Lunch at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's - 11/01/12

I have decided I don’t go to London enough. I NEED to go more! There is so much of London that I’m yet to experience. I never used to like it very much. However, living in Newcastle has changed my view on city life. I’ve recently become quite fond of the idea of living the ‘London life’.

The main purpose of my visit to London with my Godmother on this occasion was to spend a Tiffany’s voucher she had brought me for my 21^st birthday. We were contemplating going to see a matinee performance of Wicked but decided we wouldn’t have enough time. Instead, I was given the job of deciding on somewhere nice to go for lunch. I discovered Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s do a three course set lunch menu for £30 per person. Sorted!

You walk through the front entrance of Claridge’s hotel and are over-whelmed. The front hall is beautiful. The restaurant itself is spacious and very art deco. I loved the fact that the chairs were purple. Our plan to eat off of the three course set lunch menu went out of the window. Excitement overcame us and we decided to go for the five course tasting menu with matching wines which was £55 per person.

To start with we were offered a selection of freshly baked breads. I chose olive bread and onion bread. The olive bread was my favourite of the two.  Our first starter was celeriac soup with apple and walnuts. It came served in the cutest little bowl. The soup was deliciously rich and creamy. Tiny pieces of apple and walnut ran through it which added a lovely texture and gave little bursts of flavour. The sweetness of the apple contrasted with the slight bitterness of the celeriac and walnut and took away some of the richness. I quite liked finding the hidden pieces of ‘fruit and nut’. A fantastic little soup!

The soup was followed by a tortellini of pheasant and pumpkin with almond veloute and rosemary beurre noisette. This was served with a glass of Chardonnay (Cordillera, Torres, Limari Valley, Chile 2009). The pheasant and pumpkin had been combined with a little mushroom and then stuffed into the tortellini. Beurre noisette simply means ‘brown butter’. It had a lovely nutty flavour, with a hidden tinge of rosemary. The almond veloute was light, nutty and slightly sweet, like marzipan. The sweetness of the veloute and beurre noisette cut through the gamey richness of the delicate pieces of pheasant and complemented the sweetness of the soft pumpkin.

The final starter was citrus marinated king fish with pickled ginger, grapes, carrots and spring onions. This was served with a glass of Fiano (Masseria Bianca, Puglia, Italy 2010). The fish was served raw. The citrus flavour dominated the dish. I couldn’t really taste the ginger, only the spring onion which had been finely shred with the carrot. The grapes added a sweetness that cut through the heavy citrus flavour. This was my least favourite out of the three starters.

For main we had a choice between feather blade of beef braised for 16 hours with pomme mousseline and wild mushroom persillade and pan-fried fillet of sea bream with a clam blanquette, apple salsa verde and baby fennel. We both opted for the sea bream. This was served with a glass of Pinot Noir (Yealands Estate, Marlborough, New Zealand 2010). The sea bream was fresh, delicate and perfectly cooked. It has such a subtle flavour. The clam blanquette created texture within the dish. It was rich and creamy but slightly sweet and therefore, it complemented the sea bream along with the apple salsa verde. The baby fennel gave a slight liquorice taste to the dish. However, it was quite stringy.

For pudding we had salted caramel pannacotta with bread pudding and roasted pineapple. This was the course I had been looking forward to the most and for good reason. The pannacotta itself was just incredible. It was indulgently creamy. I didn’t want it to end. The bread pudding had a lovely cinnamon flavour. Oh and the pineapple! Where do I start? I don’t know what the pineapple had been roasted in but God I wish there had been more than one piece of it. It was deliciously sweet. The three elements worked so well on their own and when combined. This was my favourite course and most definitely the nicest pannacotta I have ever eaten.

Our wonderful lunch was rounded off with some home-made goodies; candied clementine marshmallows and chocolate, hazelnut and caramel truffles. Both were heavenly! I had seen a tweet about the marshmallows the day before so I got overly excited when the waiter brought them to our table. Seconds after telling him I had seen the tweet and had been hoping to taste them more marshmallows appeared. BONUS!