Berkeley Square Restaurant

The restaurant did not long survive the departure of its head chef - a shame.

Sadly Stephen Black and his wife have headed off to Australia, and the place is not what iit was, though there are still flickers of talent showing. The menu was priced at £42.95 for two courses of £49.95 for three courses, and there was also a 7 course surprise menu at £55. Breads (rolls of onion, olive white and brown, and the onion roll lacked much onion taste) were rather chewy (13/20). A pumpkin veloute served in a little cup arrived as an amuse-bouche and had reasonably good pumpkin flavour, though it could have been more intense and the texture was a little thicker than the ideal (14/20). My starter of “Sennen cove” crab with avocado, grapefruit and pea shoots was a disappointment. The crab meat used was the brown meat from the crab, and it had very little taste given that it was supposedly fresh crab.  The grapefruit segments were also rather dried out (11/20). Better was a pair of diver-caught scallops (sweet and timed well) with a bulb of well cooked warm foie gras, a little parsnip puree and a smear of ragout of salsify and girolles (16/20).

Roast loin of venison was reasonable, served with a well-made fondant potato, creamed Savoy cabbage, a parsnip roasted with a honey glaze and a sauce of beetroot and red wine. The vegetables were nicely cooked but the beetroot did little for the sauce and the venison was merely pleasant in taste (14/20). My wife's pasta parcels with ricotta were downright poor, the pasta chewy and hard (9/20). Roasted monkfish was cooked well enough but was rather uninteresting despite its miso marinade, while the “tiger prawns” were more like kitten prawns judging by their size, while a butternut squash tortellini had chewy pasta (13/20). A pre-dessert apple cake was mediocre, though my dessert of lemon tart with lime rice pudding was better, nicely made with clean flavours (16/20). The cooking was a serious drop in standards compared to when Stephen Black was in charge, and now the prices would seem too high to justify returning. Overall this was perhaps nudging 14/20 level, but this is no longer good value for money at £100 a head.