I came to hear of Verru through K, an Estonian-born Russian friend of mine. The restaurant only opened a few months ago and boasts of an Estonian chef, hence the name Verru which is a play on the word Võru, the name of a town and county in Southern Estonia. Chef Andrei Lesment’s French training is evident. The restaurant’s website talks of Baltic flavours, but Verru’s menu reads more French with hints of Baltic influences thrown in.

Situated on Marylebone Lane, right near Le Cordon Bleu, the restaurant is small with an awkward layout. Nevertheless, it still manages to dish up an intimate and cosy charm. K tells me the look is very Estonian. There are leather seats, brickwork and distressed wood walls.

A very good starter of roasted quail (£7.50) was nicely cooked and moist. It came with a flavoursome slice of boudin noir, almonds and some deliciously exotic mandarin syrup. With the richness of the boudin noir, slightly more acidity was called for.

Roasted quail

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About a month ago, I was invited to a bloggers’ dinner to mark the 5th anniversary of The Cuckoo Club, a members-only rock ‘n’ roll club. Their website is very cool (well worth a visit) and I was excited about the idea of going to the club. Artists such as Johnny Borrell and his band, Tinie Tempah and Seb Fontaine performed at The Cuckoo Club just before Christmas to mark its 5th birthday and I believe many other star performers have also passed through its doors.

The Cuckoo Club is not as glamorous (thinking Mayfair here) as the website would have you believe, but it is certainly cool in a rock-chic kind of way. The lighting is very purple which made it very difficult to see what the food really looked like. I originally had the photos up, but in the end I decided to remove them from this post. As you can imagine, with this blog having a purple background, the photos were an eyesore.

We (Boo in London, Leluu from Fernandez & Leluu and many others) kicked off the evening with some fancy cocktails, all of which had very rock ‘n’ roll names. The prices are steep though – they come in at £13 a piece with the classic champagne cocktail at a staggering £24.

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Pierre Koffmann made his permanent return to the London dining scene with his restaurant Koffmann’s at The Berkeley. When Pierre Koffmann appeared during London Restaurant Week 2009 with his pop-up restaurant at Selfridges, Restaurant on the Roof, he became the toast of the town. The ex-three star Michelin chef went into retirement after closing Le Tante Claire in 2004, so his pop-up stint was always going to create some excitement. Restaurant on the Roof was pricey, but it was well worth a visit. The food was very good, and the ambiance was great. And of course there was the opportunity to try his famous pig’s trotter dish.

Koffmann’s at The Berkeley received a fair bit of press during the last couple of weeks as a consequence of Kate Middleton dining there with The Duchess of Cornwall. The restaurant opened last summer, and occupies the space that was previously Gordon Ramsay’s Boxwood Café. The dining room is elegantly furnished and sits on the lower ground floor. As nice as it was, I am not a big fan of this basement eating with no windows. The placement of the toilets is also awkward – you have to up the stairs, go past the reception, and then go down another set of stairs to get to them. Why there is no connecting door between the dining room and the bathrooms is a mystery to me.

A pre-starter of caramelised onions with anchovies and olives on puff pastry was a little salty. The puff pastry wasn’t particularly light.

Caramelised onions with anchovies and olives

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Racine seems to have this mystical reputation as being one of the best non-high end French restaurants in London, and it was because of this reputation that my friend J wanted us to go. I have been once before, a long time ago, and while I didn’t think that the food was bad, I didn’t remember it being particularly memorable either. Racine always seems packed whenever I go past it, and so it felt like time to try it again.

So did Racine live up to its reputation? In the décor stakes, I would say yes. The restaurant is cozy and warm, and the ambience sings a buzzing tune. The moment you walk through the door, you get the sense that you have been transported to some hidden romantic hideaway in rural France.

To start, a foie gras ballotine (£12.75) was rich in flavour and wonderfully creamy in texture, but the accompanying brioche was disappointing. Instead of being soft in the centre, it was dry and a little crusty. It also lacked the requisite sweetness.

Foie gras ballotine

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The Roux family are the closest thing we have to cooking royalty here in the UK. So the opening of Roux at The Landau, a collaborative effort between father and son Albert and Michel Jnr, was always going to be newsworthy. Housed in the Langham Hotel on Regent Street, the dining room has been elegantly and stylishly refurbished by interior designer David Collins. His client list includes such notable restaurants as J Sheeky, Locanda Locatelli, Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and Bob Bob Ricard (ok I didn’t like the food at Bob Bob Ricard, but I did like the clever décor). The most memorable aspect about the design was the vaulted passageway that guides you through the restaurant’s treasured wine collection before leading you into the dining room.

Chef de Cuisine is Chris King, Michel’s young protégée who spent five years at Le Gavroche before working at Per Se in New York and then at Roux at Parliament Square as the sous chef.

I dined as a guest of Roux at The Landau. Amuse bouches included a creamy remoulade topped with a soft quail’s egg, spicy chorizo spring rolls and a fragrant beef tartare finished with truffle. These were very tasty.

Amuse bouche

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Tempo is a recently opened Italian restaurant on Curzon Street, right near the now-defunct Mirabelle. There is a bar upstairs on the first floor, and the ground floor houses the dining room which is contemporary but not flashy. The colour scheme offers up warm, beige-y tones and large paintings splash the walls. This is a pretty and comfortable restaurant, even if the tables are squished together and the seats are small. I guess space is precious in Mayfair.

I liked the menu. Subdivided between cicchetti (small eats), carpaccio, antipasta, pasta and risotto, fish and meats, side dishes and desserts over a compact two page format, it offered a reasonable range of choices without overwhelming the audience. It made me want to try a little bit of everything.

I dined as a guest of the restaurant. From the cicchetti section, an insalata di polpo, seared octopus, pomegranate with apple (£3.75) was lovely. The octopus was tender and and nicely seared, and there was a lovely freshness coming through from the pomegranate and julienned apples which well with the octopus.

Insalata di polpo

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So here is a list of my top ten UK restaurants of 2010. I wish I could take the credit for coming up with the idea of doing this list, but I can’t. TopTable emailed me a few weeks ago and asked if I would come up with a top ten which they have kindly published on TopTable. Here is the link to their site if you want to check it out (click here). Anyway, I thought it was such a cool idea that I’ve replicated my list below.

It was pretty tough trying to decide which restaurants to include. There were so many factors to take into consideration, eg, food, price, overall experience, etc, but on balance, these are the restaurants which I have enjoyed the most this year. All the restaurants are UK based, but for good measure, I’m going to throw in Providence in LA as one of my top eats of 2010 as they were absolutely fab.

So here’s the list of my top ten UK restaurants of 2010:

(1) Barrafina

This has to be one of the best restaurants in London at the moment and it’s easy to see why it draws in the crowds. The food is simple, but delicious and fresh. The experience of dining at Barrafina leaves you wanting more.

(2) Apsleys

My first visit meal at Apsleys was uninspired, but my second visit was mind blowing. Head chef Massimiliano Blasone executive sous chef Marco Calenzo really know how to cook. Flawlessly executed, the meal was so exquisite I still dream about it.

(3) The Ledbury

Aussie boy Brett Graham serves wonderfully creative haute cuisine at this Notting Hill gem. He deserved his second start this year.

(4) Galvin La Chapelle

Brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin again serves up top-notch French cuisine in what must be one of the most stunning dining rooms in London. If you ever wanted a venue to impress someone, this is a choice that cannot be overlooked.

(5) Bistro Bruno Loubet

Solid French cooking boasting of tasty, robust flavours. Their pea soup à la Française was a jaw-dropper. It’s the kind of place you know you can’t go wrong in. Pretty reasonably priced as well for this standard of cooking.

(6) Polpo

I think the wait for a table here is horrid, but the food is good and great value for money. Their flourless cakes are to die for.

(7) Ottolenghi

I am not a vegetarian, but the dishes at Ottolenghi, a lot of which are veggie, are good enough to make me want to become one! Yotam Ottolenghi only uses the best seasonal ingredients and spices it up to produce a balance of wonderful flavours. With a stint in the pastry kitchens of The Capital and Baker and Spice, it’s easy to understand why his desserts are an unadulterated pleasure.

(8) Sedap

Cheerful hole-in-wall which, in my opinion, serves the best char kway teow in London.

(9) Dean Street Townhouse

The cooking is very good, although the service can get a little rushed during peak times. But the atmosphere is great fun and the vibe is cool.

(10) Harwood Arms

The Harwood Arms was better before it got its first star (surprisingly). But on the whole, it still serves up great food. For the price and quality, it is still one of the better restaurants in London.

Finally, it wouldn’t do to not mention my worse eat of 2010. For their ludicrously overpriced lobster spaghetti, I am going to have to say Bob Bob Ricard.

And, if you would like to check out the top ten lists of some other bloggers that were also featured on TopTable, click here.

Readers, thanks for hanging out with me and sharing my eating adventures throughout 2010. Merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the new year.

Note: Chefs Massimiliano Blasone and Marco Calenzo have now left the restaurant. Consequently this blog post may not reflect the current state of affairs at Apsleys.

Back in March I went to Apsleys, a one Michelin starred restaurant, and had the five-course tasting menu. Apsleys is the London outpost of Heinz Beck, a chef who holds three Michelin stars with his restaurant La Pergola in Rome. I had therefore expected good things. Instead, I left the restaurant feeling a little under whelmed. It wasn’t a bad meal per se, but my tortellini pasta was a bit overcooked and there were inconsistencies in the presentation of the food. I also found the tuna tartare dish with herbal infusion and green tea sorbet slightly odd.

Somehow the restaurant got hold of my post. Perhaps they had a point to prove because they contacted me several months later to invite me to dine at Apsleys again, saying that things had much improved. Interestingly, The Critical Couple wrote of an underwhelming first experience followed by a much more positive one at Apsleys. I was therefore sufficiently curious to try it again.

To start was a trio of seafood amuse bouches. From left to right, tuna tartare sparkled with the gentle hint of orange pieces. Next was a seabass tartare with cauliflower and candied lemon mounted on some finely chopped cantaloupe melon. The sweetness of the fish contrasted wonderfully with the fruitiness of the melon and the acidity of the lemon. Finally, a stunning sliver of thinly sliced scallop marinated in olive oil and lemon was served on a bed of creamy amaranth (a black corn stock).

Amuse bouches

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