Tag: Faux gourmet

Murano – oh dear!

Lunch at Murano today, what a disappointment. It is so old fashioned and not in good way, rather the kind of food you might have found acceptable in the 80’s.  Just not a gourmet experience. We were really glad we decided to go for the £30 set lunch and not the overpriced tasting menu.

We started with fairly ordinary bread with a good olive oil and some charcuterie. Then a Chicken Ravioli that was too salty and a rather ordinary beef carpaccio.  The main courses consisted off a coronary inducing calf liver, with capers in a red wine jus with mash and a salmon dish decorated with pea shoots. Pre dessert was Tiramisu and dessert was a peanut butter crumble with caramelized bananas – very uninspiring.

The wine list was disappointing too, the mark up did seem to be excessive.  It was difficult to find a decent glass of wine for less than £14.00.

It was so hard not to compare the Murano experience with our recent visit to Texture, which just served to emphasize everything that was wrong with Murano.

Overrated and based on our experience, cooking that is not of a Michelin star level.  Another Faux Gourmet experience in a restaurant that looked the part but failed to deliver.

Marks out of 10

Food 4.9

Service 5

Ambience 5

 

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Harveys Fish Market, Oyster Bar & Restaurant – not the plaice to go!

Harveys of Ramsgate, part of Kent Inns of Distinction, is marketed as a dedicated seafood restaurant  using locally landed fish. A fabulous idea, in theory.

Celebrity TV chef John Burton-Race of the Michelin-starred New Angel in Dartmouth is connected with it, loosely I hope, based on the standards achieved here, both in terms off food and service.

I can not see this place, surviving  the winter. I certainly will not be returning or recommending this unjustifiably overpriced venue. Neither the food quality or the level of service matched the look of the venue. Bland Fish, and one of the worst deserts I have ever had (hard meringue!). Plates passed across my companion at the table, come on – anywhere that typically charges £20 for mains, needs to deliver something a bit special. Then there is the ambience issue,  sitting next to a large noisy table of 10 in a half empty restaurant is far from ideal. This is most definitely not my idea of “fine dining”.

Its pretension without the quality, delivering expensive badly cooked food. Just another “Faux Gourmet” experience.

They could have done so much more in this prime location overlooking Ramsgate Royal Harbour.

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UPDATE October 2009 : Made a return visit to Harveys after all, in light of comments and the award of an AA Rosette. For details see Harveys Fish Market, Oyster Bar & Restaurant – still not the plaice to go!.

UPDATE April 2010 – Back in Ramsgate, this time to try Eddie Gilberts. For details see Eddie Gilberts – reasons to leave London? (Eddie Gilberts 7, Harveys 2)

UPDATE October 2010 – About time!  Harveys is finally closed – RIP please! For more information see post from Isle One.

 

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Ristorate Dorando, San Gimignano, Tuscany – Faux Gourmet!

Situated in the beautiful Tuscan medieval hill town of San Gimignano, Ristorante Dorando is the place that first got me using the term “Faux Gourmet”.

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San Gimignano

I use it to apply to places that have all the apparent trappings of a gourmet restaurant, i.e., the look, the prices and the marketing hype, which then subsequently fail to deliver anything close to the level of food or service expected in real gourmet restaurants.

Marks out of 10

Food 4

Service 4

Ambience 4

 

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Abode – not so inviting!

Before I visited Abode in Canterbury, I had read a  review by a well known food critic which I thought was a bit harsh, this is after all one of Michael Caines projects.  Boy was I wrong, if anything he was being too kind!

When we arrived we were left waiting for what seemed an age as there was no staff in the dining room. Not a good start.

The food when it arrived was totally underwhelming, some of it was just downright unpleasant.  One desert tasted like play doh© and another tasted like cigarette ash.

The kitchen also recently came under criticism from other sources, see Caterersearch.

The service was in general chaotic. What was particularly hard to swallow was that they charged London Michelin star prices. You would get better value taking the train to London than eating here. Sadly another “Faux Gourmet” experience to chalk up.

Abode apparently merits 2 AA Rosettes – the definition for this is “Innovation, greater technical skill and more consistency and judgement in combining and balancing ingredients are all needed at this level.”

On leaving our opinion was that the only talent there was the busker playing outside.

 

 

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