Dinner for 2 with a bottle of wine: £80.00

My good friend the Vegetarian and I treated ourselves to a meal out after work one evening at The Gate in Hammersmith.   The Vegetarian chose the venue and I did not read any reviews prior, so I had relatively few expectations other than that there would be no meat in my meal.

The entrance to the Gate is a little odd – you go in through the courtyard of a church and the restaurant is indeed in the same building as the church – though is not at all affiliated to it.  Once you get past the Jesus loves you pamphlets on the ground floor the restaurant itself is quite cozy.  My only criticism of the interior is that it’s so dark that if you have vision problems you should bring a torch so that you can read the menu or see your food.  And if you are a food blogger be prepared to have to use your flash no matter how much this pains you.

Confit Artichoke Salad

I started with the confit of artichoke salad which was spectacular. You know how sometimes a cooked artichoke heart still has the odd chewy hard bit that sticks you in the throat?  None of that here.  The artichokes were sweet and soft without being oily and the addition of hazelnuts and sweet oven dried tomatoes were just great.  I made a note that I need to get a recipe for cooking artichokes this way.

I should also mention that the wine list is all vegetarian/vegan friendly and we drank a lovely chardonnay from Carmel Wineries.  It was expensive at £30 but it was as I said lovely.  There are less expensive wines on the menu as well.

Wild Mushroom Rosti

For my main course I ordered the wild mushroom rosti which just sounded like it was going to be ridiculously luxurious.  Four different kinds of wild mushrooms over a potato and celeriac rosti with a cep mushroom (porcini for anyone not British) sauce all topped with rocket.  I was really excited about this dish and it is with heavy heart that I have to report it was a letdown.

The reason for the heart heaviness is that we had the best service I’ve ever had in a restaurant in London and I just really wanted to give the Gate a 100% positive review.  But it was just completely over salted.  If the chef had gone easier on the salt I am pretty sure it would have been a fantastic dish – the textures were all right, it looked good on the plate but the salt was seriously overwhelming.  Clearly no one tasted the dish before it came out of the kitchen.

All that aside though I would really like to go back and if the place a second try.  The salad alone was good enough to make me want to try their other dishes.

Update: I’ve since gone back to the gate for another try and the over salting was indeed a fluke.  I had a lovely creamy and somehow completely vegan Jerusalem artichoke soup and the pumpkin cannelloni both of which were delicious.  Great service again as well.

The Gate
51 Queen Caroline Street
Hammersmith, W6 9QL

Dinner for 1 with wine: £60.00

I am not a vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination but I love vegetarian fare and if you read this blog often enough you will notice that many of my favorite dining experiences involve no meat at all.  Saravanna Bhavan for example is still one of my all time favorite dinners.  Also some of my best friends are vegetarians – some are even vegans.

If you spend enough time going out to dinner with vegans/vegetarians you often end up feeling sorry for them as they have only 1 or 2 options on the menu to choose from.  Conversely it can be a whole lot of fun to take a vegan out to a restaurant where no item on the menu is off limits to them.  The sensory overload is amazing -  the whole part of the brain that is employed in decision making has atrophied and watching the gears grind away can be highly amusing.  So with this in mind we have headed out for a special evening to see two friends off on an epic 7 week vacation.  Since the couple is comprised of one vegan and one vegetarian we decide to go out to Saf a vegan, raw food restaurant near Spitalfields in East London.

When we arrived we were promptly shown to a great table in the back.  I love round tables for large groups and there was plenty of room for the pram one of the couples was toting their newborn around in.  The vegan/vegetarian friends were running late so we ordered some pre-dinner drinks and snacks and relaxed.

When our friends did arrive we had been at the restaurant for at least 25 minutes and by the time we had all made our decisions we’d been in our seats for 45 minutes at the very very least.  I had decided that I was going to have the Saf bowl.  I was really looking forward to it.  So boy was I annoyed when while placing my order the waitress informed me that they didn’t have it that evening but that there was a mushroom risotto special instead.  Now in my experience the way it usually works is that the waiter/tress tells you what the specials are and any changes to the menu BEFORE they take your order.

Apple Cashew Mille Feuille

Luckily they did have the starter I wanted.  I like vegan “cheese” which is generally made with nuts (almost always cashew for some reason).  The Apple Cashew Mille feuille turned out to be the winner amongst the starters.  The “cheese” was good and spicey and paired nicely with the apple.  I ignored the odd frisee hat it was wearing and terrifically 80’s balsamic reduction decoration because the dish itself was pretty good.

For my main I did in the end go for the surprise special that was not the Saf bowl.

Not the Saf Bowl

Ok so what is wrong with the picture of the dish?  Why is my garnish segregated from the rest of the dish by a diagonal line of shiny red sauce and black olives?  Is the chef trying to make an artistic statement? Perhaps something about man’s isolation in modern society?  WTF?

I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if it had just been served in the center of a smaller plate and didn’t have all the crazy squeeze bottle mayhem going on.  I hate this kind of plating with a passion.  And I just couldn’t take the dish seriously – I mean why black olives?  I don’t even know what was going on on the other side of the sauce fence with the pile of garnishes.

I don’t understand the trend in raw food restaurants for over decoration.  Pure Food and Wine in NYC has the same problem with stacking and squeeze bottling in the presentation (however both the food and service are better there).

The risotto itself was ok, underseasoned but with a creamy texture all accomplished without cheese or butter or cream.

The food was just alright, the service was pretty poor, and the meal was ridiculously overpriced.

Saf
152-154 Curtain Road
London, EC2A 3AT