Bistrot Bruno Loubet

Returning to London on a balmy April evening was very special, particularly as Cowie was able to join me for dinner at my hotel’s much hyped new restaurant, Bistrot Bruno Loubet. Many words have been written about Bruno Loubet’s return from gastronomic exile in Australia so I shan’t write about the subject. Especially as I am not geeky enough to have heard of him until very recently.

I hardly ever spend much time writing about the staff we encounter in restaurants apart from when we almost needed gas masks because of our waiter’s smelly pits in Belgos and the disastrous service at The Albany. But Bistrot Bruno Loubet deserves enormous amounts of praise for the front of house and for our waiter who was affectionately known as “The Chicken” by his colleagues. Between the two of them, they made us feel like the most important people in the room and took great pride in recommending their favourite dishes with the sort of enthusiasm that you know is genuinely because they love the food.

I also very rarely write about the design of restaurants, mainly because I am utterly unqualified to do so and partly because I normally get too excited about the food and blast on in. I really enjoyed the aesthetic experience of the restaurant. From the stylish royal blue and gold typography to the abundance of cool lamps, to the integration of the objets d’art into the menu, to the soft, textured leather wine list, the experience was thoughtfully composed. The only irritation was the way the lighting resulted in me eating in my own shadow. Maybe it’s just a quirk I’ve got, but it’s very offputting.

The menu here is the kind that makes you consider bulimia and wish you were wearing expandable trousers. Cowie and I negotiated for around quarter of an hour before deciding what to scoff.

Cowie’s skate terrine with Sauce gribiche was the sort of clean, bold and refreshing starter that such a fine evening warranted. It’s not a dish I’ve seen before but is one that’d I’d love to try again.

My snails with meatballs and mushroom mousse was as impressive as it sounds weird. The snails and meatballs made exceptionally good bedfellows. And the red wine sauce they were swimming in couldn’t have been any more French if it had cheated on its wife whilst surrendering to a baguette.

Cowie’s salmon confit was soft, slippery and quiveringly moreish. The juj of salad that came with it tasted not only of spring but also of Cowie’s platonic form of side dish.

My hare royale was like Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries. It boomed with baroque flavour and rumbled with bass notes of rich meat. Lumps of foie gras studded the centre. Shards of pork belly jostled for position with the lumps of tough hare. And all was drenched under more heavy red wine sauce. Beneath lay some sweet pumpkin puree. And on top perched an undercooked ravioli containing an unknown filling. Whilst I’ve been critical about some of it’s technical flaws, it wasn’t half tasty. I’d just love to know what it’s like when it’s perfect.

By this point I felt like an inbox that’s reached it’s limit that keeps issuing quota warnings whenever you get a fresh email. So the only solution was to purge ourselves with a trio of ices. Raspberry sorbet was good, but was too deep, whilst rose water ice cream was perfect. But the passion fruit sorbet was far too sharp and needed an extra beehive of honey to counteract the acid. I wish I’d had space to try their Valrhona chocolate tart instead. Or some of their salted butter ice cream.

Whilst our meal wasn’t utterly perfect, it was still very good and I’d love to return to test out more of the menu, especially some of the lighter dishes in the summer time, such as quail and pigeon. And also to indulge in their desserts. To appropriate the words of David Ogilvy, “advertising and PR can’t sell a bad product twice”, so it’s great that the hype around Bruno Loubet is well founded. It’s a great restaurant that fits the current trend towards nostalgia that we all need in a time of uncertainty and I look forward to dining here again.

P.S. When I checked in for breakfast I was told I had become the mayor of Bistrot Bruno Loubet on Foursqaure! Does that mean I get free champagne?

Other opinions:

The Guardian didn’t like the hare dish
Evening Standard
Dos Hermanos
The Independent
Douglas was disappointed
Tom Eats Jen Cooks on Breakfast

A lunch worthy of beatification at St. John

I’ve re-written this introduction four and half times now. Which is quite apt given that the occasion was to celebrate my departure from my current job after the same number of years of busy toil. And for the same amount of time I’ve been gagging to eat at St. John and have developed a zealous love of off-beat cuts of meat and English cooking styles. So to say I had high hopes is like suggesting that John Terry has got an eye for the ladies. I just prayed that all my pent up enthusiasm wasn’t going to be let down. Fortunately, it wasn’t.

From the moment we arrived in the stark but light atrium, surrounded by institutional white paint and police station glass, until the moment we left four and a half hours later, we were treated with informal efficiency. The sight of Fergus Henderson enjoying a light lunch just made the whole experience even more special.

We started with a pint of savoury Black Sheep ale whilst a colleague got sidetracked on the phone. This gave us time to delve deep into the bowels of the menu whilst tucking into perfectly baked bread. We had to be careful not to wolf it all down and spoil our appetites.

Langoustines were magnificent specimens that begged to be sketched by someone with more talent than me. They were sweet. Fishy. Juicy. A more classically inclined individual might describe them as the Platonic ideal of shellfish. The yellowy-green, mayonnaise they were served with made for perfect dunking as the slightly bitter taste helped to highlight the langoustine flavour. Whilst fiddling with the claws, in an ambitious attempt to get the last shard of flesh out, I remembered a story my father tells about how on a holiday to Brittany when I was still in a pram, I was parked opposite a lobster tank and fell under the mesmeric spell of the shellfish. The next time I was fed I rejected my pappy baby food and demanded langoustine which promptly made me very ill! This whole episode probably explains an awful lot!

Bone marrow with a parsley and caper salad is famous. And rightly so. I now know why dogs are obsessed with the things (minus the parsley). Is there anything in the world that visually promises so little but delivers so much? Spread on hot toast and sprinkled with salt and we were all in bliss.

Sprats with tartar sauce were tremendous. I’ve had them a few times recently and these were definitely the best. Crispy, juicy and well sauced.

A single native oyster from Mersea was the best I’ve ever had. It deserved to be put in one of those memory capsules that school children fill with things they want people in the future to discover. Crucially it tasted purely of itself.

It took us a while to decide what to have for our main courses. Guinea fowl with lentils turned out to be delicious as did a Flinstonian sized pork chop. But I was delighted to be ushered in the direction of chitterlings and chips rather than a safer option. Chitterlings are exactly the sort of thing you should eat in a restaurant like St. John. You can cook guinea fowl, pork chops and steak at home. But chitterlings require expert knowledge to ensure they are prepared properly. Failure to do this can result in illness owing to fact that they are only inches away from a pig’s anus.

The only previous time I’ve encountered chitterlings was at Chilli Cool, where they were prepared in a Sichuan style to great effect. But this time they were simply served having been poached and then grilled over charcoal. The meat was soft, juicy and salty. Not unlike eating roast ham in sausage format. I’ve been in raptures about them ever since. The chips and sauce they came with cannot be faulted either.

Ox heart with beetroot and horseradish was magnificent as well. The heart had been sliced into livery slithers and quickly grilled. It was soft and lean like Rowan Atkinson wrapped in an acre of velvet, but a lot more edible. I just wish they served ox heart in sandwich format on a regular basis.

Excellent Eccles cakes and blackberry ripple ice cream added a triumphant full stop to our meal. It’s rare when something you’ve hyped up to biblical levels lives up to your high hopes. St. John, didn’t live up to them. It rewrote my expectations and has inspired me to eat more boldly. Thank you for the best lunch I’ve ever had in London.