A culinary masterclass from a master chef

Sweetbread, almond, pear

Back in December, a whole fortnight before Christmas, we ended up at the Gilbert Scott for my birthday meal, after a salutary lesson in just how far in advance you need to book for certain restaurants.

Not, I hasten to add, that The Gilbert Scott is in any way a culinary let down.

But within a few days, I’d suggested to The Other Half that we try to book well advance for his birthday, which fell this weekend just gone.

It paid off – thanks to very helpful staff – and we found ourselves with a reservation for lunch at Marcus, Marcus Wareing’s eponymous eatery at the Berkley Hotel in Knightsbridge.

Having quaffed a late-but-light breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast – as much to get the systems going as anything – we dressed and headed out into Saturday’s gloom.

To begin with, the bus was slow. Then, after getting to King’s Cross, the tannoy blared out the news that a signal failure had stalled all Piccadilly line trains – just as we’d found our way to the platform.

I’ll just say at this point: King’s Cross was always bad, but it now simply seems bigger and more crowded than ever, even if shiner and newer. It’s a nightmare to navigate around.

We thought about hopping onto the nearby Victoria line and changing – only to see that there are no stations where you can change to the Piccadilly.

We’d given ourselves more than enough time – more than recommended by Transport for London – but with less than half an hour left before we were due to take our seats, we hopped a cab and I rang the restaurant to let them know we would be a little late – which didn’t worry them in the least.

Eventually, we made it across London just 15 minutes beyond our appointed time, but nonetheless feeling slightly harried.

Anjou pigeon, celeriac, bean, blackberry

Moving through the tea room and into the restaurant provided almost instant tension relief.

At a comfortable spacious table, we started to unwind with the menus, a welcome glass of fizz and small, doughy balls with a Parmesan salty kick inside that really lengthened the taste experience.

Marcus is one of those establishments that uses very simple menu descriptions, but frankly, I don’t know why some people find it disconcerting: for me, it’s a nice way to highlight the key flavours and ingredients.

So, while The Other Half started with “sea bass, sweet potato, saffron, sorrel”, I opted for “veal sweetbread, almond, pear”.

Sweetbread is one of those hugely misunderstood cuts: yes, it can be testicles, but it can also be several other things – not least, thymus.

These were blissfully sweet and tender, with a texture that was not unreminiscent of foie gras, and with a gloriously caramelized top providing a wonderful contrast.

The pear came in at least two ways: two segments that, our waiter explained, had been given the sous vide treatment, which firmed them up at the same time as keeping them juicy. The cut edges had a filigree of black on it – a little like charcoal, I thought.

And indeed, that would work perfectly, given the wine I had.

We’d decided to rely on the sommelier for recommendations, and for this course, mine was a French white – Chardonnay ‘Vieilles vignes’, Seguela, Côtes Catalanes, 2013 – with a distinctly burnt toast taste that worked really well as a compliment to the sweetness of the meat and the pear.

There was also a pear crisp that was wafer thin and simply melted in the mouth, plus slivered almonds and a purée to add further textures.

It was divine.

For a main, The Other Half picked “venison, chestnut, cranberry, black pudding”, while I took on “Anjou pigeon, celeriac, bean, blackberry”.

Again, two very happy diners.

The pigeon was wonderful: superbly cooked, with a single leg roasted to the point of being sticky with it’s own juices, and served in a tiny bowl of bread sauce and with a water bowl alongside. There’s something almost divinely nefarious about sitting in a two-Michelin-starred restaurant and eating with your fingers.

Rhubarb, custard, thyme, ginger

The blackberries, I suspect, had also been in the sous vide for the same reason as the pear – intensified flavor and firmness – while the celeriac came in both tiny, sautéed dice and little roundels. The beans added yet more texture.

Wine this time was an earthy red – a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, ‘Clos des Brusquieres’ from the Rhône, 2010.

And then, of course, dessert.

Both of us, having seen Wareing himself present Masterchef: The Professionals late last year, were aware of his love for the dishes his grandmother cooked in his native Lancashire.

So on seeing a listing for “rhubarb, custard, thyme, ginger,” neither of us bothered with a second thought, given that the Yorkshire Triangle’s forced rhubarb season is just underway.

Not, of course, that this was any old rhubarb and custard.

The custard came as feather-light set discs, flavoured with vanilla and thyme.

With that, there was a sticky rhubarb smear, a quenelle of rhubarb ice cream, pieces of rhubarb (probably from the sous vide, because it was ‘cooked’ yet firm) with dots of foam and thyme, ribbons of stewed rhubarb and strings of ginger.

With the restaurant out of banyuls, I tried a digestif from Spain: a Moscatel Dorado, Bodegas César Florido, Jerez, which was full of prune sweetness and sunshine.

There were Tahiti vanilla and milk chocolate truffles and banana ganache with yuzu gel squares to complete the meal.

We that, we headed home, both sated and soothed.

People sometimes question whether fine dining is worth the lay out.

Truffles and ganache

I know I’ve said it before, but yes, it really does.

This was flawless cooking; not a single false note. Superb ingredients, with flavours that were robust yet combined with great subtlety, and all presented quite beautifully.

Having the wine selected for you by an expert really adds to the experience: when matched like this, it becomes even more an integral part of the meal than if you simply selected a single bottle to cover all courses.

Service was exemplary – friendly yet formal at the same time: the perfect way to illustrate this was that the junior sommelier happily agreed to give me a list of the wines we’d had, and did so in a beautifully hand-written list before we left.

And in the interests of completeness, the setting combines comfort and elegance.

This was a wonderful meal – and a perfect way to spend an afternoon.

If you think food is food is food – think again

Utterly divine Yorkies and filling

It’s a fairly familiar moan of mine that here in the UK, far too few people really rate food highly and instead, treat it essentially as straightforward fuel, rather than one of life’s great pleasures.

A pleasure, incidentally, that taken with a dose of seriousness, would almost certainly be healthier for you than the food-as-fuel attitude that drives the punters in their millions into the supermarket ready-meal aisles for supplies of ping food.

And the same attitude reveals itself in other ways too: for instance, when people suggest that there’s no point in paying the kind of money a top-quality restaurant will charge, because, after all, ‘food is just food’.

Well no, it really isn’t.

On Friday night, with a trip to the theatre in the offing, we needed food first.

Now The Other Half and I generally like to avoid chains and franchises, and most certainly what would be called fast food joints.

When you’ve got two hours to fill, you might as well sit down and enjoy something decent.

Since we were heading to Shaftsbury Avenue, I had been considering where to eat in that vicinity. But I was struggling.

We thought about a Chinese – how about the legendary Poons, for instance?

It was agreed that that sounded like a good idea, but then I discovered that that establishment has gone the way of all flesh.

Soho is not what it once was – changing as developers move in: and for the worse, in my opinion.

We ummed and ahhed, and I trawled the internet looking for anything with consistently decent reviews, but all without finding anything remotely inspiring.

In the end, I tried out a rather different idea on The Other Half: what about an early dinner down the road at The Gilbert Scott, and a cab to the theatre after?

He readily agreed – which pleased me, since I’ve been dying for a chance to return since my own first visit 15 months ago for the set lunch, and also wanted to introduce him to this rather special place.

It would, rather obviously, be more expensive than we’d expect to pay if we’d stuck with the idea of dining nearer the theatre.

So what do you get for spending all that extra filthy lucre?

Well, you get a very great deal.

To start with, though, it’s worth pointing out that most middle-range restaurants are not cheap.

Yet what you will frequently find is that, if one course is good, the others won’t match it for standard.

What you get at top restaurants is, in essence, simple: flawless cooking all the way through.

The Gilbert Scott is no exception.

Arriving a little early on Friday, as the team was still having its pre-service meeting, we sat in the bar for cocktails – a wonderful, refreshing rhubarb and ginger sour (with vodka) for me – and popcorn.

Now popcorn is ‘in’ at the moment. And popcorn is also not something that The Other Half likes. But this was just wonderful – and I was far from being alone in chucking it into my mouth.

Not that this was just any old popcorn, mind, but very carefully flavoured. I couldn’t quite work out what the subtle smokiness was – fortunately, chef Nick Ward later explained to me that they cook it with smoked butter from their salmon supplier.

So, what was first up for dinner itself?

In an exception to any previous experience, we both had the same.

To start with, a Yorkshire fishcake with lavabread mayonnaise, and topped with a divine little sprig of ever-so-fresh herbs (chervil, dill and chives) that was far more than a careless garnish, but added a glorious bitterness to the gentle sweetness of the fishcake itself.

For our mains, it was wild pigeon, roasted with tiny onions and mushrooms, and lardons, in a truly voluptuous gravy, and poured into individual Yorkshire puddings at the table.

Now that’s great restaurant threatre, of course, but it also ensures that the pudding is as crisp as possible when it reaches the diner.

Did I say “crisp”?

Now I don't consider myself bad at Yorkies, but I have never tasted one so good – and nor had that thoroughbred Tyke himself, The Other Half. Neither, should it be added, had I ever tasted such tender pigeon.

On the side, we opted for white tenderstem broccoli and carrots cooked in tarragon and star anise.

Both were cooked to perfection – none of that ‘al dente’ means almost-raw nonsense, while the carrots were perfectly complimented by the tarragon and the warmth of the star anise.

We didn’t have the time to sit and digest, and then order a dessert – but I know that we’d both have opted for Yorkshire rhubarb posset, if we had had that time.

The Other Half could see a regional theme here that he rather liked.

In the last year or so, we’ve finally sussed that, in really good restaurants, ordering a glass of wine doesn't simply translate as the house white or red, so we picked a good white for the fishcakes and a good red for the pigeon.

The former was a Riesling ‘Brauneberger Juffer’, Kabinett, Paulinshof, from Germany’s Mosel, while the latter was a Côte du Rhône, Domaine Charvin, from France.

The Riesling in particular was superb – great bouquet, great length, great taste. It’s the same wine I’d enjoyed on my previous visit, and it was most gratifying to find that The Other Half was really impressed with it too.

The service was exemplary: friendly, attentive but never intrusive.

The dining room is a pleasure in itself.

It probably doesn’t need pointing out that we will be returning – and recommending it highly to all and sundry.

Next time, I want longer – not least because the menu itself is worth browsing over at leisure before you even get down to eating.

The food, as you’ll probably have gathered, is not the kind of obviously French-influenced cuisine that has blossomed in high-end British restaurants under the tutelage and influence of the Rouxs and Raymond Blanc, and which has massively improved at least some of the country’s restaurant scene.

But then again, Marcus Wareing, who designed the menus for the Gilbert Scott, is himself immersed in what Michel Roux Jr would call “The Classics”.

It is a menu, though, that makes you aware and proud of our British food heritage – and when such food is done like this, it is as good as anything else.

It will equally need little pointing out that it was all rather more expensive than it would have been if we had trawled around the Shaftsbury Avenue area and simply found somewhere – anywhere! – to eat.

But I hope that what I’ve done here is to illustrate exactly why, in food terms, you really do get what you pay for.

I still remember – without needing to look it up – what I ate on that first visit to the Gilbert Scott, over a year ago. I cannot recall what I ate at a small restaurant near Charing Cross just two months ago on our last visit to the theatre.

I rather doubt that either us of will find this meal to have been instantly forgettable.

And that really should tell you something.

Comfort and joy

Dining out sometimes seems to be like the London bus of legend – after an age without a single restaurant visit, a glut of such opportunities present themselves.

Today, I was faced with a choice. With an evening trip to the theatre atop the schedule, something more substantial than my usual homemade lunchtime fare was required, either at noon or later.

So, what was it to be?

In the back of my mind for a year or so – since it opened – has been the Gilbert Scott, Marcus Wareing’s restaurant in the newly-renovated St Pancras Renaissance hotel.

And it’s pushed it’s way to the front in the last few days, first as I was considering retro food, and then as a result of Wareing’s own appearance on Masterchef: The Professionals.

A quick glance at the website convinced me that the ‘express menu’ was the perfect option, at £19 for two courses and £23 for three.

This means that you get to select each course from two options drawn from the full à la carte version.

So, since it’s served between midday and 1pm, I headed into the cold, clear day a little before the clock struck 12.

The first thing to say is that the renovated building is just a glory. It really is a step back in time and has been wonderfully restored. The restaurant itself is housed in a curved room with an incredibly high ceiling that has a great sense of light and space.

The name of the restaurant is, incidentally, that of the architect who designed this gothic icon, which so very nearly disappeared altogether. A nice touch.

And the entire ethos of the restaurant is also one of looking back to our culinary heritage.

The starter was a choice between haslet – an old-fashioned English meatloaf – and a broccoli and stilton soup.

Now I don’t often have soup as a starter, because I usually find it too filling – and I’m also, even as a cheese lover, sceptical about the use of blue cheese in savoury dishes.

So … I opted for the soup. Well, if a place like this isn’t going to convince you of the merits of something, nowhere’s likely to.

It arrived in a small pan, to be poured smoothly onto the air-light crispy, cheesy croutons waiting in the bowl. A lovely moment of dining theatre.

And as well as being a glorious colour, the taste was heaven: smooth and thick as velvet, it had a wonderful, fresh fragrance and a delicate flavour, seasoned by the salty cheese that never overpowered the vegetable.

For a main course, I’d chosen rainbow trout on purple sprouting broccoli and with a caper vinaigrette.

Trout is another food that has been badly served over the years, treated as a poor relative of salmon and, like duck with orange, suffering the ignominy of being lazily linked with almonds.

This was superb: buttery and moist as anything, with a full taste and a crispy skin that simply melted away in the mouth.

The capers gave the whole thing a tart lift that was as astonishingly subtle as it was effective.

For dessert, a lemon posset with rosemary shortbread – the former, light and rich with a hint of vanilla on top; the latter, light and crumbly and with the herb just adding a note of wonderful sophistication.

On the side, a small glass of 2011 Riesling Brauneberger Juffer, which gave off a heady aroma of citrus and gooseberry, and tasted of honey, shot through with grapefruit.

This might not be ‘cutting edge’ food, but it’s fabulously classy, everything looked so beautiful and smelled divine. Quite simply, the cooking is so, so precise.

So often, when you eat out, there’ll be something, somewhere that you think is great, but something else that doesn’t quite hit the same heights.

This, however, was not only wonderfully comforting, it was flawless. And it’s not often you get to say that.

Get those gams out

Has retro food ever had it so good? After all, at the top of the pile there’s Heston Blumenthal himself with his restaurant Dinner, which serves ‘meat fruit’ amongst myriad other reinvented dishes.

And it was accorded official approval by the award of a Michelin star less than a year after it opened in early 2011.

Elsewhere, Marcus Wareing is guiding the Gilbert Scott along similar, if less outré, paths, with a range of dishes that pay homage to English cooks of yore, including Mrs Beeton, the patron saint of English cookbook writers (even if she did plaigerise).

But celebration of the past doesn’t have to be limited to the fine dining end of the food scene. Indeed, there are one or two dishes that were perhaps most in fashion in the 1970s and which linger on – but could seriously do with a bit of a boost.

Scampi is one – done properly, it can be very, very good. But all too often, it’s just an excuse for an eatery to be lazy – not least by everything having come out of the freezer.

Only the other day, The Other Half commented that a fondant potato on Masterchef: The Professionals looked overcooked – then Michel Roux Jr complimented it.

The thing is, we’re so used to the utter insipidity of frozen and oven-cooked chips that we’ve forgotten that a deep golden colour on a fried potato dish is not an indicator of it being burned.

But another retro dish that is failed badly by being cobbled together from inferior ingredients is gammon steak.

Let’s face it, on most occasions that it’s served, it’ll be a piece of pink rubber in a suspiciously regular shape, served with pale chips and frozen peas; possibly with a fried egg on top, and with brown sauce or ketchup on the side.

Yet like so many things, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Last weekend, I decided that it was worth doing it differently. On Broadway Market on a Saturday, one of the stalls is Downlands farmers/butchers.

They specialise in pork products and, recently, we’ve had their sausages and bacon a couple of times. And by gum, it’s good.

They also sell gammon steaks – but they’re nothing remotely like those regular discs of pink you’ll find in the supermarkets.

I bought two. And last night, they were given the Voluptuous Manifesto test.

They each come packed in vacuum bag, with a suggestion that they be blasted fleetingly in a seriously hot pan, before a little water is added, the pan is lidded and the meat is allowed to steam for five minutes.

Now these are farmers, and if they say that – as opposed to one online source suggesting sticking them under a hot grill for 10 minutes a side – then I’ll go with the farmer. He (or she!) probably has a clue, which doesn’t involve killing the cut.

So that was what was done.

Some heat, a little water and then a five-minute wait.

In the meantime, I’d peeled and par-boiled some new potatoes, before finishing them off in the oven in a little duck fat. To accompany this was a mix of red and white cabbage, cooked à la Robuchon and, being very retro (and because The Other Half thinks it essential) a couple of pineapple rings on top.

Gammon is from an old northern French word ‘gambe’, meaning the hind-leg of the pig, or ham.

But over the years, eateries have denuded it of any real class, serving it as a processed, tacky dish – the sort of thing you eat in desperation.

Done this way, using quality – real – gammon steaks, it’s a real pleasure.