Corrigan's Mayfair

I must confess I didn’t have the best experience when I first tried Corrigan’s Restaurant. Having already eaten at Bentley’s and Lindsay House (Richard Corrigan’s previous one Michelin starred restaurant which now houses Gauthier Soho), I had expected better. But lots of positive comments since have convinced me that perhaps that experience could have been an anomaly. Anyway, things were set right last week when I went to try the spice menu at Corrigan’s which is available until 29 January 2012.

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This year I was again asked by the nice people at TopTable to come up with a list of my top restaurants for 2011. However, this year’s list posed a dilemma. Rather than a list of top ten restaurants as was the case for 2010, I was only permitted to table a list of my top five! With so many great dining options in London, how does one whittle down to a list of only five best eats?

I can assure you, only with great difficulty. But I tried my best. Reliving some great memories along the way, here are the restaurants that I have come up with which you can read about below, or on TopTable.

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Morton’s Club occupies an impressive spot on Berkeley Square in Mayfair. Housed in an elegant Grade II listed Georgian building which dates back to 1823, it has a lavish history, and was once the private residence of a Chancellor of Exchequer. The famous Bentley brothers also played here during the 1920s.

Morton’s Club entered the MARC (Marlon Abela Restaurant Corporation) fold in 2001 when it was purchased by its multi-millionaire Chairman Marlon Abela. It underwent extensive refurbishment and was finally reopened in 2004. The décor is lavish, and world class pieces of art adorn the walls. Morton’s Club consists of a snazzy ground floor bar, an intimate night club in the basement area, and an intimate restaurant on the first floor which has views overlooking Berkeley Square. Sister restaurants include the Michelin-starred The Greenhouse and Umu, both in Mayfair. So it is therefore unsurprising that the restaurant at Morton’s supports a lovely classical French menu.

I dined as a guest of Morton’s. To kick off our meal, we had amuse bouches of wild mushroom soup, marinated salmon and quiche Lorraine. All were tasty.

Amuse bouche

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I was lukewarm on Bocca di Lupo when I first ate at this glamorous looking Italian (to read about my previous visit click here). The food was good but it wasn’t as good as the hype. Despite this, the restaurant’s reputation remains strong, and the fact that it continues to be a destination spot for many Londoners and celebs such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz does not escape me.

So it was time for a revisit. The restaurant is far more gorgeous than I remembered from last time. The décor is stylish yet warm, and even though we were perched at the end of the bar, there was no escaping the fantastic chandelier than hangs over the main dining room.

We started with crescentine (fried flatbread from Bologna) with fennel salami and squacquerone cheese (small – £7) which was scrumptious. The crescentine was crispy on the outside and fluffy and light on the inside. The delicious texture of the bread worked well with the creaminess of the cheese and the meatiness of the thinly sliced salami.

Crescentine with fennel salami

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Copita Restaurant takes over from the site that was once Bar Chocolate on D’arblay Street. This is another tapas offering to hit London with a no reservations policy, but luckily we had no problems securing a spot for two on a Friday night. The vibe is chilled, relaxed and very Soho.

We kicked off with ajo blanco and beetroot (£3.95) which was lovely. A creamy dish, the sweetness of the beetroot pieces provided a lovely contrast to the runny garlic sauce.

Ajo blanco and beetroot

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Note: Chef Antonin Bonnet has now left and been replaced by chef Arnaud Bignon from the two-starred Michelin restaurant Spondi in Athens.

I was lucky enough to be invited to sample the new limited edition Laurent-Perrier champagne pairing menu recently launched at The Greenhouse for the festive season. The House of Champagne Laurent-Perrier, founded in 1812, is one of the most recognisable and famous champagne brands in Europe. The Greenhouse is a one Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of Mayfair and is well known for its Asian-inspired French cuisine.

The menu matches five of Laurent-Perrier’s most prestigious and pioneering champagnes with a selection of dishes created by head chef Antonin Bonnet. Each course is designed to enhance the lightness, freshness and elegance of each of the Laurent-Perrier champagnes in the menu. Antonin Bonnet is a protégée of the famous three Michelin-starred chef Michel Bras, and this influence shows in his elegant and refined cooking. I have been to The Greenhouse several times and I adore the food (my last blog post for The Greenhouse is here), and this evening had the makings of a glorious affair.
The evening kicked off with a salmon canape followed by an amuse of runny hen’s egg. This was followed by our first course of a refreshing apple cider marinated mackerel with horseradish snow and pickled black radish. The zingy acidity of the cider was a wonderful match against the oiliness of the fish, and the freshness of the snow added a touch of spark to the dish. The accompanying champagne was Laurent-Perrier Ultra Brut which had lovely hints of citrus.

Apple cider marinated mackerel

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Ducksoup has to be the most interesting restaurant name to hit London in recent times, at least I think so anyway. Brought to us by a team of people who previously worked at the Hix chain of restaurants (chef Julian Biggs, Clare Lattin and Rory McCoy), it adopts a similar formula to the one tried and proven in the Russell Norman empire (Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino, da Polpo) of great location (Dean Street), no bookings except at lunch (very annoying), and reasonably priced food (always appreciated).

But Ducksoup’s approach is slightly more no-frills, so much so that paper napkins come from paper napkin dispensers. The décor is also simpler. It’s comfy, but cool like Spuntino it is not.

There are a number of bar food options, mostly at £3.50, which is great value for this part of town. From the daily changing hand written menu (dotted with a few spelling mistakes) we went for the bar choice of bitter greens with gorgonzola. This was really impressive with the greens being fresh, crispy and nicely dressed. The gorgonzola was creamy, rich and served at the correct room temperature.

Bitter greens

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A couple of weeks ago I attended the opening of One Blenheim Terrace in St John’s Wood. This is the first restaurant to be opened by Head Chef Ed Shaerf who previously worked at Gordom Ramsay at Claridges and The Ivy. To hand is a wealth of knowledge as David Moore acts as a consultant for One Blenheim Terrace. David is well known in the restaurant industry as owner of the Michelin restaurants Pied à Terre and L’Autre Pied, and as an inspector on the BBC2 TV series The Restaurant.

For the occasion of the opening, the dining room had been removed of most tables and chairs to allow the guests to mingle freely. It was therefore difficult to know how the restaurant is normally laid out. Nevertheless, One Blenheim Terrace appears to be an intimate space with a lovely al fresco eating area outside which would come in handy during the summer.

On offer were a canapé selection of items from the menu paired with drinks for our tasting pleasure – starters with beer, mains with wine and desserts with sweet wine. These included an oak smoked salmon (matched with Purity Pure UBU, Warwickshire) which was beautifully smokey. Served with dill, dill emulsion, crispy skin and salmon roe, the salmon was lovely and sweet, and the dill and crispy skin worked a treat.

Smoked salmon

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