Review: Dinner at Dinner

[wildeabandon]

I'm just in from a rather fabulous meal with robert_jones at Dinner, Heston Blumenthal's restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. The menu is a bit more down-to-earth than the Fat Duck, with only one option involving liquid nitrogen, and no scented sprays, gelees, or sound-effects at all. Unsurprisingly though, that still leaves quite a lot of scope for poncyness. The conceit of the restaurant is that all the dishes are based on or inspired by traditional English food, from about the 13th-19th century, although they were clearly rather more developed from the original recipes than some of the things I cooked for the Bardcamp Elizabethan Feast.

We started with a glass of fizz - I had the house champagne, which was rich and buttery, and Robert had the sommelier's recommendation, which was much crisper and sharper, and as would pleasingly persist throughout the night, both of us slightly preferred our own choices. Sadly they don't publish the wine lists online, but I'm hoping that Robert will appear in the comments with a better memory of the details of these and later wines.

For starters I had bone marrow with snails and a pickled vegetable salad, with a glass of Meursault. It was delicious and garlicky and warming, with a lovely sharp spicy contrast from the salad. The only flaw, if such it can be called, was that I would have liked another mouthful or three. The wine was a fantastic match to the marrow, and whilst it was less so against the salad, it would have been very difficult to find something to go well with both. Robert went for one of the few dishes that didn't tempt me - octopus in a smoked sea broth, which he paired with a Vouvray. As it turns out though, when it's done just right, octopus doesn't have that rubbery texture that I dislike, and I could have very happily polished off a whole plate of it myself. The broth was particularly fine, intense and savoury and fishy.

For main courses I had duck with confit fennel and 'umbles, and Robert had spiced pigeon with ale and artichokes, and to drink we had a pinot noir from Burgundy. As we were ordering they checked that we were both happy for these to be served quite pink. We were of course, but it's a good job we both really were, as by "quite pink" they meant "dripping and bloody". The meat for both courses was surprisingly similar - they met about in the middle of how gamey I usually expect duck and pigeon to be. And they were really really good. In contrast to the starters, the portions here were really rather generous (I think I may just be too used to tasting menus, so the extent of the difference in size between the two courses was rather greater than expected). Also worthy of note was the mashed potato, which was super-smooth, rich, and buttery, with just the slightest hint of caramel.

Puddings were brown bread ice-cream with salted butter caramel, and a glass of Madeira for Robert, and goat's milk cheesecake with smoked candied walnuts and poached pear, and a glass of sweet Riesling for me. Robert's was perfectly balanced - lots and lots of flavours that just worked together. Mine was a bit more unusual, with a lot of savoury notes coming from the smoked walnuts and the goat's cheese. It might not be for everyone, but I really love puddings which are barely puddings at all.

An excellent meal throughout, without a single duff note in the food, and a lot of really sparkling ones. The wine was also superb, especially the red with the main course. The service was generally good, although perhaps a little over chatty. If we could average out the attentiveness between here and the Pollen Street Social, where we ate a few weeks ago then I think it would be just perfect.

The bill came in at a slightly eye-watering £335/head including service, but about three-quarters of that was wine, and they have plenty of far more reasonably priced bottles.

Comments

[mr_magicfingers]

That sounds magnificent. I love reading your reviews as you often go to places I've never heard of and you describe food so very well indeed.

Wines

[robert_jones]

I don't think you did have the house champagne, because the waitress said that the sommelier recommendation was the same price as the house, but yours was £18 and mine was £15. Yours was Ruinart, which explains why I wasn't enthused. The red was Chambertin 2000 Pierre Damoy. This made up 57% of the final bill. There were both many cheaper and many more expensive bottles available.