The dining room has a pleasant, airy feel to it, with white walls and plenty of natural light. The menu is brasserie food, which depends for its success heavily on ingredients, a bold move in England. Starter of warm prawns with garlic had correctly cooked prawns in a pool of olive oil, but the prawns themselves were ordinary. Similarly crab and lobster salad was overwhelmed with herb flavour, which perhaps was wise given the ordinary shellfish (12/20). Onion tart was better, nicely made with a soft base and plenty of onion flavour (14/20).
Main course was a whole chicken served with some foie gras. The chicken was a good blackleg chicken roast correctly, but I did not understand the foie gras addition, which was too rich for the dish and lacked any counterpoint of acidity (13/20). Served with the chicken were decent French beans, fair chips and rather watery dauphinoise (12/20). Desserts were a decent tarte tatin of apple with not enough caramelisation, and a pleasant orange ice cream (13/20). Perhaps the best thing was the bread, crusty country bread from the London Bakery (16/20). Coffee was fair.
The wine list was naturally mostly French and had some good producers e.g. Mas de Daumas Gassac 2006 was £55. Service has been criticised in some reviews but was fine tonight. The issue I would have is value. With a moderate bottle of wine, a pre-dinner drink but no dessert wine we managed to run up a bill of over £90 a head. This seems a lot for what is essentially decent bistro food.
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Amol Parnaik
Yeah, I agree with your scores. I also liked the onion tart the best. I was a nice enough meal but very expensive for what it was. If, in the end, we desired roast chicken with sides, perhaps Rotisserie Jule might have been a good option. Desserts were fine, but the over rich foie gras kind of spoilt it. 3/10 seems like a reasonable mark.
Alex Chambers
I'd agree on the score too. My spatchcocked poussin sounds like it was an improvement on the much hyped roast chicken- it was delightfully cooked and had a great lemon flavour. The truffle pasta was less successful. I found the service to be generally very friendly, though remarkably inept. I can't help but think this starts at the top, as the maitre d' was awful. Not a bad meal at all, just rather underwhelming given the reviews.