Dinner (by Heston Blumenthal)

Unsurprisingly, Heston Blumenthal’s first London outlet’s been the cause of a fair amount of noise and no doubt this was part of the reason I was quite so excited to go on Sunday. Other contributing factors were the excellent meal I had at the Fat Duck nearly two years ago; the fact that we were on the chef’s table; and of course that it was my friend Ollie’s birthday.

We sat at the Mandarin’s Mandarin Bar, full of anticipation and liberally disparaging the reputation of the single member of our group who held us up by 30 wretched minutes. The Dinner staff, for the record, didn’t hassle us a bit. Foolishly, we munched on bar snacks as if we weren’t about to eat to the point of agony until finally, we entered the room.

I didn’t really get a good look at the dining room as the chef’s table is immediately round a corner from the entrance. I have to say that it looked a bit big and bland, but the table was comfortable and had a good view over the kitchen which is certainly why we were there. Our waitress was lovely. Her historical explanations (every Dinner dish is based on one found in old writings) were laughably atrocious, but then that aspect of the concept is a bit laboured so it’s hardly her fault. More importantly, she was an excellent hostess and alongside our chef host (whose name I believe was Jorge and who couldn’t have been friendlier, more helpful or more generous, particularly after hour 4 of our company) was well equipped to answer all the questions we asked. Which is actually pretty impressive as we wanted to know details like how much gellan was used here or why gelatin was used instead there and what it was like working on their flashy new induction flat-tops.

Our menus were presented to us on scrolls in little boxes. It was ludicrous, but it’s proving handy now in jogging my memory for this review. The wine list was, as ever, long, but the sommelier helped select wines which were not only reasonably priced, but only contained one slightly duff option (an unusual South African blended red, which personally I found hollow rather than light) and an inspired choice of dessert wine for the meat fruit (a Jurançon I think, though my memory’s hazy).

Onto the food then, where you’ll have to excuse phone photos; my camera got left behind in the fluster of cancelled tubes: blame TFL. Before anything, we feasted on sourdough and much more importantly, one of the things that bizarrely stuck out about the Fat Duck, the most brilliant butter I’ve ever tasted. Unpasteurized and deep, turmeric yellow, it’s so full of flavour that you can’t help but eat as much as you can even though you know that there’s food for at least 6 coming your way in just a moments time.

Mmmmmm

First up was this little mackerel dish, one of the meal’s many highlights. Hay smoked with a take on gentlemen’s relish (which basically means anchovy mayo) and pickled Amalfi lemon. The mackerel was simply fantastic. As a piece of fish in itself it outstrips the Ledbury mackerel that I bang on about. The relish didn’t really match up, but that’s not to say it was bad; just that in the presence of a king, the duke somewhat lost his lustre. Light, delicately smoked and cut through by the pickled lemon (which, thankfully, wasn’t as salty as most preserved lemons), I could have gladly eaten this at least three times over.

Hmmmmmm

Immediately after followed the meal’s undeniable weak point. I missed out on snail porridge at the Fat Duck and so was quite looking forward to it here. After Jorge (I really hope that that was his name) explained that this version was a little different – more relaxed with a different compound butter – we dug in. The texture of the porridge was not good. It was sufficiently relaxed to be like eating a butter sauce that a few oats had just happened to slip into. The garlic was a bit strong too. Cod soft palate’s a good discovery, though, at least texture wise, as really the garlic took over. The shaved fennel salad, on the other hand, was amply refreshing and more importantly, able to cut through that garlic.

All up from there, though. Meat fruit arrived and was breathtakingly beautiful.

Look at it. It looks just like fruit. Really, it does. It’s incredible. Our waitress warned us that, though edible, the leaf wasn’t for eating and would really, “just taste like leaf”. I tried and it did; it was crap. The meat fruit on the other hand, was oh-so-very-very-good. This really was the thing that I could have sat and eaten for literally hours on end. Liberally laced with port, white port, I’m guessing some kind of dessert wine, it was everything a good foie gras parfait ought to be, beautifully offset by a wonderfully fresh mandarin jelly. And so smooth! Just look at it:

I always have a complaint, of course, and this time it was that my toast was a little bit bitter and cold, as if it had been made some time ago. But it really didn’t matter in the light of what has jumped up above the other Heston Blumenthal/APW foie gras dish that made me dizzy with joy (jelly of quail) to sit comfortably in the list of the top 10 things I’ve ever eaten.

The roast sea bass had a hard act to follow, but didn’t try and upstage and was all the better for it. A pretty plate covered in the somewhat odd sounding ‘Cockle Ketchup’. This dish was an exercise in balance. The beautifully cooked fish went well with the cockles (incredible, big, fat, juicy cockles – see below), though the ketchup was too sweet by itself. The chicory leaf was initially fragrant and tasty, if not delicious, but was then so woefully bitter as to be resolutely unpleasant. The pile did become a bit of an exercise in endurance until the discovery that, taken together, all the parts balanced one another well to create something that was exciting and delicious. Though still pretty bitter. My only real complaint here is that once you’re eating everything together, a bit of palate fatigue begins to set in with the strong taste of the ketchup.

Personally, I don’t like pork. The aftertaste reminds me squarely of the godawful pungent reek of a poorly cleaned urinal. Others disagree, I accept this, and normally it’s not a problem as we don’t seem to get too much pork foisted upon us in this country at least. But there in the menu was a blackfoot Pork Chop with sauce Robert. Which was really rather lovely.

Whilst it’s hardly local British produce (ironic, in a restaurant relentlessly hawking British culinary history), the Spaniards obviously know a thing or two about pig rearing because the meat was tender, succulent and well flavoured. Without even a faint whiff of stale piss. Result. Sauce Robert is a very tasty mustard sauce and the pointy cabbage is hiding there beneath a layer of Lardo, an Italian cured pork back-fat, which added not just luxury, but a truly delicious herbiness that almost seemed smokey even though I don’t think it actually is smoked. All in all, that’s about as close as you’re likely to get me to really enjoying a piece of pork.

Pigeon, on the other hand, is a personal favourite. I genuinely don’t understand why we don’t eat more of it. In fact, during the course of this dish I was nearly laughed off the table after arguing that we should do without beef and chicken and head straight to game; pigeon and venison alone would do. Anyway, this pigeon came with artichokes and an ale sauce, filled with raw ale, apparently, at the last minute, which certainly lent it a brilliant malty depth. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure that braised artichoke hearts really were the best accompaniment. Jorge described the evolution of the dish as APW combining Pigeon in Ale and Pigeon with Artichokes, and I’m not so sure whether they really did combine. What I’m absolutely sure about is that the artichokes were great and that even better, when they were gone, I had a mouthwatering piece of pigeon (Jorge obligingly provided sous vide temperature and time) covered in a sumptuous sticky sauce; heaven, then. A small part of me missed the Fat Duck’s Blood Pudding that so incredibly tasted like chocolate, but really I think that that part’s a fool.

Pause for thought. And then comes the Lychee Frozen Ice, perhaps the second weakest dish of the day. It was very pretty and those snaps you see in the top were lovely, but rosehip jam was too… jammy. It was very concentrated and coated the mouth, killing the delicate lychee flavour a little, which is a shame, as lychees are on of the bests things on earth and the ice itself was well made. I have no comment on barberrie granite (aside from querying whether we say granite or granita and if the latter whether Dinner got caught by MS Word’s autocorrect?), but found that sugar coated redcurrants, whilst nice, suffered from the enduring problem of redcurrants; those little seeds that get stuck in your teeth. Our waitress introduced this dish by explaining that sugar used to be very expensive so other things would be used. But that they’d used sugar too anyway. Which makes me feel two things. The first is confused and the second is that if it used to be a luxury, what you’re telling me is that my food isn’t a luxury anymore? Needs work, that.

Unfortunately I only have this one, lousy photograph of the tipsy cake. That’s because I was too busy being in hog-heaven eating it from the moment I put the spoon in to stop and take any more. By this point in the meal we were pretty full, but after a short spiel in which our waitress implied that pudding was made of leftovers (it most certainly was not) I put my spoon through what was, without doubt, the lightest brioche I have ever seen. It opened in a puff of fragrant steam and when I broke through the bottom… then my spoon filled with the most luxurious Sauterne/brandy/cream/butter/sugar mixture conceivable. The kind of thing so sinful it’s incredible that anyone ever made it. And it really was incredible. Even halfway through when I knew that every further mouthful was going to be agonising stomach pain, I did not regret a single mouthful. Conversation stopped as we all turned to our cakes. The pineapple was a decent foil, but really doesn’t merit discussion (and cannot have needed/merited the 2.5 hours purportedly spent cooking it) in the context of such a magnificent, majestic indulgence. The guilt in the air was palpable as we consumed.

We had a bit of a break, then. It was sorely needed. Bellies were distending, shirts were popping open, bow-ties were cast to the floor. At this point we’d been eating solidly for somewhere in the region of 4 hours and the grooves in the leather seats were literally inches deep. In our glorious discomfort we fidgeted around, trying to find a section of cool leather, clutching the cushions over our stomachs as if they’d do a damn thing to soothe. Then came the ice cream.

Jorge explained that Heston liked it very vanilla-ry and it was. It was churned by hand with liquid nitrogen on this funny little trolley and then we were asked which of the four toppings we’d like our ice cream dipped in. Here was a flaw in the plan. When the toppings were described to us – almond praline, dehydrated apple with popping candy, sugar coated fennel seeds, freeze-dried raspberry shards – only one thing was going to happen. And sure enough, a somewhat shocked Jorge received six orders for “All four please.”

The result was this. A little knobbly ice cream cone (filled with fresh strawberries in the bottom). The ice cream was actually nothing to write home about, and melted like it was going out of fashion. But the whole thing was really good fun. We were given extra toppings so we could carry on playing around and the fennel seeds were delicious (if a bit overpowering after a while). It was also messy as hell.

After the ice cream we really had reached a stage of full from which it seemed impossible that we would ever recover. It must have been a good half hour of sitting there groaning before the waitress timidly suggested that we might like some tea? Just a little tea? Nothing that’s food, honest. But there was food. Little glasses were brought to us with little spoons and little biscuits and we burst out laughing. We were actually being killed with kindness. And it was great.

The little glasses contained a white chocolate and Earl Grey ganache which had the texture of condensed milk (and a little of the taste, too) and a very strong taste of Earl Grey. It went excellently with the carraway and olive oil biscuit that sat to its side and was absolutely the straw that broke the camel’s back. After almost five hours we settled up and went to Hyde Park to sleep off the shame.

In summary, then? Not every dish I had at Dinner was perfect, but some of them were memorably fantastic. It lacks a bit of the excitement of the Fat Duck, as the combinations are not so innovative and I imagine that the food could actually struggle to make sense in the context of a three course meal. But taken a few at a time the dishes here made for a great eating experience and I’d happily go back, if just for the tipsy cake or the mackerel, or the pigeon. Three indisputable highlights isn’t bad for a meal, is it? Oh, and the meat fruit, four.

Recap: The Menu.

1) Hay Smoked Mackerel (1730) with gentlemen’s relish and lemon salad

2) Garlic and parsley savoury porridge (1660) with cod soft palate and pickled beetroot

3) Meat Fruit (1500)

4) Roast sea bass, cockle ketchup and leaf chicory (1830)

5) Blackfoot pork chop, pointy cabbage, Robert Sauce (1860)

6) Spiced pigeon with ale sauce and artichokes (1780)

7) Lychee frozen ice, rosehip jam, barberrie granite and red currant (1590)

8) Tipsy Cake with spit roast pineapple (1810)

8.5) If you’re my friend Ollie, a somewhat ambitious bonus pudding ordered by your friend who didn’t really understand quite how much food was coming anyway

9) Nitro Ice-cream trolley

10) Earl grey white chocolate ganache with olive oil and caraway biscuit

11) A much needed nap in Hyde Park to deal with the food-sweats

Zuma

Zuma (beware naff music) has become something of a family staple for birthdays. It’s lively, varied and nice enough to be special, but without the hassle of particularly bothering to dress up. This trip was perhaps my 6th in 5 years. How’s it changed?

Well, the crowd’s a little older, not quite as beautiful and the decor’s certainly not tired, but isn’t as achingly cool as it was at the peak of the fashionability of Asian fusion a few years ago. The bar’s still busy with well-to-do types and the restaurant’s still difficult to get in to and it would be pathetic to complain that the place no longer holds the novelty value it used to. If anything, I suppose, that’s a testament to its success insofar as it’s still here and I’ve kept going back.

How was the service? Well, blippy, for a restaurant of its price, albeit without the pretence that usually goes along. When we said, upon ordering, that one of our group would be another 10 minutes we were told that the food would come before he did and that the waiter couldn’t hold the order back a few minutes. Quite why is impossible to see. Additionally, even though we had a table, we had to leave a card in order to have drinks at the bar, though I suppose this isn’t the end of the world. The handling of my mum’s gluten allergy (which is a problem as it cuts out some soy sauces) was fine, but not perfect. The waiter needed prompting, seemed to think that  a new dressing for some fish couldn’t be made up with the special soy sauce we’d brought along (again, quite why is impossible to see: it was laziness). Additionally, no effort was made to accommodate her with the raft of puddings (more later, as it was impressive) that came at the end, where 2 of 3 contained wheat flour.

The food then. We had a not astronomical £96 tasting menu, which saw dishes brought for all to share. First off, a very delicious classic in the form of seabass sashimi with salmon roe and truffle dressing (the one they wouldn’t remake). It’s easy to see why you can get this dish everywhere: it tastes great. Then came a tuna tartare with lotus root crisps and some kind of cracker. Honestly, it was a little bland, though well placed in the menu.

Then a mountain of sushi and sashimi. The seabas reappeared, along with some fine yellowtail, plump salmon and excellently firm fatty tuna. The star of this particular show, however, was the scallop that was worth the money all by itself. Sliced into half centimetre rounds with impressively thin slices of small, sweetish, limes slipped in between the pieces, it was really incomparably good. Unfortunately, those pretty yellow flowers you see on top of the ice block there are initially lemony sour and then bitter as all hell and were a terrible way to kill my mouth.

The sushi, if I’m honest, lacked the variety it had on previous visits, consisting almost entirely of salmon and fatty tuna and in some rolls, whole shiso leaves that overpowered the flavour and were furry on the tongue. It was tasty, on the whole, but it wasn’t exciting and I’m not sure it was even a faithful display of the ingredients used.

The miso marinated black cod that followed was a step up. Once again, it may no longer be the wildly original dish it once was, but it’s ever so good, so we’ll let it pass. The langoustine “tempura” that followed were not so good.  In place of gloriously light tempura batter, the langoustine seemed to be wrapped in kataifi (that pastry that’s a lot like angels’ hair pasta). This didn’t quite cook through, overpowered the taste of the fish and went a bit soggy in the dipping sauce. I seem to remember having popcorn lobster on previous occasions which was so much better!

Nevertheless, the meal picked up pace after a miso soup interlude (rich and warm) with some beautiful grilled wagyu beef. We were treated to a sirloin and a ribeye, which was a fun little comparison (points to ribeye) and the meat was meltingly tender and beefy. And that was it, time for pudding.

Pudding was a raft of different desserts all served on a great long half-bamboo shaped dish, bizarrely, given that half the puddings were hot, filled with ice. Tropical fruit was just fine, green tea and banana cake was more sponge-rubber than sponge and pretty flavourless with a misjudged caramel nut sauce. The chocolate fondant with salt-caramel centre was, as always, absolutely delicious and fantastic. Green tea ice cream was by the by, coconut on the other hand, tasted a lot like Bounty bars, but was nice and light. The winner was a tropical fruit Chawan Mushi with a magnificent coconut custard in the bottom, chopped fruit and a lovely layer of lychee foam on top. Every layer sparkled individually and were really quite out of this world when all together.

A word on drinks; the cocktail list is good, if patchy. A kiwi bellini was absolutely as vile as it sounds like it would be, whereas a mixture of Woodford Reserve, pears and ginger was great. Stay away from the rhubarb and lemongrass thingy that tastes a lot like surface cleaner.

Zuma’s not as exciting as it once was and the menu’s hardly changed between visits (at all times of the year, too), but then, given that some of the dishes on that tasting menu really are modern classics, you can hardly fault them for it. Go and have a nice evening out, just don’t be afraid to put your foot down and get them to slow the pace a little, as the worst habit they have here is trying to turn the tables a little bit too quickly.

Here are a couple of photos from other people’s blogs (it didn’t seem polite to sit there flashing away at the family meal out).

The offending langoustine

Kitchen W8

Philip Howard is the man behind The Square, one of London’s most popular and respected restaurants (and my parents’ favourite, but that’s beside the point) and Rebecca Mascarenhas has opened a number of popular local restaurants. You’d think, then, that a joint effort would be a very good thing. Particularly one with a Michelin star. But truth be told, I found that it was a slightly-good-thing-not-without-its-flaws-(and-reasonably-significant-ones-at-that), which I understand is a mouthful, but feel to be accurate.

The outside was smart and black, down a side street off High Street Ken. Inside the decoration was a little weirder. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t like it – and my companions attacked me for saying this when we were there – but the design did seem a touch confused, with nightclub style glitzy wallpaper, a grey-white marble bar and crisp white linen tablecloths. What I didn’t like was our waiter. I know this is only the second review on this blog, but I’m scared that a theme is developing. The single biggest flaw in our meal was the waiter, who was a totally, completely and utterly miserable Frenchman. His service was unsmiling, abrupt, offhand and at one point when I asked for horseradish for my roast beef, slow enough that I had to get up and ask someone as my friends were nearly done eating.

Anyhow, I was having roast beef because we went for a very reasonable Sunday lunch at £25 for 3 courses (be advised that it does, however, as ever, add up when you’re wined, watered and so on). The menu was short, but everything sounded delicious, which is a very good start. Minor point is that my vegetarian friend (I know, she’s annoying) gently asked about options she was pointed towards a mushroom fricassee alone. More of a major point, when she told the waiter that she unfortunately didn’t eat mushrooms (I know: really annoying), he ignored her and she damn-well had the mushrooms.

The dishes had a certain Philip Howard precision about them (at least, when written down) and once we’d settled on a bottle of wine that wasn’t cheap, but no more than you’d expect given the nature of the place, we were all really rather excited. My first course was a raviolo of chicken and girolles with melted onions and sweet corn. It was tasty, undeniably, but mainly tasty of onions. In fact, almost exclusively tasty of onions, except for when a kernel of sweetcorn was popping in my mouth. The pasta itself had been rolled slightly too thin and sat slimy on the tongue and flopped around the mouth.

Other starters included a dainty little terrine (if that’s possible) with its ever-so-neat carrot salad. I didn’t take a bite, but I’m told that it was perfectly adequate. Not exactly effusive praise, but then I have ever so fussy friends.

My roast beef was a different thing. It didn’t look great on the plate, and our bastard waiter drenched my magnificent yorkshire pudding with gravy so as to make it soggy because that’s what bastards do. It was a good yorkshire pudding, though, and the beef was tender and deep and all told, incredibly beefy. The accompanying veg, however, were dull, slathered in butter and too much parsley. And overcooked. As for the potatoes, they were hard inside, not especially crispy on the outside and too salty to eat in the first place.

The fish (I confess: I’m now filling this in a week and a half later and I cannot completely remember the details of it) won a far superior review from my fussy fussy friend. The pasta was still soggy, though, and the portion meager. Vegetarian option was also pasta (terrible day for coeliacs) and was the infamous mushroom dish. Personally, it seemed a little too much like a puddle of starchy water to me, but then, I didn’t order it and probably never would have. The two who did, however, claimed to enjoy it. Bar the mushrooms, of course.

It wasn’t all bad though, and I ought to be clear that whatever the criticisms above, it wasn’t all bad anyway. It’s not that the food wasn’t good, just that the whole experience thus far was lacking a sense of actual hospitality. This didn’t really change at all, but one dish did finally begin to make up for it a little bit.

A gooseberry fool with gooseberry financier was simply to die for. It had crystal clear, cooling elderflower jellies that perfectly balanced the slightly tart flavour of bizarrely red gooseberries. Little crunchy bits of deliciousness ran throughout and it just got better with every mouthful.

The chocolate pudding wasn’t as good, but still very tasty. Unlike so many chocolate puddings it was sufficiently chocolatey: my only real complaint was that, being a little on the small side, the texture was thicker throughout than it might have been and robbed us of a truly liquid centre. Apricot tart was just fine and moreover, declared a winner by those for whom it was a preference in the first instance.

What, then, is the conclusion? The conclusion is that Kitchen W8 was good for a local restaurant and I admit, my disappointment tripled the moment I discovered that it was supposed to have a Michelin star. The fact remains, however, that the food was good. Not perfect, but on the whole good. For £25 it was good value. Would I have paid the £40 odd it would have cost a la carte? Almost certainly not, but there’s every chance that the a la carte could be better. Moreover, had I not been with a particularly etiquette conscious friend, I almost certainly would have had the service knocked off. For want of a better word, it was crap.

Altogether, this finally means that sure, you can go to Kitchen W8 and have a decent meal. If you’re in the area you won’t find anything better for the same money. You can probably have one equally as good for the same money anywhere else, but that’s hardly atypical. Once they sort the experience out (read, fire The Bastard) you actually ought to go. But skip the mains, at least on a Sunday.

Pollen Street Social

Last weekend I managed to escape work just in time to make a long-awaited reservation at Jason Atherton’s new Pollen Street Social. The best thing about PSS was that it was far more than the sum of its parts. Not everything was perfect, but I left at the end of the meal far happier than I have from restaurants which have been meticulous, but enjoyed none of PSS’ buzzing conviviality. Photographs borrowed so as not to embarrass dining companion.

I had read a review saying the place felt like a posh All Bar One. To this I have two things to offer in reply. First, is that it’s a little unfair. The decoration is unpretentious, furniture comfortable and it has none of the grime I associate with a typical All Bar One. Second, a “posh” All Bar One is inherently not an All Bar One. So there.

Image from the Independent

A decent Old Fashioned with a sizeable choice of bourbons opened the evening well, though my Pollen Street G & Tea was cocktail of the evening. It arrived as a glass topped with a tea-strainer (full of jasmine tea) through which was poured “smoking” gin and burdock, thanks to some judiciously placed dry ice. Rhubarb Belinis I am assured were delicious. I can imagine nothing worse.

We were shown to our table and took our sweet time over ordering. Eventually, however, we decided and after some excellent salt-cod brandade with the bread, the food started rolling in. Escebeche of quail was delicious, with beautiful little mushrooms packed with flavour and accompanied by a mouth-watering slice of melba toast, generously spread with chicken liver parfait.

The BBQ mackerel with cucumber chutney was always (at least for me) going to be compared to The Paragon of Mackerel Dishes, currently available at The Ledbury. This wasn’t quite as good, but then that’s a lot like complaining that you were allowed the beautiful girl, but not her best friend too. It was clean and tasty with a well placed slice of scallop and an exciting sheet of frozen ajo blanco. That said, it also came with a herb I didn’t recognise, but have a sneaking suspicion was a piece of fir tree. Regardless, it tasted great and then its little fronds stuck in my throat for about 20 minutes.

Full English Breakfast was a slow cooked egg, and though the tomato was a bit ketchupy and everything was a bit mushy, my companion only managed an “oh God it’s so yummy” in the kind of shocked/delighted voice you hear when somebody encounters a particularly delectable morsel of gossip.

The star of the show for both of us was the foie gras. Crusted in gingerbread, I suspect sweet-wine marinated (at least it had that sweetness) and accompanied by glorious dabs of black sesame and golden raisin purees. A hefty dose of smoked paprika in the raisin (again, I’m guessing from taste) lent a depth set off by the accompanying sourdough toast.

We had one main between the two of us; halibut with asparagus, samphire, tender-stem broccoli, but more significantly, a little copper saucepan of a Catalan paella interpretation that filled me with pleasing guilt that only encounters totally indulgent food.

Al dente rice laced with chorizo stock, enriched with shellfish and tomato and everything that’s good in the world. We ordered it when the smell from the man next to us having it was good enough to break with Britishness and actually talk to the person next to us.

The veg was a little on the firm side (bar the perfect asparagus) and the halibut was well cooked, but unspectacular. But I could eat that rice every day for a year, and whilst I’m sure the Jewish half of my blood would boil, it would only make me a happier man.

PB&J had tasty peanut brittle and perfectly good cherry jam. It also had a nasty strip of thin jelly that was like chewing a semi-bloomed piece of gelatin. Peanut parfait was also fine. More interesting was rice pudding with hay ice cream and lime jelly.

Image from Square Meal

I hate rice pudding. Loathe it. Really loathe it. It’s like someone warmed up baby sick and added the grainy refuse from God knows what. But this was okay. It was too milky for me, but tolerable. The real reason for ordering the dish was the ice cream. I love the smell of hay. Hay ice cream was, in fact, very tasty. Nevertheless, the surprise star of the show was the sparkly lime jelly that went beautifully with the accompanying crystalised tarragon. Flavour revelation. It’s just a shame that our somewhat pissy waiter spooned far too much rice pudding into the bowl without a word, drowning the jelly (which melted) and surrounding the ice cream (which also, rapidly, melted).

This brings me onto the final item: the service. The thing is, service is crucial, and by all accounts, those people we did speak to at PSS were extremely friendly, helpful and, in the case of Jason Atherton himself (who works every single one of the restaurant’s 12 weekly services and graciously chats to every clamouring guest who requests it), tolerant. The shortcoming, then, was with someone we didn’t speak to, or rather, who wouldn’t speak to us.

We had two main waiters through the evening. The Spaniard (who, in a nice touch, presented the paella) was helpful and knowledgeable to the point where he could tell me the type of rice used (I forget, but it sounded a bit like the Spanish for fireman?). The Frenchman who ruined my dessert was standoffish and disagreeable. He looked angry when we weren’t immediately ready to order and replied “do what you like” when asked for a little explanation of the menu (which suggests making a tasting menu from starters at the top).

The fact is, one typically grumpy Frenchman was not enough to ruin a meal in a restaurant that scored for atmosphere as well as food. At £80/ head (including 2 cocktails each) the Jury’s out on whether it’s value for money, but then given Mr Atherton’s previous Michelin star credentials and a central London location, little else is to be expected. I’d recommend it.