I have never much been a fan of the Conran ‘Machine’, formulas never did it for me in maths class and they still don't when I eat. There are a few formulaic anomalies however – Le pont de la tour, The Orrery and La Cantina del Ponte – they are no longer his in business terms but were his babies once.
Now to his current offspring – I avoided spending too many hours at Boundary/Albion, however what time I did spend there was nice. I had an inkling that maybe in his twilight years something had changed a younger spark had revealed itself.
I read a few reviews on Lutyens and the problem with reading other reviews (films, restaurants, books) is that you get aroused, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. I got excited. I thought that maybe this Conran experience would be different. I was wrong. It was thoroughly Conran.
Lutyens+Three boys=See Below
Starters – Dressed Crab, Escargots, Streak Tartare
Result – Good, needed salt, Nice kick.
Mains – Roast Partridge, Rabbit with Bacon and Mustard, Roast Middlewhite Loin
Result – Good but needed better knife, Solid and tasty needed more mustard kick, tender and had flavour all the way through.
Sides – Green Salad, Frites, Champ, Spinach, Roast onions
Result – Nice and clean, solid and tasty, good (lots of melted butter on top..discuss), spinach!, sweet and small
Pudding – Pear, Cinnamon and Custard Tart, Creme Brulée, Buttermilk Pudding
Result – Good solid patisserie work, Good but pot 1/2″ too deep, like pannacotta but better.
Wine – Gruner Vetliver, Langhe nebbiolo and a bottle of ‘The Bothie’
Result – Clean with crisp apple and a touch of sherbert, Long lasting and smooth with a cherry or two, Sweet sticky and jammy!!!
Service was poor to start with (20 minutes to order, 10 minutes to get the wine menu, 10 minutes to get a third menu!), it did get a little better. The starters were on our table before we had even had a chance to give back the menus and we did get an apology for them getting our mains being placed in front of the wrong person.
Ended up at £100 a head, but we did have a bottle each and one of nearly every side.
My mathematical syntax is not up to scratch but ‘being Conraned’ is not a bad thing:
Conran+Restaurant<>Good<>Bad=Satisfied
There should probably be an (x) or (y) there somewhere, but the statement above says it all, neither good nor bad – you leave satisfied. As @restaurantdiray on twitter said to me as I was in the taxi last night “Satisfaction is a great thing after a good meal; amazement is wonderful when it happens but should / can never be expected…” I do agree with him, I had let myself believe the hype.
Anyhoo. Let not discuss Mr Conran any longer, we all know that his formulas do produce money and lots of satisfied people, I will look for amazement elsewhere.
