No Expert – Page 9 – No Expert …but I know what I like

After recently dining at The Providores I was keen to try The Modern Pantry where Peter Gordons former protégée Anna Hanson produces some very interesting food.

The Modern Pantry is located in St Johns Square, right next door to the delightfully cosy Zetter Townhouse which was ideal for our post lunch cocktails.

We entered The Modern Pantry via the side door, through the informal cafe and were escorted upstairs to the modern quirky dining rooms, with their designer lampshades and wooden floors which in conjunction with our wobbly table introduced a strange bouncy effect when any one walked by.

As expected the food was imaginative, combining unexpected ingredients to enhance the flavours.

There is a separate charge of £2.60 for the bread, but that makes sense as the bread here is not the boring options provided by most restaurants. The aniseed bread in particular was a real winner.

I started with the the New Caledonian prawn omelette with green chilli, spring onion and smoked chilli sambal, the combination of the sweet prawns and chilli was stunning, making it the best tasting and interesting omelette I have ever had, a dish that if I made a return visit I would struggle not to order again.

My companion ordered the king scallops with Jerusalem artichoke mash, a tasty dish that was unfortunately spoilt by some grit in the scallops.

For main course I had the lamb rump with curry leaf besam chips and curly kale. The chips were great, less so the curly kale which rather dominated the plate. This dish though was served with a quite lovely 1999 Urbina Rioja.

My companion had the roast cod with chorizo and squid ink mash, a terrific dish that successfully combined some very strong flavours without overpowering the cod.

We finished with the pumpkin and gingernut cheese cake with mulled wine sorbet and the eggnog bread and butter pudding, both rather festive choices.

All in all despite a couple of flaws, this is fusion food that really works. We had a very enjoyable meal in a venue I would be happy to return too.

With the Modern Pantry and Bruno Loubets at the Zetter, St Johns Square, Clerkenwell is a developing into quite a foodie enclave, which can only be a good thing.

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RSJ – Something old and reliable

Not many London Restaurants have been around for as long as RSJ, it opened way back in 1980 and has been in The Good Food Guide since 1981 and not many London Restaurants are fully booked on wet Wednesday evenings either. I suspect RSJs longevity and success are based more on repeat business rather than as a potential pre/post theatre venue – it is a short walk from there to the IMAX and the Old and New Vic Theatres.

RSJ is a rare find, it feels like a “neighbourhood” Restaurant, but is actually in a back street near Waterloo Station. It is also one of the best places in London to sample Loire Valley wines (in fact they specialize in them and run regular wine tasting events – check out the Wine List).

The food is not cutting edge nor is it trying to be – it’s good quality perfectly cooked comfort food. The menu is not large (always a good sign in my view), there are a few a la carte dishes and a nice range of options in the reasonably priced set menu.

I choose from the set menu and started with the Whiskey cured mackerel with beetroot salad and orange dressing – a flavour combination that worked very well. I followed this with a tasty Confit shoulder of Lamb served with Mediterranean Cous Cous and a refreshing cucumber and mint yogurt – perfect, and for dessert I had a pretty large portion of Parkin (Yorkshire Gingerbread) with Liquorish ice cream. However the star of the show here is always the wines. We started with a bottle of La Taille aux Loups Montlouis Pétillant Triple Zero NV, a zero dosage wine – sweetened only with ripe grapes and followed this with a bottle of 2011 Sancerre ‘Les Pierris’ Domaine Roger Champault, a red wine that works well with Fish. Then for our main courses one of my dining companions ordered a bottle of 1997 St. Nicolas de Bourgueil Les Graviers, the delivery of which was rather entertaining – basically we were offered the very last bottle in the cellar complete with a badly damaged label. There was also a concern that the wine might not be ok – check out the pictures – the bottle looks ancient and full of character. The wine thankfully was perfect, and after that indulgence we finished with a bottle of Coteaux de L’Aubance Trie de Vendange Domaine Richou dessert wine before decanting ourselves into a Taxi.

RSJ is definitely the sort of place to take friends who appreciate good wines and one that I am always happy to return too. It is going to be around for a good few more years too I suspect.

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The Ledbury – More or Less?

We started off the new year on a high, with lunch at The Ledbury. There were two menu options. The special lunch Menu at £45 or the Tasting Menu at £75, both available with matching wine. Such a tough choice, but it was The Ledbury and we just had to go down the “More” route. We had matching wines for each course (including a matching wine for the amuse bouche) making a total of 8 glasses each (I think). Pretty heavy for lunch time drinking I have to say. In retrospect the “Less” route might have been the more sensible choice.

We found the restaurant to be rather quiet on this visit, only a few tables were in use during our mid week lunch. So if you pick your day carefully it is possible to get a reservation at this temple of gastronomy.

We started with Chantilly of Colchester Oysters with a Tartare of Scallop and Oyster, Horseradish and Dill – a very elegant dish, this was followed by Flame Grilled Mackerel with Smoked Eel, Celtic Mustard and Shiso. Then we had Hampshire Buffalo Milk Curd with Saint-Nectaire and Truffle Toast. The Truffle Toast was the highlight for me, delicious. We were four glasses down at this point when we moved on to the fish course of Roast Native Lobster with Broccoli stem, Natural Yogurt and Indian Spices in Brown Butter. This was followed by Pork Cheek cooked in Pedro Ximénez with Puffed Grains and Spiced Cream and Roast Haunch of Fallow Deer with White Beetroot and Smoked Bone Marrow and several more glasses of well matched wines. We finished with a light pre-dessert and the dessert of Pavé of Chocolate with Milk Purée and Lovage Ice Cream.

The food was universally good, we just felt that we had over done it. I am always happy to go to The Ledbury but I think next time I will stick to the set lunch.

One tip though, if you do want to go down the Tasting Menu route, is to do it at lunch time – the Tasting Menu is £30 cheaper then than the one offered in the evening.

UPDATE – June 2020 Permanently Closed.

UPDATE – April 2022 Reopened.

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Serious about Dessert Wines

Product Review for Fine Wines Direct UK

When it comes to Wine I know I am no expert, but I do know what I like, and over the years have been lucky enough to have endulged in quite a wide range of different dessert wines. I started off playing it safe with some basic Sauternes, moved on to Tokaji, found some bargain Coteaux du Layon wines, tried some great bottles of late harvest Riesling and Gewürztraminer, got blown away by PX, found a favorite in Eiswein, got hooked on Moscato d’Asti long before it got popular with the US Rapper fraternity and even had the chance to share a bottle of ridiculously expensive Chateau d’Yquem (arguably the most prestigious of all Dessert Wines). So when Fine Wines Direct UK said they would get someone who specialises in Dessert Wines to pick out a couple of bottles for us to review I was happy to oblige.

Fine Wines Direct UK supplied:-

A bottle of Santinela Semi-Dulce Marques de Caceres Rioja 2011 which is very new to the UK market and popular in Spain.

A bottle of Vale Perdido Late Harvest Chardonnay from Patagonia Estate Winery 2009 – this is exclusive to Fine Wines Direct

I had not tried either of these before.

The Marques de Caceres Rioja is a very light refreshing wine, with a pleasant fruity bouquet. To me it had a faint taste of peaches. It reminded me a little of Moscato d’Asti but without the fizz. This is an easy wine to drink on its own. I tried it with some rather fabulous baklava from Arabica Food and Spice which was a bit too overpowering to be a good match, but it did work surprising well with the Comté Cheese I recently purchased from Borough Cheese Company. This is the kind of wine you would have no problems drinking a lot of, especially on a nice summer evening. So can fully understand why it’s popular in Spain. It’s a fun wine with a low alcohol volume (12%) and a very practical one with a screw top cap which you might use if you don’t decide to drink it all at once.

The Vale Perdido Late Harvest Chardonnay is very different (I think it is a wine that you would more typically drink with food), it has a higher alcohol volume (15%) and is a lovely golden color. It’s almost sherry like, not overly sweet and has subtle hints of caramel (at least to my untrained palette), it worked really well as an accompaniment to both the rich nutty baklava and to the Jomara Date Chocolates my drinking companions brought back from Jordan. That is after I managed to open the bottle as it had one of these new synthetic wine corks that I hate (they may be safer but they can be a pain to open).

A bottle of good dessert wine is generally a lot more expensive than the equivalent volume of non dessert wine, which is why it makes a lot more sense to order online rather than pay the restaurant mark up. Having said that I still love to see a good dessert wine selection on a Wine List, generally because so few places give Dessert Wines the prominence they deserve, for example on one of my trips to Scotland, we had dinner at a modern rather flash venue that was perhaps trying a bit too hard to be cool. The Restaurant Manager served us and he was really enthusiastic about having put a Dessert Wine on the Wine list for the first time. We ordered it (off course), but didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was not a particularly good one. Regardless I applaud him for the effort, a lot of places sadly just do not take Dessert Wine seriously. We casually mentioned a few of the better Dessert Wines and hoped that he would take the hint, because if you are going to treat yourself to a dessert wine, you really want it to be a good one.

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The Ritz – getting past The Glitz

As a birthday gift I was treated to lunch at The Ritz by the other half of No Expert. We had some concerns as you do, when visiting somewhere so prestigious and potentially wallet busting. High profile venues like The Ritz all too often live off past glories. Fortunately this was not the case here, although there was no getting past the cost factor. The wine was very expensive. Don’t expect to find bottles at the £30 mark, the lowest price is around £50, but give it its due, the bottle of Marlborough Pinor Noir we ordered was delightful. We very sensibly chose on this occasion to go for the set lunch which consisted of three courses for £45, rather than go a la carte, where you could pay the same price for a single course!

I should also say at this stage, that the set lunch was very good indeed, so by going down that route you really are not slumming it. Indeed we are currently debating the likelihood of naming this the winner of this years best restaurant (the meal was that good).

There was the inevitable Champagne Trolley to avoid before the meal began. We were quite happy to just go with a jug of tap water (admittedly a silver plated one).

The amuse bouche was served in a Champagne glass and we chose some rather nice bacon flavoured home made bread. The set lunch menu was certainly enticing, I started with a rather moreish Mackerel dish and my companion had a very tasty salt beef and foie gras terrine. This was followed by main courses of duck and venison, delivered under cloches and revealed with some theatre. This was comfort food of the highest order, both were absolutely delicious. Then for dessert we had a classic Ritz dish, the Chestnut Souffle with Rum ice cream, a real treat. We did not order coffee but were still presented with what I can honestly say were the best selection of petit fours I have had in a restaurant for a long time. So in summary although the food is not cutting edge by any means, one of the reasons this meal stood out for us, was that nothing jarred, from the bread right through to the petit fours, everything was uniformly excellent and that is a rarity even in the best of restaurants.

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