
3

"This new hotel restaurant in Richmond attempts a menu of trendy, disparate dishes—open rabbit lasagne, Roscoff onion slaw, jackfruit dirty burger and other “voguish odds and ends”—but reads like the work of an absentee executive chef and an unprepared kitchen. Serviceable room aside, many dishes underdeliver: a rocket salad arrives as an undressed, near-wilted clump; a venison scotch egg shows gnarly, waywardly pink meat; a flat-iron steak contains a thick band of gristle and a Gressingham duck breast appears as two seeping pink slabs. Even bread rolls are disappointingly dense. Puddings are particularly problematic: a Knickerbocker Glory is messily overreaching and a Valrhona chocolate mousse suffers from grainy tempering, gluey honeycomb and an unappealing presentation. The overall effect, according to critics, is hapless and slapstick rather than confidently ambitious." - George Reynolds