Had lunch at L’Autre Pied in Marlybone yesterday. This restaurant has been on our wish list for a while. It is the sister restaurant to an old favourite Pied à Terre. The set lunch at £17 for 2 courses and £22 for 3 courses is a good deal, you really do not need to spend hundreds of pounds here, although you could if you wanted to, by following the example of the Commonwealth Development Corporation who allegedly claimed for a £700 dinner on expenses – see Telegraph artical.
For each course of the set menu a reasonably priced matching glass of wine is recommended. They also do a 4 course and a 7 course tasting menu.
l’Autre Pied is much more casual than its sister restaurant Pied à Terre, certainly at lunch time there is not a white table cloth in sight.
We had an interesting amuse bouche – a tiny tasty sausage roll presented on a piece of slate. Then we started with the Canneloni of Confit Guinea Fowl, Lemon Thyme, Roasted Button Onions, Tarragon Cream, followed by Roasted Breast and Confit Leg of Partridge, Root Vegetables and Turnip Fondant. The Partridge was beautifully cooked, moist and full of flavour, we also had a couple of stunning matching wines.
For dessert they had to change the set menu as they had ran out of the Treacle Tart, so I had a Caramel parfait instead, with hazel nut ice cream and Caramel foam. My companion ordered her dessert a la carte, going for Baked Alaska Poached White Peach, Vanilla Ice Cream and Raspberry Sorbet. The dish looked rather like a small white hedgehog when it arrived. The Baked Alaska had not been cooked in the conventional manner, rather than being in the oven it looked like the meringue had been added by hand and heated with a blow torch, which meant the sorbet was a little bit too hard, however it was still a delicious dessert.
On the whole I found the food at L’Autre Pied to be quite similar to Pied à Terre, which is praise indeed.
Marks out of 10
Food 7.2
Service 6.9
Ambience 6.5
UPDATE: October 2016, L’Autre Pied no longer has a Michelin Star.