I love the feeling of going somewhere you just can't wait to try. Somewhere you've read about for months, somewhere you are dying to sample, somewhere that just deserves time and attention. After a rather hectic early October 2012, we took a bit of time out for a couple of holiday breaks (lovely to get a bit of late summer European sunshine) and came back to a town shrouded in mid-Autumn gloom. To celebrate (or commiserate), we headed to Medlar in Chelsea, somewhere which was about to receive its first Michelin Star and a place I had been itching to try all summer.
The one thing which strikes you about the Medlar menu is how charmingly reasonable everything is. The standard a la carte dinner menu is (still) a wallet-pleasing £45 and the Saturday lunch was a mind-boggling £30 for three courses. That's with a wide variety of choice and few supplementary charges. Anywhere that offers this sort of affordability with so much good press is a no-brainer.
The menu read like a dream, and the wife and I quickly settled on a few choices we would each like and share between us. A pleasant variety of bread & butter came and went and we were ready to get stuck in to starters. Mine was a rather incredible crab raviolo with brown shrimps. (At this point I would usually post a photo but in my haste, I only had time to snap a rather inadequate shot using my now-defunct Blackberry to brag about my lunch on Facebook.) It was a heavenly combination of heady, salty seafood flavours combining to great effect with the leek fondue and bisque which the pasta was sitting in. The pasta was perfect and the filling was an exceptionally cooked, beautifully seasoned, creamy delight.
I helped to inform the wife's choice and it was something I had heard very specific and enticing things about since Medlar had been on the map: duck egg tart (left). This is a dish conceived in the most pure and elegant way, with a fried duck egg on top of a flaky pastry circle, surrounded by bacon, turnip purée, red wine sauce and duck hearts. It was a delicious, meaty and rich plateful, combining English classics with a modern finish and perfectly-sized to cap it all.
Starters had blown me away. Whatever followed, the reputation of the place had been justified based on the first two dishes we tried. Nothing was going to match these but it didn't really matter. The wife ordered steak for her main course (right). It was an under-blade fillet, meaning it was cheap enough as part of what most of us know as 'chuck', but had been carefully cooked so as not to be overdone or chewy. It was served with some perfectly edible triple-cooked chips, salad and Bearnaise sauce. Plus snails. Now I often take issue with snails because they can be slightly chewy and more than often a bit pretentious. Sadly here I don't think they added much to the dish. The wife disagreed and demolished the plate double-quick. As an overall plate it was not bad, but not up to the standard of the starters.
My main course was a surprise to myself in that I went for fish. Seafood followed by fish is one of those rare menu choices I'll make on average about once a year given that my preference is always meat over fish. In this case though, I felt instantly vindicated. A sumptuously-cooked fillet of Cornish Brill was light, buttery and melt-in-the mouth satisfying (left). I would suggest the fish had been gently fried, given the flavour, but it could have been cooked in a water bath, so delicate was the touch. The accompaniments were inspired: Jerusalem artichoke purée for earthiness & rich savoury punch, braised chicken wings for a sweet-salty compliment to the fish, crisp pancetta for textural variation and salsify to remind one where the food came from. As a combination on a plate, I can't remember having had a better piece of fish.
Desserts presented a small issue since most of them contained nuts, alcohol or both which the wife and I are not fans of. However, as any decent restaurant should try to do, they accommodated accordingly. The wife ordered the almond panna cotta which would usually have come with Pedro Ximenez sherry (right). It came with poached pear and Ricciarelli biscuits. The panna cotta was well-set and creamy, the biscuits a much-needed crunch and continuation of almond sweetness and the poached pear just right. It was a perfect dessert after what had been a heavy and rich meal.
My dessert was a fruitier, more complex proposition. Whenever you order the glorious, fork-intimidating thing that is a mille-feuille, it had better deliver in terms of texture and exciting flavour combination. This was a blackberry one, and damned exciting it was too (left). Served with variations on lemon curd (cream on the top and ice cream on the plate), it was a much-needed sour shock of flavour at the end of a meal which threatened to put me in my grave, so deftly comfortable it had been. But the sourness was not unpleasant in the least. It had been well-measured with the rich, fresh blackberries to allow the pastry and typical sweetness in the ice cream to sit alongside. It was perhaps a bit much for the wife but I saw it off with no complaints.As we contemplated the outrageous quality of the meal we had just finished, four gorgeous, dusted chocolate truffles were placed on the table. We ate them with childish speed, so as we were signing the bill, four more came. These were eaten with about as much ceremony as the first four. Then, as we were about to get our coats, four more came to the table.
Since by this point, everyone knows how amazing Medlar is, I don't need much of a conclusion. Just read what I have written above. I had so much fun writing this because I could recall every taste, every emotion and every single thing that makes Medlar just about the best 'new' restaurant in London. If you haven't been, you absolutely must go. But seriously, if you haven't been... where have you been?
Medlar
