Here Are 50 Reasons Not to Eat Out on April 20: Gourmet London

Here Are 50 Reasons Not to Eat Out on April 20: Gourmet London
2009-04-14 23:00:01.3 GMT
By Richard Vines

April 15 (Bloomberg) — Here’s a tip: April 20 is the night of the year to avoid dining out in London. It’s the date of the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards and you’re more likely to see a top chef there than in a restaurant.

Joel Robuchon will head to Freemasons’ Hall from Paris, Daniel Boulud from New York, Ferran Adria from Barcelona and Tetsuya Wakuda from Sydney. They will join U.K. counterparts who include Heston Blumenthal, Marcus Wareing, Rick Stein, Fergus Henderson and possibly Jamie Oliver — he’s filming. In case you wondered, Gordon Ramsay won’t be there. He’s out of the country.

It promises to be quite a gathering — there are 500 people on the guest list — for awards that are greeted in the food world with a mixture of both amusement and annoyance, as well as a touch of boredom.

The top three places have gone to El Bulli, the Fat Duck and Pierre Gagnaire — in that order — for three straight years. China and Japan don’t feature in the Top 50 and the Asian winner is usually Bukhara, an unexceptional eatery in New Delhi.

This year, new panelists have been named in an attempt to freshen things up. I am one for the first time. I have no idea who everyone else voted for, but I can tell you who will win the Lifetime Achievement award. It goes to Robuchon, Michelin’s favorite chef, the organizers said in an e-mailed release.

Red Eaters

There’s good news for steak lovers in London who can’t get enough even now that Goodman has joined Maze Grill, Hawksmoor and other restaurants that cater to those who like their meat red. Palm Restaurants plans to open a London branch on May 25 on the former site of Drones, on Pont Street. The look will be similar to that employed in the U.S., with banquette seating, hardwood floors and caricatures of famous customers. The menu will feature favorites such as lobster, creamed spinach, New York cheesecake and, of course, USDA prime-aged steak.

Blumenthal was one of the judges last week in the finals of the Roux Scholarship, which seeks to recognize and support the U.K.’s most promising young chefs. (The age limit is 30.) He’s busy after the Fat Duck, which won the Best Restaurant award in 2005, was closed for more than two weeks following a breakout of the norovirus. Blumenthal is popular in the industry and received plenty of sympathy from fellow judges who included four members of the Roux family — Michel, Albert, Michel Jr. and Alain — and chefs Gary Rhodes, Andrew Fairlie and Brian Turner. I was a judge, too, so I know. The winner, Hrishikesh Desai, of Lucknam Park, near Bath, stood out at London’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel on April 6 when finalists had to cook Brill Cherubin, an Escoffier recipe.

Miami Fab

Hakkasan, the Chinese restaurant known for being fabulous, is to open its first U.S. branch on April 19. Hakkasan Miami, in the Fontainebleau hotel, Miami Beach, will replicate the venue’s formula of fashionable food and cool cocktails. It’s more than a year since the restaurateur Alan Yau sold majority control of Hakkasan and its sister Yauatcha for $60 million to Tasameem, the property arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. There’s already a Hakkasan in Istanbul and Yau last month opened a second London branch of his budget Chinese eatery Cha Cha Moon at the Whiteleys shopping center in Bayswater.

Yorkshire Portions

David Moore, co-owner of Pied a Terre and L’Autre Pied in London, has opened an eatery in Harrogate, in northern England. Van Zeller — the chef is Tom van Zeller — uses local Yorkshire ingredients in its modern British cuisine. I’ve yet to make it there but I did finally try the cooking of another Yorkshire chef, Anthony Flinn, at Piazza by Anthony in the Corn Exchange, Leeds. Portions are large for dishes such as warm salad of Bury black pudding with a soft-poached egg, and fish pie with creamy mash. My family is from Yorkshire and I can’t say how welcome such good cooking is. In my home town of Doncaster, I’ve given up trying to find a restaurant serving food I would want to eat.

(Richard Vines is chief food critic for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

Posh Indian Eatery Seeks Business Crowd

Posh Indian Eatery Seeks Business Crowd — Uh-Oh: Richard Vines
2009-03-13 00:00:01.1 GMT

Review by Richard Vines

March 13 (Bloomberg) — Dockmaster’s House must have looked like a good idea on paper, like a collateralized debt obligation or a 16 million-pound ($22 million) pension pot.

Good food? Check. Popular cuisine? Check. Beautiful rooms? Check. Comfortable bars? Check. Corporate customers? Whoops.

This posh Indian eatery in London’s Docklands, conceived in a time of plenty, opened in a post-Lehman world where a business lunch is a cheap sandwich and keeping your job is a bonus.

I sat alone nursing a beer in the venue’s 100-capacity cellar bar and pondered how cruel the restaurant industry can be, even without Gordon Ramsay shouting or mystery illnesses prompting complaints from about 400 diners a la Fat Duck.

Fortunately, the food is good, the wine list realistic and the prices acceptable at Dockmaster’s House, lending hope it will survive if not prosper. It’s a similar story at Bombay Brasserie, which has reopened after a facelift. That venue traces its history to 1982, so someone is doing something right.

Navin Bhatia (of Cafe Lazeez) is Dockmaster’s executive chef and serves up a menu that is adventurous enough to be interesting while retaining a familiarity that breeds content. The starters include a kebab platter (11.50 pounds) with charcoal-grilled saffron prawns, tandoori green chicken, lamb burrah kebab and ginger lamb chops. It works as a combination, without any dumbing down of the spices to appease those with bland ambitions.

Sweet Beef

Most main courses are about 18.50 pounds and include some relatively mild dishes such as Chettinad breast of guinea fowl and a less successful coconut chili beef, which was chewy and oversweet. If it’s sweetness you’re after, the orange-and-banana raita is unusual and alluring.

If I went back, I’d just go for the lunch and early-evening set menu, which costs 20.95 pounds for three courses. This offers value and some delicious flavors, including a salmon-dill tikka starter and a main of grilled breast of chicken with tomato fenugreek sauce — think chicken tikka masala — served with rice. Desserts include mango panna cotta and pistachio creme brulee.

Throw in a Spicy Indian wine such as the Sula Vineyards shiraz (22 pounds) and a selection of breads and you can have enough change out of 100 pounds for two to enjoy a few beers in the bar. The service in the restaurant (by a German waiter each time I visited) is friendly and the house — built 200 years ago by the West India Co. — has been given an attractive contemporary look. I wouldn’t travel to Docklands to eat there but I’d be perfectly happy to go back if in the area.

Big Balloon

An Indian family was celebrating someone’s 50th birthday when I visited the Bombay Brasserie, which has reopened after a makeover by the design firm Chhada Siembieda & Associates Ltd. (It may have been the big balloon with “50” written on it, floating above the table, that gave the game away.) Gone is the colonial look, which has been replaced with what resembles an Asian five-star hotel interior.

You may visit many restaurants in the U.K. without finding anywhere that so faithfully replicates the experience of dining in a hotel in India, where families come together to enjoy good food in luxurious surroundings. That’s what you get at Bombay Brasserie, where dishes such as Crab Kalimiri (Telicherry pepper crabmeat) and Adraki Duck Roast (with kumquat and ginger chutney) are sufficiently different from other Indian fare in London as to be intriguing with flavor to be worth revisiting.

The menu was created by Hemant Oberoi, corporate chef for the Taj Group of Hotels. I wonder if he claims the credit for dividing it into sections such as First Impressions, Aquatic Strokes, Master Strokes and Rice Frames. That’s starters, fish, mains and rice. Needless to say, the rice is “fluffy.”

Unlucky Rieslings

The wine list has plenty of enticing options, including Sepp Moser Gruner Veltliner Breiter Rain 2007 from Austria, at 24 pounds. One of the managers kindly recommended this over another gruner veltliner at 40 pounds, though I had less luck with the rieslings. We got one so oversweet we sent it back, which was handled reasonably well, though not without a staffer explaining to me that rieslings tend to be sweet. Cheers.

The real winner at Bombay Brasserie is the Sunday buffet, which costs 22 pounds. It’s so good, and such good value, I’m feeling fluffy just thinking about it.

Dockmaster’s House, 1 Hertsemere Road, London, E14 8JJ.
Tel. +44-20-7345-0345 or click
http://www.dockmastershouse.com/.

Bombay Brasserie, Courtfield Close, Courtfield Road, SW74HQ. Tel. +44-20-7370-4040 or click on
http://www.bombaybrasserielondon.com/.

The Bloomberg Questions
Cost? Dockmaster’s three-course set menu is 20.95 pounds; Bombay Brasserie’s Sunday buffet is 22 pounds.
Inside tips: Dockmaster’s basement bar is worth a look but the music is LOUD; Bombay Brasserie’s bar has good cocktails.

Special features? The architecture at Dockmaster’s House; Bombay Brasserie’s conservatory features an open kitchen.
Private rooms? Yes.
Will I be back? Yes for Bombay Brasserie’s Sunday buffet.
Ratings? **

What the Stars Mean
**** Incomparable food, service, ambience.
*** First-class of its kind.
** Good, reliable.
* Fair.
0 (no stars) Poor.

(Richard Vines is the chief food critic for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

–Editors: Jim Ruane, Farah Nayeri.

To contact the writer on the story:
Richard Vines in London at +44-20-7330-7866 or
rvines@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mark Beech at +44-20-7330-7593 or mbeech@bloomberg.net.

Fat Duck Sickness Complaints Jump to 400 From 40 in Food Scare

Fat Duck Sickness Complaints Jump to 400 From 40 in Food Scare
2009-03-06 00:00:01.7 GMT

By Richard Vines

March 6 (Bloomberg) — The number of people who have reported falling sick after eating at the Fat Duck has risen to 400 from 40 last week, when Chef Heston Blumenthal said he was temporarily closing his restaurant because of the health scare.

The Health Protection Agency and officials from the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead are investigating the complaints about the experimental eatery, west of London, which
is famed for dishes such as snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream.

“This is a very complex outbreak,” Dr. Graham Bickler, the agency’s regional director, said yesterday in a press statement. “We are working closely with the restaurant and
with colleagues in the Royal Borough’s Environmental Health team to explain what happened and to ensure that the risks of it happening again are reduced as much as possible.”

The Fat Duck, which has three Michelin stars, was named the world’s best restaurant in the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards in 2005 and has been in the top two for the past five years. El Bulli, north of Barcelona, currently holds first place.

Blumenthal announced the shutdown on Feb. 27 after diners had called over a three-week period to report they had become ill. He said the next day he hoped to reopen this week and said tests hadn’t revealed any evidence of food poisoning. At the time, he put the cost of a one-week shutdown at 100,000 pounds ($141,000) and said he didn’t know if his insurance would cover it.

Food Tests

Health officials have conducted tests on foodstuffs from the Fat Duck and taken samples from diners and from staff members, looking for signs of contamination by germs — either bacterial or viral — which might have occurred at any time from being supplied to the restaurant to being served, the agency said.

“We’re saying 400 possible cases, not that 400 people have fallen sick,” Teresa Cash, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a telephone interview last night. “When people hear something like this has happened, they may call and report something.” The complaints relate to meals since late January.

Blumenthal’s spokeswoman, Monica Brown, said the chef had no further comment while the investigation was continuing.

The restaurant has examined records of which waiters served which customers, which dishes the diners ordered and where they sat without finding any correlation, Blumenthal said in a telephone interview on Feb. 28. The Fat Duck has used an independent company, Food Alert, for four years to monitor hygiene and it is involved in investigating the complaints, he said.

The restaurant normally serves more than 80 people a day, and each spends on average about 220 pounds, Blumenthal said. The tasting menu costs 130 pounds for about a dozen courses such as the Sound of the Sea, where diners don earphones and listen to lapping waves while consuming seafood washed up on what looks like a beach. The sand is a mix of tapioca and Japanese breadcrumbs.

Matching wines for the menu cost 90 pounds or 165 pounds.

(Richard Vines is the chief food critic for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

For Related News and Information:
Top arts and lifestyle stories, MUSE <GO>.
London dining reviews, TNI LONDON RES <GO>.
More reviews by Richard Vines, NI VINES <GO>.

Editors: Mark Beech, Robin Schatz.

To contact the writer on the story:
Richard Vines in London at +44-20-7330-7866 or rvines@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mark Beech at +44-20-7330-7593 or mbeech@bloomberg.net