My last visit to St John saw us tucking into their roast suckling pig. It was all rather yummy, but I still maintain, as I did in that write up, that I cannot understand why this restaurant holds a place in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list (currently 41st). St John also has a Michelin star, another fact which I find beggars belief. It might serve head to tail cooking, but its hardly refined or technical cooking. It’s good for a pleasant dinner out, but that’s about it.

I was quite adventurous and went for the pig’s spleen (£7) which was served rolled with bacon. This was my first foray into spleen which was similar in taste to very strong liver. Not particularly enjoyable, its flavour was very powerful which necessitated lots of pickles. This was not a dish for the faint of heart.

Rolled pig's spleen & bacon

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I have always thought highly of Bryn Williams. That man can cook, and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal the last time I went to Odette’s even though I had a bit of a bad service experience (click here for that post). But the food at Odette’s was good enough, and it deserved another chance.

This time around I dined as a guest of Odette’s. We kicked off the meal with an amuse of mushroom soup with pickled mushrooms. The soup was wonderfully flavoursome and creamy, and the pickled effect of the diced mushroom pieces gave the soup an interesting contrast.

Succulent, moist and perfectly crisped hand dived scallops (£14) were accompanied by some velvety smooth cauliflower and coconut purée that worked well with the star ingredient and which left me wanting more. There were also some salted grapes which weren’t particularly salty but which didn’t quite match with the scallops. Nevertheless, this was a very classy and accomplished dish.

Hand dived scallops

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Yep – somehow I managed to score another reservation at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. I know I only a few weeks ago (check out that post here), so I debated whether I should go again so soon. But in the interests of research (and for another taste of that meat fruit), I thought why the hell not?

So this blog post will be a little different to the others. I won’t be talking about the things I covered the last time such as the décor. Instead, I’ll focus primarily on the new dishes I tried on this second visit.

But it’s a little hard to past up a mention of the meat fruit (£12.50 – c.1500). It again delivered the ‘wow’ factor to my dining companions who were new to Dinner. The meat fruit looked and tasted great, although it was served a little too cold. This truly has to be one of the most dazzling dishes to grace London tables of late.

JL went for the hay smoked mackerel (£14.50 – c.1730) with lemon salad, gentleman’s relish and olive oil. The mackerel was lovely, and there was a wonderful balance of acidity in this dish, especially from the gentlemen’s relish. (For a copy of this recipe which was published in The Guardian, click here).

Hay smoked mackerel

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Dinner

The most excited I’ve ever been about getting a restaurant reservation was when the people at El Bulli emailed me to say that I had secured a table. The excitement of getting a reservation at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental came close, except this time I managed to control my screams of euphoria. The restaurant receives about 6,000 phone calls a day and is now booked out until the end of June. The arrival of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal was highly anticipated and it has to be the hottest opening of 2011. It is so hot that reservations are being traded on ebay.

An Adam Tihany design, the restaurant is beautiful with dark wood panelling and leather furnishings. The previous occupant of this space was Foliage, which Tihany also designed. It’s airy and light, and the high ceilings give it an incredibly spacious feel. It’s also elegant but relaxed, and there’s a touch of mischievousness and fun to the room with the use of some cheeky jelly-mould lights. The kitchen is an open one providing diners with a look-in, but that’s if you don’t find yourself getting distracted by the fabulous views of Hyde Park.

The kitchen at Dinner

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Vinoteca Marylebone is the sister restaurant of the original Vinoteca wine bar and restaurant in Farringdon. It opened in November last year, but unlike Brawn, the sister restaurant of that other well known wine bar, Terroirs, it has barely registered on the Richter Scale of restaurant openings. I found out about it purely by chance. Thinking I would go to the branch in Farringdon, I stumbled across the details of the Marylebone branch when I went onto the Vinoteca website. Despite the lack of PR fanfare, the restaurant is already doing a thumping trade. It was packed during our visit and justifiable so. Its concept is simple – good, seasonal food, in an ever changing menu, matched with one of the 25 wines that are available by the glass. There are also 280 reasonably priced bottles to choose from.

Vinoteca Marylebone is cosy and intimate. It does not take reservations, but there’s a bar area to drink at while you wait. Due to the lack of carpeting and rugs on the floor, its only drawback was that it was incredibly noisy which made conversation a little difficult. But this can also be construed as fantastically atmospheric.

We started with a heavenly smoked eel with celeriac and apple remoulade and wheaten toast (£8). The eel was delicate, succulent and lightly smoked, and the creaminess of the deftly made remoulade was a perfect match. There was a hint of sweetness in the well-made, flavoursome bread which made this dish all the more appetising. The suggested wine, an Austrian 2009 Kamptal Gruner Veltliner ‘Kies’, Kurt Angerer (£4.50 for 125ml) was a great accompaniment.

Smoked eel

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One of the things that irritate me about a restaurant is when they publish a menu on their website where the prices aren’t reasonably accurate. As was the case with Northbank, their website menu suggests that the average price of a main is £15.75 (range of £12 to £18.50 – accurate at the time of this post). But on their actual menu, the average main costs £17.50 (range of £13.50 to £21). This works out to be about 11% more. I think it’s rather cheeky for a restaurant to not update their prices with reasonable accuracy as it may mislead a customer into going to the restaurant when they might not have otherwise gone. Ok, it’s only a couple of quid, but its still 11%.

The décor at Northbank is pretty swanky. It looks modern and smart, has quite a masculine feel to it, and boasts of a prime location on the Thames overlooking the Tate Modern. With its location, I imagine that its usual crowd are tourists and city types.

A venison, rabbit and hare terrine with quince jelly and toast (£8) was meaty, well seasoned and very tasty. This was very well done, but the piece we got was stingy. It had been very thinly sliced and could have done with about fifty percent more. Cheeky I say.

Venison, rabbit & hare terrine

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My lovely friend JK, who is as much a foodie as I am, liked the idea of trying Fig Bistro in Barnsbury when I suggested it. She often drives past the restaurant, which with its candlelit window, looks cosy and romantic. I’ve never been past the place but I liked the sound of it because Chef Christoffer Hruskova’s CV read well. Having spent a year at King Hans, Denmark’s longest running Michelin starred restaurant, Christoffer embarked on a worldwide culinary tour, taking in kitchens such as Tetsuya’s in Sydney, one of the ‘50 Best Restaurants in the World’, and the now closed Patria in New York City which I use to love when I lived in NYC.

The restaurant is as cute as JK described. It’s warm and homely with brick walls and woodwork furnishings. But our meal got off to an unpromising start. Our waitress had no idea what was in the Cornish charcuterie, one of the starters on the menu. She sent another waiter around to answer our questions, but he was also unable to tell us what was in the Cornish charcuterie or how a main course of Herdwick lamb rump Provencale was cooked. I was floored that the waiting staff at a restaurant could be that ignorant about the dishes on a menu, especially one as short as this (about 5 to 6 options per course).

For starters, I decided to go for the pan-fried scallops and cauliflower (£8) which was part of the ‘Bistro Special menu’ (4 courses for £35). Initially the waiter declined to let me order it (as it was part of the set menu), but with a gentle nudge he finally relented.

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I like Dean Street Townhouse. My last meal there (to read about that meal, click here) was very enjoyable and it’s the kind of place I’d happily go to again and again. I was especially looking forward to trying the grouse that I had spotted on their menu. Not that many restaurants in London serve grouse even when it’s in season, so it’s a bit of a treat.

To start was a soused Cornish mackerel with sea purslane (£9). As one would expect, there were wonderful vinegary properties to the fish, similar to what you would find in the Scandinavian pickled varieties. The accompanying purslane, tapenade and wafer-thin crisp breads worked well with the mackerel, although this dish didn’t feel particularly autumnal. But it was great if pickled fish is your thing.

Soused Cornish mackerel with sea purslane

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