Nice menu, nice place. Shame about the food.
Firstly the inability to provide us with a glass of sparkling wine or champagne didn't get things off to a good start. So we gave up on the idea of a nice pre-dinner drink and ordered our food.
My wife had ordered something described as a taste of seafood, set to contain crab salmon, etc. But when it came, it was more like a glimpse of seafood, with pathetically small demi-portions of each and a teaspoon of green water, which was supposed to be a gazpacho. At over £10 for a starter, you would expect a lot more, and we've had better from tins at the local Morrisons for considerably less.
My starter - a risotto - was quite the opposite. It was absolutely enormous. Nicely cooked, fair enough, but by the time I'd finished struggling through it, I felt full.
My main came - a beef Bourguignon with potato gratin. I was expecting a kind of stew, but instead, I got a great hunk of beef and a small "frying pan" of stew/sauce, with which to pour over it. It was all nicely cooked apart from the miniscule excuse of a gratin, which tasted raw, with too much garlic and it lacked cream - a vital ingredient for any good gratin.
While my wife's beef fillet was perfectly cooked (well, after being sent back to the kitchen), it came almost like a lump of meat on a bare plate. No mushroom or onion, not even a dribble of sauce to make it attractive. But at £22 one would have expected a LOT more effort.
I couldn't finish my main for being too full of risotto, and for fear of any further disappointment, we asked for the bill, rather than a dessert. At £70 for 2 starters, 2 mains and a bottle of (poor) wine, we felt ripped off, certainly for an incomplete meal.
Most of the food was nicely cooked, but overall the presentation let it down; the food lacked creativity, and everything seemed upside down proportionally. A real shame, given the potential of this place as a posh nosh eatery.
1/5
Last visit: October 2008
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