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I’ve just posted my Dinner by Heston review and there are many similarities in the British food cooked well ethos.
Lamb shank and beef wellingtons were our mains, both good sized portions very well cooked and very delicious.
Pudding was a let down though, sticky toffee pudding was ‘cheffed-up’ but instead of a gooey pudding we got a dry muffin.
The bill weighed in at £188 with service, with about £80 on drinks. Whilst not as good as Heston’s dinner, it was half the price and I’d be much more likely to return here than I would Dinner.

After a long time of failed attempts to book the fat duck (really why does he make it so difficult?!) we though we’d try Dinner, so with the gravitas of the Heston’s name appended to the restaurant it brought with it great expectations of a wonderful meal and dining experience.

Salamugundy (Chicken Oysters, Salsify, Marrow Bone & Horseradish cream) was my starter, succulent pieces of chicken, with a delicately spiced horseradish source. Which was quite delicious.

Spiced Pigeon with Ale and Artichokes was my main, again a very good dish.

The Pièce de résistance however was the desert, brown bread ice cream, nothing like or taste brown bread but a delicious unctuous texture that almost had a hint of taste of fois.

As I mentioned at the start there were high expectations due to the Heston association and whilst the dinner was excellent, it didn’t really excite in the way that it might. It certainly is good food done well, but for someone that dines out a lot it wasn’t extra ordinary.

The bill for the two of us came in at £324, getting on for half though was the drinks bill. For me, whilst a good dinner wasn’t interesting enough to warrant the price tag.

We went to the Square a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday evening. First impressions were of a nice looking restaurant, but very corporate in terms of clientele and the acoustics make for a very loud ambience.

What I personally love about the poshy type of restaurants is all the extra courses that are thrown into the meal, transforming a three course A La carte dinner into an extra special tasting menu experience. In this respect the Square really hit the spot, with a couple of pre-starters, a pre-desert and petit fours.

The meal itself, whilst good was not that memorable as I am having to revert to their web site as an aide-memoire for what I had. Starter was a crab lasagne, which was very nice however. Main was a… actually I can’t remember even looking at the crib sheet, so that probably says it all. My dinner companions went for the wagyu beef which was very pleasant though. But who could forget the dessert, warm fondant with 100’s & 1000’s; a perfectly cooked fondant with extra sauce on top and crispy and tasty sprinkles, don’t worry the 100’s and 1000’s were a home made concoction rather than those found on the end of a Fab lolly!

Service was in keeping with the overall experience, good but not amazing. Service between courses dragged a little and we had to have our petit fours as a carry out as we had to get back to our baby sitter. The other gripe about service was when the waiter poured sparkling water into my glass of still, an easy mistake, but the problem was when he raced off saying he was going to get me a fresh glass, well I’m still waiting for him to come back with it.

The bill for the 3 of us was £430 of which about £150 was drinks and the 3 course menu priced at £90 per head including the service charge.

My over all impression, a pleasant experience but not amazing, worthy of two stars probably not in my opinion, but certainly worth one.

Arriving at Aqua, in the old Dickens and Jones department store building, it is all very swish with the heavy red velvet curtains and subdued lighting. It is here you meet the first receptionist. Then taking the lift to the 5th floor, you come to a 2nd receptionist where you give name and booking all over again, this receptionist take you to the maître d’, who takes your name and booking again and finally sits you down.

It is all very swanky and stylish inside, low lighting and dark woods, the sushi chefs at work in the centre of the restaurant. The bar area and the restaurant full of young and beautiful types, so I upset the tone there!

There is pretty good choice on the menu and they waitress encourages you to share the dishes, as it is more tapas style service with plates arriving when ready rather than coordinated French style of service. So for the four of us, we ordered 4 appetisers and four mains which were more or less served sequentially. This was maybe more down to table size than the kitchen as at most there was room for two dishes at any one time. Interestingly given the lack of space it was only with prompting that it occurred to anyone to take away the empty aperitif glasses away.

The food itself was very good, sweet and moist blackened cod every bit as good as Nobu, soft shell crab tempura, pork belly and Cray fish, beef with foie gras all delicious and memorable dishes. For me all the dishes were excellent, and certainly looked as beautiful as it tasted. It is a bit of an Atkins meal though, as the rice is a little incongruous with the meal as the lack of sauces and its minimalist nature precludes loading up your rice bowl as you might in less contemporary restaurant.

The desserts were equally delicious; I had small doughnuts served on yuzu curd, a thick lemony sauce, with a side dish of chocolate praline mouse. This was super delicious.

From a food point of view I thoroughly enjoyed all the dishes, and the sequential serving and sharing of each plate… More

It has been a while since I’ve visited one of the Gavlin restaurants, and if I am honest it was more the clients’ choice than mine. Whilst I’ve enjoyed the food in both the Bistro De Lux and Window I’ve never really been blown away by them and that we were out on a Saturday night it seems a little wrong to me to be in the City when I don’t have to be.

Without doubt it is a very impressive building once inside, the huge vaulted ceiling and immaculately set tables, and you do spend the first few minutes just looking around at the amazing space.

We kicked of with a few cocktails in the adjacent café, and then went on to dinner in the restaurant itself. We opted for the tasting menu (£70) accompanied with the matching wines (£35). This encompassed crab lasagne, for me the best part of the meal, sea bass with lovely crisp skin, vegetable risotto, beetroot and goats cheese salad (the only let down course as a little incongruous with the whole meal I thought), fillet steak with potato fondant and creamed spinach all finished off with a superb tarte tatin. There were no amuse bouches or pre-desserts though, it is very much what you see on the menu is what you get, which is fine but detracts from the spoilt and pampered feeling some restaurants give to you.

Service wise was ok and the whole friendly and efficient, albeit a little too effusive with a queue of waiters and maitre d’s lining to talk to my dinner companion as he’d been there a ‘few’ times before. Good skills from the sommelier remembering the wine he usually drank. On the negative side, one course we had to chase for the matching wine and napkins were sometimes folded and sometimes not, but only minor infractions really.

All in all it was very pleasant, and for the standard of food and service £105 (plus 12.5%) a head for the tasting menu was good value, whilst I’d probably not race back I’d certainly recommend the place especially as the City is so lacking in top end restaurants.

Following the current vogue for ‘staycations’, we decided to have a week in Norfolk and as luck have it (ok maybe a little engineered) we stayed near to Morston and more importantly Morston Hall as they are quite proud in boast the only Michelin restaurant within a 50mile radius.

Dinner is at a set time, arrive for 7:30 for canapés and dinner is served at 8pm, there is no choice except the set menu, which I could see causing difficulties especially for those with sea food allergies.

On arrival we shown to the conservatory for drinks, which was accompanied by (3!) canapés including a delicious tempura lobster claw. We were then shown to our table in another conservatory, the tables were well spaced throughout the restaurant so you were neither on top of each other or having to listen to some boorish conversation on and adjacent table.

We went through about 8 courses including, crab salad, sea bass in broth, quail egg scotch egg and roast quail (the best course for me), roast pork with super crispy crackling, rhubarb mousse and rhubarb soufflé. All of which was perfectly cooked and tasting very well.

The wine options were also very good and reasonable, a sheet of bin ends for £20 and recommend wines at £25 were pushed over the wine list of more costly wines.

The service was a little hit and miss, whilst quite attentive and efficient I am not sure I liked the thought of the waiter holding the next table’s dinner as they introduced the course to our table a bit to canteen style for my liking, we missed the bread coming around due to a lavatory visit and had to ask for the return of the bread waiter and petit fours were meant to be served with our coffee and when we asked for ours that had been forgotten we were initially told they had ran out but when we explained none had been served yet they miraculously did have some after all. On the plus side, when they noticed my wife didn’t like the rhubarb mousse a couple of strawberry ones quickly appeared, so double mousse… More

Tucked away in a small alleyway just off Knightsbridge you’d be unlikely to stumble on this place. Itself a long narrow, and truth be told slightly cramped restaurant.

The service was spot on from the start, a warm welcome from all the waiting staff, drink orders quickly taken and delivered. Then attentive service through out the meal, with reassuring updates ‘I’ll be over in moment to take our order’, ‘your main is about 5 minutes away’, which is nice as you don’t sit there wondering.

The food was also excellent, snails and warm pate were our starters, the buttery herbyness of the snails and the rich deep taste of the pate were both amazing. For main we shared the fois gras stuffed chicken, super succulent roast chicken on a bed of green beans, made all the more delicious and succulent by the portions of fois gras in the pot. We shared a cheese course, three strong French cheeses served with bread. Then a little maxed out food wise I had ice cream to finish, great intense flavours, while my wife went for the chocolate torte, very rich very chocolaty very yum.

The wine list was a good balance between cheap and moderately priced wines, weighted towards French producers as you might expect in a French Bistro.

Our bill came to a bit over £200, but a good half was the drinks bill, so very reasonably priced and very much worth a visit.