Tag: Closed Restaurants

Roganic – Pop up

Roganic is a two year pop up restaurant in Marylebone that still has a few more months to go. It’s sister restaurant is the rather more famous L’Enclume located in the medieval village of Cartmel in the Lake District. Roganic is very much a foodies destination, made all the more exciting by its inevitable expiry date.

The restaurant is small and minimalist as you might expect in a pop up restaurant. All the effort has gone into the food and service, which is no bad thing.  The staff are friendly, efficient and enthusiastic. You can choose from a 3, 6 or 10 course tasting menu. I felt a bit like Goldielocks in that 3 courses was not enough, 10 courses was too much and 6 courses was just right.

The ingredients used, vegetables, fruits, edible flowers and herbs all come directly from Simon Rogans farm in Cartmel, and the breads are all made on the premises. This level of control is very much illustrated by the depth of flavour found in every dish.

I can not remember the specifics of the amuse bouche apart from the mention of butternut squash, mint and onion ash, but it was a lovely start and a taste of things to come.

The home made bread was also very good, especially the onion bread, which went well with the blue cheese flavoured butter.

The first course on the menu was described as Leek custard with dill broth, salsify and mustard, very flavoursome. This was followed by our favourite, a really stunning dish of Artichoke dumplings with truffle and ragstone. Next we had Beets and butternut, parsley and hazelnuts, again with strong flavours. The fish course consisted of Halibut, chervil roots, clam and wood blewits. The clam puree gave this dish a real boost. The final savoury course was Guinea hen, parsley root, salt baked turnip and yarrow. Very filling and heavy on the salt. Then it was a dessert of roasted pears, chestnuts and crispy cake. A very light dish with really sweet juicy pears.

After dessert we were presented with a small glass of Douglas Fir Milkshake, an unusual way to finish a meal but a nice change from petit fours.

We also asked the Sommelier to select glasses of matching wines, which gave us the chance to try some more unusual wines such as El Bandito – an orange wine from South Africa.

Roganic is unconventional, but all the better for it in my view and is certainly a good advertisement for L’Enclume.  I really hope that after the lease ends in Marylebone that a new London premises is found. For more information on that, see Square Meal article – Roganic on the hunt for new Marylebone site.

UPDATE : Roganic to close on 20 June 2013 – see Square Meal article – No new site planned for Roganic

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Bar Boulud – a welcome return (Closed)

Located in the basement of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge is Daniel Boulud’s London outpost Bar Boulud. I had lunch there just after it opened – see post Bar Boulud – Busy! Buzzy!Burgers! I enjoyed it on that visit and certainly thought about returning to try more from the Bistro inspired menu.  It’s amazing to think that was over 18 months ago and I am only now returning, this time as part of a larger group.

This visit was for lunch on a Saturday and we experienced a much less frantic environment than I remember.  The ambience was actually very relaxing.

I choose from the excellent value fixed price lunch menu – seriously good value at £23 for 3 courses.  I started with a lovely creamy and tasty pumpkin soup,  followed by a very tender lamb shoulder dish served with baby carrots, eggplant, almonds and apricots and finished with a quite stunning chestnut sable & mousse covered in a lovely shiny chocolate glaze served with some light and refreshing pear sorbet.

My companions were visiting Bar Boulud for the first time and quite rightly ordered the burgers. The Yankee and the Frenchie being the most popular choice. The best burgers in London was the general consensus there – great fries too.

The other dessert pictured is the gâteau noisette et poire – hazelnut mousse with caramelized pears and caramel ice cream. It was a stunner.

I tried very hard to resist the allure of the Mandarin Bar without success. My intentions for having a reasonably priced lunch were dashed by the pricey but delicious cocktails.  The pictured cocktail is a Lychee Martini, the cocktail menu also had some delightfully named cocktails like the Orient Expresso and the Ginny Henricks.

I am sure I will return to Bar Boulud again in the not too distant future. It’s such a good refuge from the hustle and bustle of Knightsbridge.

UPDATE : December 2012, returned for the good value set lunch menu (which unfortunately does not include the famous burgers).  Same high standard of food and service.  The tables are very close together, so you will find it hard to avoid a bit of people watching, we witnessed a couple of incidents where the staff were working hard handling some of the very demanding customers that frequent Bar Boulud.

UPDATE : June 2021 – Closed

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Roux at Parliament Square – The return (Closed)

This was my second visit to Roux at Parliament Square.  My previous visit here was not typical, in that it involved indulging in the tasting menu and matching wines in the Private Dining Room, so I thought it would be interesting to see how the set lunch menu held up. £25.00 for 3 courses plus coffee and petit fours is an excellent deal for this sort of venue.  Booking via Top Table also enhanced the deal to included complementary glasses of champagne on arrival apparently – although when I reviewed my Top Table account later it said 3 courses with a bottle of filtered water, so we definitely got  the better deal 😉

Ironically although the set menu looked quite inviting, we were seduced by the a la carte menu, so did not actually end up going down the cheaper route as planned.

Every dish we ordered was beautifully presented and the meal included all those little extra’s I love in a fine dining establishment, the selection of canapés, the amuse bouche, the pre dessert and the petit fours.  OK so it cost more than twice as much as the set menu, but at least the excellent range of reasonably priced wine by the glass (typically between £5.00 and £7.00 a glass) kept the price down.

The Restaurant does not as yet have a Michelin star, but I would be very surprised if that was not in the pipe line. Roux at Parliament Square certainly has all the ingredients.

Marks out of 10

Food 6.9

Service 6.8

Ambience 6.5

 

 

 

UPDATE Feb 2013 – MasterChef winner Steve Groves is now the head chef  – see article.

UPDATE Dec 2020 – Now closed

 

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The Little Polka Cafe – a little ray of sunshine on the coast (Closed)

The Little Polka Cafe in Eastbourne markets itself by saying there is only one “Little Polka” on the South coast. Which is basically my only complaint, I just wish there were more – one in London that I could get to more easily would be great.

I just loved this place. We walked in on a rather bleak bank holiday Saturday for a late lunch, to be warmly welcomed by the owner. The feeling this invoked was rather like the sun coming out. We had stepped into a beautiful Polish parlour. I think we easily spent the first 5 minutes looking round the room and complementing the owner on how lovely it was. With its terracotta walls and eclectic decor like the upright Piano and the dresser filled with Boleslawiec ceramics.

There was only one other customer, an obvious regular, so the level of service was perhaps more attentive than it would have been if the place had been busier. We ordered Pierogi’s for two and the Schabowy (pork cutlets fried in breadcrumbs and egg).

There were 3 types of Pierogi’s – one filled with cheese, potato and onion, another filled with lentils and the third filled with fried mushrooms mixed with pickled cabbage and onions – they were served with beautifully fresh beetroot and a delicious cabbage and carrot salad. They were a meal in themselves (and even now, days later I can still remember how good they were). The Schabowy was also excellent, you could really taste the pork.

Initially I had no room for dessert, so we just sat back and had some more tea. Then after a gap I did order a light piece of lemon zest roll, just to complete the lovely meal.

Marks out of 10

Food 7.9

Service 7.9

Ambience 7

 

UPDATE: February 2012 – Sadly Little Polka has closed see comment for details.

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The Hungry Monk in Jevington – Birthplace of Banoffee Pie (Closed)

I do like my desserts, so a visit to The Hungry Monk in Jevington was a no brainer.  Banoffee Pie was invented here way back in 1974 and as far as claims to fame go, inventing Banoffee Pie is a good one in my book.

37 years later the Banoffee Pie is still going strong, as is The Hungry Monk.

Banoffee Pie

The previous evening I deliberately ordered Banoffee Pie in another Restaurant, which will be nameless – mainly because I have no intention of returning there as the food was mediocre to say the least.

Verdict on the Banoffee Pies (pictured) :-

The Hungry Monk – cost £7.50 (less when part of a set menu)  – 7/10 : Homemade, with a pastry base – you could really taste the condensed milk, bananas and toffee, I would have prefered less cream, but otherwise it was a very nice dessert.

The unnamed Restaurant – cost £3.85 – 2/10 : Factory made I suspect – faintly metallic taste, mostly cream and toffee sauce and some soggy banana’s on an overly crumbly biscuit base.

A prime example of how the invention has been corrupted over the years, even at half the price the “factory” made one was not worth it.

The Hungry Monk

The Hungry Monk Restaurant is in a quaint 14th century building in the tiny village of Jevington on the outskirts of Eastbourne.  The building is a bit of a maze – there is a series of small sitting rooms to left of the entrance, where you can have drinks before you are escorted to your table.

The menu on our visit was fairly typical for a Sunday lunch with main courses of Lamb, Roast Beef etc.

To start we had a fairly conventional Scallop dish (Seared Scallops with Crisp Bacon and Minted Pea Dressing) and a smoked salmon dish described as being with New Potato salad (it was actually with potatoes and lettuce), so not exactly as expected, but perfectly acceptable.

The most  interesting dish on the menu was the Rabbit Roasted in Prosciutto and Stuffed with Leek and Bacon, served with a Mild Mustard Sauce. I ordered that and certainly had no cause for complaint. My companion ordered the Roasted Rump of Sussex Lamb with Redcurrant and Rosemary Sauce which was nicely cooked, but pretty much what you would expect to get in most pubs for Sunday lunch, so nothing special there. It would have been good to choose from a small selection of vegetables rather than just the ones provided with the lamb.

For dessert I ordered the Banoffie Pie described earlier and we had a generous selection of English cheeses.

We also had coffee with home made chocolates. Something my companion who runs chocolate making courses was keen to try – they were very disappointing to say the least.  I can actually say here in all honesty, that I make better chocolates and I have only been on one course!

The Wine list was very reasonable, indeed some wines seemed to have hardly any mark up at all!

Jevington and Willingdon

The area has another claim to fame in that Jevington is in the same parish as Willingdon.  Willingdon was the base for the local village of the same name in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. We drove round Willingdon which has now been subsumed by Eastbourne, although there is still a couple of interesting looking pubs and houses and a windmill which looked very out of place on the edge of a housing estate. Jevington is more picturesque with a lovely church and access to country walks.

Marks out of 10

Food 5

Service 4.9

Ambience 5

Update – September 2012 : After 44 years The Hungry Monk Restaurant has now closed.

 

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Zucca – Cucina povera & BYOB : Bellissimo (Closed)

Zucca has a very reasonable £10 corkage fee when you bring your own bottle.  Corkage fees can be excessive. Here is a useful list, to give you a rough idea of the typical charges:-

It’s not as good a deal as the one advertized by the Kitchen W8 (free corkage on a Sunday evening), but for a Saturday night a £10 corkage fee is not too bad.  Especially in a restaurant with such a great reputation for food.

So armed with a rather nice bottle of Amerone (Masi Costasera Classico Amerone 2003), we headed off to Zucca (Bermonsey’s answer to The River Cafe), to choose some cucina povera to go with it.

It is almost a year now since my last visit, shortly after the Restaurant opened, and to say Zucca has been successful in that intervening period would be something of an understatement. It’s had rave reviews, is buzzing most nights and is firmly recognised as a “Foodies” destination restaurant.

The highlights for me had to be the pasta dishes.  The beautiful fennel and lemon flavoured tagliatelle was so refreshing and the veal and parmesan ravioli was delicious  – why did I just order a starter size portion!  The pasta was just in a different class from the very ordinary and much more expensive pasta dish I had at Apsleys. The Brunet and Speck (goats cheese wrapped in ham) was also very good.

The only downside to bringing your own wine without knowing the menu in advance,  is that you are a bit restricted in your food choices.  We avoided the more interesting fish dishes which would not have worked with the Amerone and ordered the slow cooked pork in milk and the veal chop instead.  One thing that had not changed since my last visit was the limited selection of side orders.  My veal chop, lovely though it was,  would have really suited me better if accompanied by some potatoes rather that the spinach I barely touched.

We finished with the cheese course and a very nice piece of light and moist orange cake.

The service is not particularly polished. The staff were all very pleasant, but  not quite attentive enough to comfortably handle the two hour turn around on the table. That and our waitress must have missed watching Michel Roux’s Service 😉 pouring as she did a full measure of wine, rather that just enough to check that the wine was OK, something that is especially important in BYOB situations.

Zucca is not perfect, but they certainly know how to cook.

After dinner we headed down to Most Cafe bar under Tower bridge, it was busy and getting served at the overcrowded bar looked impossible (why do under staffed bars insist on doing cocktails?), so instead we made our way to the more laid back Draft House Pub. Instant friendly service and a free table. It has a good reputation for its food as well, so definitely worth a return visit to try that, see Cheese and Biscuits review for details.

Marks out of 10 for Zucca

Food 6.3

Service 4.9

Ambience 6.0

UPDATE : Zucca has closed.

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