Dinner with lots of wine: Jenelle and Tom paid! (but expect to pay around £50)

Man I love the name of this restaurant. I’ve giggled every time I walked by it for about a year on my to and from other meals. I giggled again when I was recently invited to attend a birthday dinner there for a person I’d never met.  The birthday girl who turned out be named Yvette, also turned out to be a lot of fun and didn’t mind having a total stranger celebrate with her.

The restaurant itself is decorated in an odd form of minimalism – black walls, bench seats, low lighting.  It all works well though as even though the tables are fairly close together you don’t really notice the other diners.  That or the 2 Manhattans I’d had before dinner at Beach Blanket Babylon made me completely oblivious to the other patrons.

Before I realized that my friends were going to spring for the meal I decided to go for a completely decadent experience starting with smoke salmon with blini and creme fraiche.

Smoked salmon with blini

The salmon was nice – nothing new or earth shattering – just decent smoked salmon.  The creme fraiche was fresh.  The blini however was too big and a wee bit dry.  I think a couple of smaller blini would have been better.  You can see the size of that thing relative to the lemon wedge – it was enormous.  And I’m not quite sure what the green squizzle was in the bottom corner of the plate – there wasn’t enough of it to add any significant flavor to the dish or to moisten the blini so I ignored it.

It was fine but it wasn’t quite the decadence I was after.  Luckily I had a plate of yummy happiness on the way.

Now I am not a big beef eater.  I can probably count the number of times I eat steak in a year on one hand.  When I do eat a steak though I have very high standards and very specific requirements.  I like my steak black and blue.  This means that my steak should have a good deep sear on the outside – all caramelized and delicious – while the center should be uncooked.  When I order a steak and ask for it black and blue and the waiter has no idea what that means – I immediately change my order to nearest vegetarian option.

Ribeye black and blue

The waiter at Bloody French nodded his head approvingly at my request for black and blue so I was confident that I would in fact be enjoying a good properly cooked steak.

From the photo above (where a bite or two has gone missing) you can see that my steak was well seared on the outside (not as black as I had hoped for but still very good) and is pink pink pink on the inside (perfect).  Smothered in peppercorns and butter the steak was just lovely.  The frites were very good as well.  There’s a pot of excellent house made mayonnaise somewhere outside of the frame that was also making me very happy.

My friend Tom also had the steak. He had it cooked medium I think (wuss) and seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

Next time I crave a steak I will be heading back here.

Bloody French
149 Westbourne Grove
Notting Hill, London
W11 2RS

Dinner for 1 with epic amounts of wine: £60.00

My good friend Ian recently became old and to celebrate this fact he had a birthday lunch at his favorite local French bistro.  As usual I was the first to arrive (why does this always happen to me?).

Having anticipated a big meal I had not had breakfast.  So I decided to start off lightly with a Bellini or 2 or 3.  This is a place where all of the bartenders and the maitre d’ know how to make a proper drink – and from scratch – nothing from a bottle or pre-made mix.  Lovely.

When the rest of the celebrants arrived we were shown to our table and were taken care of by a wonderfully attentive wait staff. Most of the staff at Bouchon Breton are either ludicrously French or pretending to be.  Expect a lot of rolling rrrrs and hand flourishes.

Les Huitres

For my first starter I ordered two oysters – one from France and one a local British variety.  They were beautifully fresh and perfectly shucked (no clumps of loose shell) and served with shallot and vinegar which is my preferred accompaniment.  While enjoying them our waiter asked if I would like to try an oyster that they estimated at 20 years of age.  I expected it to be rubbery and well old tasting – but aside from its ludicrous size – it was just marvelous.  Very sweet and briny all at the same time.  For some reason I did not photograph the old man of the sea but just imagine an oyster 3 times the size of the one on the right in the photo – seriously.

La Terrine de Campagne, compote d’Oignons Rouges

For my second starter – yeah you heard me right 2 starters – I had a country style pate with red onion compote.  It was fine, nothing to complain about, just a competent pate.  The onion compote was very nice but if I didn’t have a photograph of this course I might’ve forgotten it.  In hindsight I probably should have skipped this course because for my main I went a little nuts.

For this course we drank a nice bottle of Gigondas – which is one of my favorite less expensive French reds.

Cassoulet des Landes

This was one of the best cassoulets I’ve been served.  You can see how yummy it is in the photo.  The flavors were fantastic – the beans and pork fat and sausage – oh my god it was really good.  My only criticism of the dish is that the confit duck was a little dry.  I had a nice light side of daphinois potatoes with it, which combined with the cassoulet, almost put me into a coma.

I am pretty sure that at this point we were drinking a Burgundy – but really who knows.  Whatever it was I remember it paired well with the cassoulet.

Smartly at this point I decided to take it easy and skip desert.  Not so smartly I decided to keep drinking and ordered a glass of lovely Sauternes to cap off the meal.  I should point out again that this was lunch.  I had a wicked hangover by 4pm but the food, friends, service and atmosphere made it all worth it.

This is a great place to come for either a special occasion or for no reason at all.  It has all that you want in a good bistro – good food, professional friendly waitstaff and sommeliers, an excellent wine list and a relaxed but not sloppy atmosphere.

Le Bouchon Breton
1st Floor
8 Horner Square
Old Spitalfields Market
London E1 6EW

Meal for 1: £55.00 (for 3 courses, wine and tea)

The Wallace Collection is a small museum in Mayfair that is often listed in good London guide books but which luckily doesn’t seem to be popular with the teeming hordes you find at the changing of the guard. Originally recommended by a friend in response to an offhand comment that I must have been to every museum in London (impossible of course) it has become one of my favorite places to spend a quiet afternoon.

The museum itself houses the fine and decorative arts, arms and armor collected by an English aristocratic family in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are some great items in the collection including a few very famous paintings. There is also a horde of swords and pokers and other sharp pointy things which are always fun to look at. My favorite part of the museum however is the restaurant/café in the covered courtyard in the center of the museum.

The Wallace Restaurant has two sections – a very casual café with a less expensive and smaller menu – which is good for a light lunch or snack, and the restaurant with a more up market menu and prices. Both occupy the same sunny space. On this day I decided to treat myself and headed for the restaurant.

The maitre d’ seated me in a quiet corner table which had a comfy cushioned bench and a pillow for me to cuddle up to. He did not seem at all put out to be seating me by myself in jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers. There were plenty of diners who were dressed for a nice meal, but just as many who displayed the same complete lack of effort as me.

Sweetbreads a La Normande

My first course was Ris de Veau a La Normande – pan fried sweetbreads on toast with anchovies, cherry tomatoes and capers. This was my first time eating sweetbreads. Strange as this may sound they remind me of tofu. They have a texture of their own, but such a mild flavor that eating them is really all about the sauce which in this case was yummy.

After nearly 35 years of not eating scallops I have suddenly found myself in a mad love affair with them. I think my former disdain of them really stemmed not from the scallops themselves but with the people who prepared them. An overcooked scallop is an evil, vile, horrible thing. But a properly cooked scallop is one of the most delicious things you can eat. I ordered Les Coquilles Saint Jacques – scallops braised with Savoy cabbage and Alsatian bacon, hoping that the chef wouldn’t cook them to death.

Scallops with Savoy cabbage and Alsatian Bacon

The chef did not ruin the scallops and in fact they were cooked perfectly – caramelized lightly on the outside but not cooked all the way through. This was a scallop at its best. And whoever it was that discovered that scallops and bacon love each other so much deserves a monument in their honor.

For desert I did something kind of out of character and ordered a dessert that I make myself and that I therefore know is dead simple to prepare. Fondant au chocolate et glace pistache – flowerless chocolate cake with pistachio ice cream. Now it does not take an awful lot of effort or even a deft hand to make a little molten chocolate cake but it is really important that you use a good quality chocolate.

Molten chocolate cake with pistachio ice cream

The little cake was scrumptious and once I cut into it with my fork its molten center oozed out perfectly. I’ll try something more interesting next time but I enjoyed this simple little desert.

In addition to the lovely meal, service at the Wallace is really good – which is virtually impossible to find in London. I found it disconcerting to have the waiter willingly making eye contact with me from across the room. For anyone who spends a lot of time in London this is all but unheard of at anything less than the best (read most expensive) restaurants. And this is ultimately the best thing about the Wallace. It is not a place to go for a cheap meal but it is not ridiculously expensive either, especially for the quality of the food, service and atmosphere.

The Wallace is a great place to come on your own for lunch or dinner. It would also be a great place to bring visiting friends or relatives for a slightly off the beaten tourist track museum visit and meal.

Book I was reading: The Day Wall Street Exploded

The Wallace Collection
Hertford House
Manchester Square London
W1U 3BN