{"id":8310,"date":"2013-10-13T10:33:09","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T10:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=8310"},"modified":"2013-10-13T10:33:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T10:33:50","slug":"two-meals-five-stars-worth-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/restaurants\/two-meals-five-stars-worth-them","title":{"rendered":"Two meals, five stars, worth them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last week I have been lucky to dine twice in high-end London restaurants, boasting five Michelin stars between them. How did they rate?<\/p>\n

The first was lunch at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester<\/a>. (This was with Champagne Bruno Paillard – I have written up the wine part here.) Boasting three Michelin stars, this is fine dining at its finest and most exclusive. The dining room is modern, white, stylish but a little soulless and heavy. In fact, it’s exactly what you’d expect in an international luxury hotel. This will be reassuringly familiar to many of the clientele here: they want things expensive, but as soon as you put in too much personality into the design, you will alienate as many as you appeal too. And the super-rich are a fussy set.<\/p>\n

The staff are everywhere. They are very attentive, but appropriately attentive. Professional not obsequious. The food? It’s amazingly luxurious, beautifully presented, and highly reliant on sauces. Each course is presented, then the sauce is applied at the table in an extra step. Even for the dessert.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1072-001\"<\/a>The first course, saut\u00e9 gourmand of lobster with truffled chicken quenelles and homemade pasta, was a masterpiece: expensive comfort food with lovely rich flavours. Maybe a little too rich? Rich ingredients with a rich sauce.<\/p>\n

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The fish course, a big chunk of halibut,\u00a0was like a piece of plate art. Beautifully presented, and perfectly cooked, but this time perhaps lacking a little flavour?<\/p>\n

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Then, the main course. Veal loin. Nothing too world-shaking here, but very nicely executed, and beautifully sauced. The dessert, likewise. Very pretty, very tidy, very tasty, but not anything terribly imaginative.<\/p>\n

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Conclusions? A very impressive meal, but not a memorable experience. Perfectly pitched for a clientele who have money to spend, want the best, but who aren’t curious about food, and don’t want any nasty surprises. It’s classic French cooking with a hat tip to modernity, and it will set you back about \u00a3150 per head if you are easy on the wine list. Would I go back if I was paying? No. Would I be keen to go back if someone else was paying? No. There are just too many interesting places to eat in London for Alain Ducasse’s over-heavily starred restaurant to be top of the list. But it is certainly a very good restaurant, meeting the needs of its customers.<\/p>\n

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So to meal number two, and we are dropping a star to visit Le Gavroche<\/a>, the famed Mayfair establishment, opened the year I was born, and which was London’s first\u00a0to be awarded three-stars. It now has two. I was here as a guest of Credit Agricole’s wine division.<\/p>\n

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Visiting Le Gavroche is like getting in a time machine and going back to 1982, when it was awarded three stars for the first time.\u00a0The bar is all Burgundy velvet, creaky floorboards\u00a0and\u00a0red carpets. The dining\u00a0room is\u00a0dimly lit, chintzily\u00a0over-decorated,\u00a0and patrolled by\u00a0an army of staff. There’s also a dress code that insists that gentlemen keep their jackets on at all times. (A refurbishment is planned in January 2014, apparently.)<\/p>\n

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The food is classic French, and heavily sauce dominated. We began with a\u00a0richly flavoured\u00a0crab dish, which was\u00a0nicely done but perhaps a little over-salted. The meat – beautifully tender veal fillet – was quite superbly done. Again, though, there were no surprises\u00a0 here. Richly flavoured, intricate, delicate French cooking. Technically superb, but staying on\u00a0the safe territory of the familiar.<\/p>\n

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As you can see from a shot of the menu, this is a fabulously expensive place\u00a0to eat\u00a0in the evenings. You would be looking at \u00a3200 a head. While I admire the\u00a0technical ability of the kitchen, it’s just not a very enjoyable place to eat out. The atmosphere is old fashioned and suffocating, and it’s catering for a safe, older clientele with a lot of money to spend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last week I have been lucky to dine twice in high-end London restaurants, boasting five Michelin stars between them. How did they rate? The first was lunch at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[383],"class_list":["post-8310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurants","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8325,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8310\/revisions\/8325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}