Mignonette

Mignonette opened in September 2024 in Richmond, just a five-minute walk from the station. It is the creation of John McClements, who created a little restaurant group called Ma Cuisine after starting his career at Gleneagles Hotel. He once held a Michelin star at McClements in Twickenham, so he has a serious culinary track record. Mignonette seats around thirty diners and is serving French style bistro food. Starters were priced from £7.50 - £9, main courses £18 to £27 and side dishes at £5. The name Mignonette has several potential meanings, but in this case was named after the mignonette flower and also means “cute little one”. The tables are quite closely packed and there are lots of hard surfaces, so noise levels are high despite the absence of background music. Perhaps something could be done to improve acoustics as it was quite hard to conduct a conversation without raised voices.

The wine list was not available on-line, but ranged in price from £26 to £120. Sample offerings were Canteloup Medoc 2018 at £38 for a wine that costs £12 in the high street, at Dauvergne Ranvier Crozes-Hermitage Granite et Galets 2018 at £68 compared to its retail price of £17, and Chateau Tayac 2015 at £80 for a wine whose current market value is £18.

Bread was made from scratch in the kitchen, a choice of caraway seed bread and plain. This was nice enough in texture, and the caraway seed bread had quite string caraway flavour. The only butter offered was Marmite butter which seemed a little odd given its divisive reputation – why not offer a plain butter as well?

Sardines (£8) were served as fillets escabeche (pickled) with saffron tomato aioli and croutons. Although the sardines didn’t compare to something just off the dock in Greece, they were very pleasant and the aioli was good, the croutons adding an extra texture (14/20). I also tasted an excellent crab dish (£9.50), which had white crab meat, tomatoes and avocado along with pickled grapefruit, dill and olive oil dressing. 

Terrine (£9) of foie gras and chicken with Shaozing yellow wine dressing came with pickled vegetables and an excellent duck fat brioche on the side. The terrine texture was silky, with the vinegar of the pickled vegetables cutting through the richness. The wine dressing, though arguably a touch thick, had a real tang to it and was delicious (15/20).

Sutton Hoo chicken (£19) had crisp skin and spiced up a little with Timur Nepalese pepper, served with salsify, caramelised chicory and pommes puree (mashed potatoes). Sutton Hoo is a farm in Suffolk set up by Charles and Belinda Nash in 1994. It raises free range chickens using a traditional slow growing breed of bird, grown for ten weeks, which is at least 25% long than the norm for free range chickens. The result is meat that actually has some flavour, which is sadly lacking in most chickens raised in England. The presentation was quite basic and I would have preferred more of the sauce, but the quality of the chicken meant this was a most enjoyable dish (15/20). 

I also tasted halibut fillet (£26) arrived with Mediterranean prawns, rouille crouton and sauce bouillabaisse. The fish was precisely cooked and the prawns were excellent, with the sauce having plenty of seafood flavour packed into it (15/20). A “butcher’s plate” (£27) comprised stuffed pig’s trotter, French veal sweetbread and ox cheek bordelaise made with red wine and onions (16/20). The small trotter was cooked in the style made famous by Pierre Koffmann, being deboned, braised in beef stock then stuffed with a chicken mousseline and sweetbreads. The ox cheek had been very slowly braised for hours, with a rich reduced molasses exterior. This reminded my dining companion of a version served at Maze many years ago. The sweetbread (good quality French rather than the industrial Dutch ones that often appear on London restaurant plates) had been pan fried and was of unusually good quality, cooked to the point where it retained its springy texture, kept ever so slightly pink. Almost the only room for improvement was that the carrot with it was undercooked. Perhaps a touch more acidity in the sauce from a sherry vinegar would have added a little more balance to the richness, but this is a matter of personal taste. Overall, this was a serious piece of cooking showing multiple techniques. A delightful dish (16/20). 

My dessert was apricot orange Gugelhupf, a cake baked in a specific ring pan. The result is kind of a fluffier version of a panettone. It was sliced tableside and served with creme Chantilly, which is sweetened whipped cream flavoured with vanilla. This was lovely, having light and airy texture, the sharpness of the fruit nicely balancing the sweetness (15/20). Burnt Basque orange cheesecake was nice, with light texture, a good base and plenty of orange flavour (14/20). Caramelised pear and thyme tart tatin with Calvado cream had mercifully little in the way of thyme flavour (14/20). 

Coffee was Illy, which is a basic industrial coffee, though admittedly not the worst. A restaurant that puts effort into its suppliers could surely find a speciality coffee supplier? (indeed, this happened by the time of my next visit a couple of weeks later).

Service was friendly if a little basic at times, with “who ordered what?” a level that is acceptable at a fast-food place but probably not what you might hope for in a restaurant with this level of ambition. A canelé was pleasant though a little on the soggy side – the perfect canele should be have a caramelised crust that is almost crisp on the outside and moist inside, flavoured with rum and vanilla. The perfect canelé in my experience is made at The Cross at Kenilworth. The bill came to £60 per person, which seemed very reasonable. If you shared a modest bottle of wine then a typical cost per person might be around £75.

A second meal here soon afterwards was rather less consistent, probably not helped by the fact that Mr McLements was on holiday.

Orkney scallop brochette with Morecombe Bay shrimp on saffron butternut squash risotto has a good risotto made with a mixture of seafood and chicken stock. However, the scallop, though cooked correctly, lacked natural sweetness and just didn’t seem to me to be of very high quality. The prawn was fine and the risotto had very good texture, avoiding over sweetness from the squash (14/20). Perhaps a review of the seafood supplier might be in order based on this scallop.

The crab, avocado and tomato dish was once again good, though the halibut was overcooked, which did not happen last time. My main course of rabbit was lovely though, avoiding the dryness that often afflicts rabbit dishes (15/20). As before, the Butcher’s plate was excellent, the stuffed pig trotter being the star of the show. On the side, baby new potatoes were flavoured with rosemary and garlic, and there was also braised red cabbage with caraway and apple. The latter would have been improved with the use of more vinegar. The best side dish was a bowl of petit pois flavoured with a touch of bacon, the flavour combination working very effectively.

For the dessert, tarte tatin seemed less good that the previous one that I had tasted, the pastry not as delicate as previously. Honey madeleines with salty chocolate sauce were nice, although they were, unsurprisingly, not in the league of the perfect ones that I still recall years at Olivier Roellinger. Iced nougatine and praline with fresh mango was pleasant and quite refreshing (14/20). Coffee was a choice of Square or Perla Bianca, and the Square Mile coffee tasted very good. The bill for the second meal came to £54 per person. 

These two meals were still in the early days of the restaurant, and so some inconsistency is hardly surprising. However, there is some genuine talent in the kitchen and this is already shaping up very well indeed.