Tasting Thursday

Warning:  This is a post all about food with pictures of food.  If you have no interest in food photos (Fletch) go back to yesterday and read about how much I resemble Bill's old worn in baseball glove.

Bill and I had reservations for dinner on Thursday night.  In London, you really have to prebook and for weekend nights sometimes you have to go months in advance.  But week nights are a little easier if you plan ahead. 

Our restaurant was very bookish - which always scores points with me.

 The menu was placed in side an old book (which, by the way,  was Dicken's account of his trip to the United States in the 1840's).  You basically have a choice of the 6 or 10 course tasting menu.  We came to play (10).

 But before you even start your meal you get several plates of "snacks".  And you get them rapid fire - no sooner had I bit into one before the plate was whisked away and a new on took it's place.  This was little dollops of something on very thin crispy cod skin.

 Radishes stuffed with…..something...

 Squid ink wafers with…something in the middle (this was my favorite snack).

Polenta crisps with something about bacon jelly.

 Some sort of champagne concoction in razor clam shells.  I should add that the wait staff was all lovely but had several different European accents.  And the acoustics of the room meant that it was fairly noisy.  And - we're old.  So half the time we would just nod and smile and then ask each other what words we heard to try to piece it all together.

 I heard the words rabbit, pickled carrot and beet on this one.  Cute, isn't it?  Like a traffic light.

 Ok…now the bread.  This is the first course on the menu!! Several snacks back they put a candle on the table.  It melts into a pool at the base.  Turns out that this candle is made of beef fat and its for dipping with the bread.

Onion, apple and old tom.  I have no idea what or who "old tom" is but at least with these courses I can read them off the menu.  Meanwhile, Bill told me he'd never eaten onion before he met me.  How is this possible??

 Scallops, cucumber, dill ash.

 Foie gras, pear, and thyme.  This one was delish - the top was fired up like a brûlée.  

 Heritage potato, turnip and coal.  I have no idea where the coal is in this dish. 

 This one was actually in addition to our 10 courses.  They were two courses that you could add to the list (for additional cash of course).  We picked this one.  It was listed as raw beef, apple and Perigord truffle.  It's served on steaming ice and opens in half to scoop the meat out.

Don't be fooled by the small bites.  By this stage we are stuffed but we still have several more courses to go.  Plus I started getting a wee bit lax on the photography so you are missing the wild stems, squid and pine honey and going straight to the beef, grains, watercress and sloe.  Bill liked the beef but wasn't crazy about the grains.

 Then three courses of ice cream.  I already started digging into my raspberry sherbet before I remembered to take a picture.

 We were seated next to the kitchen behind a half wall.  So I could stand up and take a shot of our chefs.

 This was our very last course and not on the menu so I don't really know what it is.  I think there was some sort of goat cheese involved in the milk shake bottle and the little chocolates where filled with marshmallow and raspberry.

 We waddled our big bellies out of the restaurant around midnight feeling very very full but happy. Just in time to catch one of the last trains home.