I love stumbling upon somewhere I had no idea about. Especially when it's on a well-trodden path. There is a building near where I work which has changed hands and guises many times since 2006. At various times a bar, a restaurant, a lounge and a café, nothing really stuck. Until summer 2011. A big refurbishment started, leaving the wide-fronted structure wood-panelled and looking as if something mysterious was occurring within.
What was actually happening took a little time to fully realise. And, thankfully for me, a restaurant was happening. But not some high street, wipe-clean menu, chain restaurant. A restaurant restaurant. A restaurant with some grand ideas and noble, ambitious pretensions. I started to notice exciting menus being sporadically displayed outside throughout the week. Menus which made one stop and re-read. Dishes such as broken duck egg with apricot and girolle mushrooms did not belong on the kinds of menu I had seen here before.
Hedone is a restaurant run by a former blogger, the Swedish Mikael Jonsson. Technically this guy is my hero even though said information is all that's needed to qualify him as such. Anyone who can take a seemingly cursed building, put a proper restaurant inside and then start generating gushing reviews - from a blogging background - is worth time and attention.
When the reviews started, they were all positive. So much so that I was certain a meal here was never going to live up to the billing. The end of 2011 came and went and I hadn't mustered up the courage or cash to walk less than two minutes from my place of work to try it. That said, their opening hours for the first six months were a mish-mash of weekend lunches and random evenings, by the look of it. I later found out that Jonsson was trying to work out the best ways to proffer and price the menu before going at it full scale. I found this refreshingly honest: if you think it's not right, tell me and I will work on it.
Towards the end of 2012, they had clearly found their feet well enough. A Michelin Star arrived in the 2013 guide and they had started opening for lunch on certain weekdays. This was big news in every way. As such, two trips close together towards the end of the year - one planned, one most certainly not - were put together with similar results.
As all good toppy restaurants outside the middle of town (and in my opinion most of them in town) should have, Hedone offers a very reasonable express lunch menu. No choices but at £25 for three courses, this is value which demands a closer inspection. Three of us went for that on the first visit (the wife went for a la carte) and the wife and I both had the express menu on our second visit. If you're wondering, the reason the second visit was unplanned was the wife oversleeping by the small matter of a few hours. Michelin-Starred lunch isn't a bad way of making up for it though...
Instead of a blow-by-blow account of each visit, I'm going to compare dishes from each visit. I'll start with one ultra-consistency in terms of flavour, then secondarily, the actual dish. Their desserts featured apple on each visit. And boy were these desserts to fawn over. On the first visit, the wife's mille-feuille of apple in absolutely perfect flaky pastry with ice cream was a vision and execution of expert comfort and fanciness in a delicious pudding (above left). That is nearly impossible to top, but the standard dessert on the express lunch menu on each occasion was a rather exceptional salted caramel parfait with apple purée (above right). The cold cream was light, sweet-salty perfection with the apple adding a pleasant acidic note of textural variation.
Soup was the starter on the express menu on each occasion. The pumpkin soup on our first visit was intense, rich and a proper autumnal bowl of comfort (left). With a similar look and feel, the cauliflower soup of December's menu was a far creamier, more flavoursome proposition (above right). I probably preferred it overall since the soup's thickness and natural sweetness of the vegetable was more pronounced. They were both quite lovely and humble bowls to start a brisk lunch.
The wife's two dishes (starter and main) from the a la carte in November were interesting and creative. Her starter of a fried duck egg with pea foam, seaweed and mushrooms was a deep and varied mixture of strong tastes and soft textures (left). It was a starter that read as a fairly striking and original combination, but it made a lot of sense when put in front of you. Now that's how to serve modern upmarket food. Her main course of lamb noisettes with aubergine was a more traditional idea but carried out in a no-nonsense way (above right). The meat was beautifully pink with a juicy fat crust. Personally I would have preferred the fat a little more rendered but the taste was a smooth and salty blend of perfection. The aubergine on the side was grilled, puréed and dressed to combine well with the meat.
The main courses on each express menu were comparable in that they were made up of a meat, a sauce and a side. The pork with broccoli and quince & apple sauce was a well-conceived plate which was a perfect size for a brief lunch (left). My problem was with the meat which was a trifle dry. The duck with root vegetables the following month was a less interesting plate since there was no colour variation and only one cut of meat (above right). The confit leg was too salty in the event, which dominated the dish too much.The issue I had with the express lunch on both visits was with the main course, but for value and quality in general, there is very little to complain about on a lunch menu like this. The extras - bread & butter and a soft toffee at the end - were also very enjoyable. The restaurant is a sleek, neutrally welcoming room framed in dark brown wood and the best thing about this whole venture: an open kitchen.
Now I find open kitchens a little tacky and distracting. In most restaurants they aren't adding anything outside of an unnecessary noise level and a chrome sheen to the dining area. In this case, the kitchen (and I believe it is a glorified finishing area) lends a serene variation to the room. There is something about watching your dishes being finished in a Michelin-Starred kitchen which makes everything that bit more tantalising. There's something about Hedone which makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up. That's what happens when a blogger-turned-restaurateur gets it right.
Hedone
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