The Royal Oak Paley Street

It is, of course, unfair to judge a restaurant on the basis of a special evening devoted to dishes served by the winner of Professional Masterchef as part of his successful participation on that programme as they are not usually on his employer’s menu. However, punters could expect the evening to demonstrate the overall level of quality and professionalism normal for the venue. We can begin with the waiting time before the activities started; our booking was for 19:30 and we were sitting there with no explanation of how things were to proceed until the owner appeared with a microphone to announce that he would briefly interview Craig Johnston and then the meal would commence. So, 45 minutes after arriving we saw some food appearing, having had no canapés, just bread to go with our fizz. Bookings were limited to 30 covers but serving everyone at the same time was clearly a problem for the front-of-house staff who gave every sign of being quite unsure of how to proceed. They did raise a bit of a smile, though, as they attempted to pour 30 glasses of the wines in the pairing to equal levels - using a measure to pour the first and then squatting down to try to judge the level in the rest of the glasses and failing miserably in some cases. The starter was mackerel, good taste and texture, served cold, excellent mackerel tartare, horseradish gel with a definite kick, very good salt baked beetroot and beetroot tartare. This was followed by not terribly tender squid with creamed roasted cauliflower, sea purslane, chorizo and a nice octopus broth, which should have been a good mix of ingredients but which failed to convince. The main came in the form of a generous portion of very tasty duck breast, cooked just the right side of rare, excellent duck hearts, perfect beetroot tarte fine, a large distinctly unpleasant chunk of red cabbage which needed far more intense cooking, and a passable (roast?) celeriac purée. The best effort of the evening by far was the dessert, accompanied by a very good Sauternes, which we believed to be a 1998 Chateau Coutet, the intense sweetness of the yoghurt mousse contrasting with the nitrogen cooled verbena rocks, and the beautiful bergamot curd and basil marshmallow making for a mix of textures, temperatures and flavours little short of genius. Nonetheless, the rather amateurish attempt at show-business presentation followed by service difficulties made one wonder whether dishes conceived for competition purposes are necessarily right for a much larger number of covers, and also whether it was doing the chef any favours to adopt this canteen fashion of service. The final negative for us was to be charged for tea which came without any petits fours when the cost of the meal was already twice that of the standard menu, so unfortunately for us the experience was not up to expectations.