Kitchen Insider
Google
Set menus are a chefs dream. They can focus on sourcing sublime ingredients and play with them with all their fave flavour profiles. "Ingredient driven" is what you'll often hear. With this upside, there are risks. You have to nail each of the 4 dishes. Not just ok or good...nailed. The tomato first course is close to a disaster. Tomatoes for this dish are tough to find. I hope that the chef realised he simply didn't have the raw material to make this very risky dish work. They were as watery and bland as they were floury. From this, we improved, but only as far as "ok." Again, the kolrabi to make this dish work has to be amazing. It needs peppery notes and flavour depth that are hard to find. But for this dish, you have them or pull the dish. The dressing was excellent, but the horseradish needed to play a more overt role. Especially with this kolrabi. The fish pieces barely rate a mention, as they barely rated presence...come on, chef, 80g of your off cuts from the main course, please. Things improved greatly with the fish course. Balance and craft in good measure, with great use of sweet, sour, and acid. The dessert, too, had a good review. The pine cone jam elevated this dish from a pleasant end to something remarkable. Id say the dishes were fussier than great produce driven dishes require. Simple is best when the ingredients are too. There was great bread and butter. Take a risk and offer refills, please. Your portions are small, so at least let us fill on great bread. The glass wines were good and the service the same. The room is stuffy, especially against the wall. It's a good place that can be mich better.