending money we shouldn't have for no good reason at all.
In a classic episode of unaffordable spending, the wife and I chalked this one up to a half-price deal and a friend leaving the country. Putting two together like that was just about enough reason to go for it, so we went back to a restaurant that had surprised us some years ago.
A table for five was booked and we perused a fairly extensive menu, happy in the knowledge that we'd get half off at the end of it all. Three of the table started with scallops served with crispy pancetta and regretted it pretty quickly. It was a badly executed dish in all sorts of ways, the worst being that the whole lot was dry. The scallops didn't taste at all fresh and none of the ingredients combined with any sort of coherence.
The wife went for a duck egg served with cured ham and a sauce of celeriac & apple. It was a well thought-out dish but one that wasn't presented with panache. It was the sort of springy starter you'd love to eat as the weather warms but in this case it was a fairly iffy plate of food that occasionally hit the spot.
My starter was a smoked haddock and chervil soufflé with chive & saffron cream. It was by far the best starter on the table and one that instantly caused much jealousy amongst the others. A fine, light but punchy soufflé combined the salty haddock with the more delicate hint of the herbs. The cream sat thickly coating the coarser flavours from the fish which made for a beautiful starter.
Steak & chips was a classic from our first visit and two of the party went for it here. Again it proved to be a relative success: triple-cooked chips which were rather fine with some properly-cooked steak. Not the kind of dish you'd want to pay the normal asking price of £37 for by any means, but for £18.50 it was about right. We decorated the table with various sides also, the pick of which were some simple field mushrooms.
The fish dish sampled with the main courses was some pan-fried halibut. It was a plate of food which confused on first inspection because it was unfortunately overfull and a bit sloppy. A good piece of fish should need little in the way of support if it has been cooked to a succulent turn but this came with a terrine of cod & potato, carrots, cabbage and spinach foam. All of which added up to an unsurprisingly addled, dry and overcooked main event. The terrine was the highlight but that's not good enough when the central part of the dish is under-delivering.
Continuing the theme of under-deliverance, the wife chose our main course as the pot-roast black-leg chicken for two. It might sound a slightly strange choice but when I read that it came studded with truffle, I could see where her mind had been unshakeably made up. It wasn't a bad choice, reading the accompaniments: roasted root vegetables, bread pudding, truffle jus and dauphinoise potatoes. One thing was for sure: we weren't going to be hungry at the end of it.
Sadly, the whole thing was a botched effort in that it was more or less a standard roast bird which they'd tried to dress up. There was no taste of truffle anywhere in the chicken or the gravy. A huge disappointment for sure. Sadly, the dauphinoise potatoes were as bad, given that they were practically uncooked. A real shame since the sauce was lovely. The whole thing was a stodgy, misjudged, poorly-developed dish.
The wife and I risked desserts in the hope that we'd salvage a halfway decent meal out of this. It was, predictably, a mistake and we were left ruing our decision. The white chocolate cheesecake the wife ordered was a predictably haphazard rendition of a startlingly standard pudding, where my "lemon plate", a mixture of tart, panna cotta and sorbet was a dull trot-out of yet more uninteresting dishes.
So clearly Athenaeum has let its standards slip since our first visit. Or perhaps it was never that good in the first place. Either way, we did not enjoy ourselves as much the second time around. The fact that they seem to have a never-ending 50% off deal on Toptable is testament to the fact that this place is just spinning its wheels. There are some good things about this place, but as far as generic hotel eating goes, it's more or less what you expect for a place that's merely knocking on the door of exclusivity and prestige.
Athenaeum
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