Andy Lynes

I saw this in the paper today, great story, and quite touching that the chef should describe the dinner party as one of his dozen or so perfect days. Mrs Woman, you never did report back, now's your chance!

Very interesting Scott, are you in the business by any chance?

Another review, this time from The Independent.

Are you able to fill in any details of why the restaurants in Cannes and London closed?

It was utterly disgusting and the whole lot got chucked out the next day. One bite was enough. More than enough.

By coincidence Matty Fort of the Guardian ate at Midsummer House in Cambridge in January, as did I. A greater coincidence is that Matthew ate the same savoury dishes as I did and only diverged when it came to the final course. You can read his review here. So here's my take on the food and service for you to compare and contrast. I'd like to state upfront that I agree with Fort's assessment that the food is on it's way to 2 michelin stars. I think overall the service is very good and that anyone with a serious interest in dining that has the opportunity would do well to pay the place a visit. Chef Daniel Clifford, as Fort points out is currently producing a mix of dishes heavily influenced by his visits to The Fat Duck and some very fine classical French cuisine. Without doubt, the restaurant is in a period of transistion and it will be interesting to see where Clifford has gone with his investigations and experiments in a years time (he is setting up a small "lab" type development kitchen in the restaurant grounds and is often found pouring over his science books I am told). I arrived a little late for my table for one after negotiating my way across the poorly lit and slightly disconcerting Midsummer Common from my hotel on the other side of town (I will take a taxi next time). I went straight to my table, although later discovered a very pleasant looking bar on the first floor for aperitives and after dinner drinks. The menu was presented, adorned with a picture of the chef, a mission statement and rather oddly, photos of some of the dishes which put me mind of a Harvester restaurant. The waiter gave his recommendations for the evening at some length, most of which coincided with the dishes that attracted a supplement. I find this practice off putting. It's obvious upselling, but more than that, the inference is that some items on the quite short menu aren't worth bothering with. I was informed that a starter of "Seared Hand Dived Sea Scallops, Celeriac Purée, Truffle Vinaigrette, Façon Jean Bardet" was not available due to their supplier letting them down. In addition, the "honey-glazed pork belly, shallot purée, roast scallops, black pudding and ginger and honey caramel" was being served but sans scallops. As a result, I chose another dish (which I now cannot remember) and a main course of Anjou pigeon à la Villegeois, with braised lentils, pommes sautée, confit garlic, poîlane croustillant and jus de raisins sec. A shot glass of green tea and lime sour started the meal. This was similar to Heston Blumental's creation, but whereas the Fat Ducks version is a foam with a mild sour flavour, the Midsummer House version was returing to it's liquid state and had a slightly unpleasant aftertaste. Whilst I was downing it, I was more than surprised to see several plates of delicious looking pork belly, with scallops. I attracted the attention of the young and friendly maitre'd and pointed out what I had seen and asked if I could change my order to the same. He was unable to explain where the scallops had suddenly appeared from, simply stating that he didn't know what had happened, but that he would check with chef to see what could be done. He swiftly returned to say that I could after all have the pork with scallops but that it might be a further 15 minutes. As I was in no rush I readily agreed. Next up was another shot glass, this time an extra course as I had to wait for my starter proper. I was instructed to knock it back in one, and that I would be told what it contained afterwards. It was pleasent enough, caramel sweet, but with a savoury edge from some finely chopped chives. It turned out to be some maple syrup, a layer of raw egg yolk, finished with chive cream. A further similarly layered glass, but of a different shape contained "a contrast of cep and coffee". This I noticed was being left untouched by many of the other diners that night, as had the sour. I finished mine off and found it to be an interesting and workable combination, but the small serving was enough. So far so Fat Duck-ish. The pork belly had been cooked for 60 hours in exactly the same manner as that served in the Riverside Brasserie in Bray and worked well with the now common paring of scallop. The black pudding added a welcome earthy note to an overall sweetness, which was heightened by the ginger and honey caramel. It was a large portion, and probably would have passed for a main course in the capital. The pigeon was served rare, on a large bed of lentils and raisins, with a neat stack of braised grapes toast and saute potatos. This was pretty much an unqualified success, cooked to perfection but too much of it and with again an overall note of sweetness. This was cleared away and the cheese trolley wheeled up unbidden to my table. I was treated to a full explanation of all the available varieties and left with the menu to decide what dessert I wanted. I admit to feeling a little pressurised to partake of the cheese after all that effort, which I kind of think is the point, and switched from my initial choice of the pear assiette. But it was a magnificent plate, some of the best cheese I've had in this country. The meal ended with four petit fours, including a lavender jelly that I couldn't quite stomach and an excellent miniature lemon tart, then a final choice of one chocolate from a very impressive display. With a bottle of Alsace wine (no details available,sorry), coffee, tap water and service the bill came to around £76.00 for one person. An enjoyable evening, with lots to admire about the food and service. I got the feeling that the chef and front of house still need to settle in with their new style. Too often the food was presented as a novelty or a challenge, almost with an apologetic tone. This may have invited the knock backs from the customers in term of those untouched shot glasses. I also didn't spot many plates of salmon with white chocolate and caviar sauce being dished up that night. The large portions may also be a sign of trying too hard to please. Restaurant website.

When I was 18 I moved out of my parents home and into my own little bedsit. In order that I didn't starve, I had been given a sandwich toaster as a birthday present. I was not domesticated at all at the time, very disorganised on the shopping front and would therefore quite often run out of food. One night I rolled in from the pub, a little the worse for wear and feeling very hungry. It was too late to get a takeaway and there was nothing in the place to eat except some bread and butter and oh yes, a certain purchase I'd made at Harrods food hall a year or so previously. Why I made that particular purchase I don't recall, except that I probably thought at the time that it was exactly the sort of thing one would buy in a place like Harrods and that it was a terribly sophisticated and grown up thing to do. I plugged in the toaster, buttered the bread, and reached for the only other item of food available in the place. And that dear reader, is how the pineapple preserved in creme de menthe toasted sandwich was born. Does anyone else have similar stories? Can anyone top it? Or maybe you came up with something really good out of just a few ingredients left in the house.

Flaming Orange Sarnie.

Witches hat - just under half pint of cider and half pint of lager (a snakebite) topped up with a shot of pernod and blackcurrent cordial.

Ha! Wonderful stuff. I've never been in a gang before. I suddenly feel quite rebellious.

I think I e mailed Clifford Mould a while ago about eGullet but haven't spotted him (he may well lurk I suppose). I used to visit dineonline quite regularly, but it seemed for a while to have only press releases rather than reviews or reports, so this appears to be an exception.

Can you ask him to log onto eGullet to post about his reasons?

I'm pleading the 5th on that. (I've edited the report to amend that rather stupid spelling mistake now in case anyone is wondering what this is about)

I'd love to. It could take some working out with the wife though.

A late afternoon dash to the supermarket resulted in a few substitutions as they were all out of tuna and squash. I came home with monkfish and sweet potato instead and cooked : Bacon wrapped monkfish with potato galette, saute cabbage and mushroom sauce Slow roasted chicken thighs with spiced sweet potato mash, pecan japaleno pesto and grilled and creamed sweetcorn. So it was a meal inspired by the basket than one that really followed it too closely. A few details on the preperation : I skinned and filleted the monkfish, laid the two fillets head to tail, wrapped them in the slightly-too-thick-for-the-job streaky bacon, then wrapped it in lots of clingfilm to get a cylindrical shape. I let it rest in the fridge whilst I made the sauce in the classical way with shallots, garlic, mushrooms (just white buttons which are actually ok for this purpose) white wine, chicken stock and double cream. Once cooked I blitzed and passed the sauce, then finished with a squeeze of lemon juice at the last moment. I decided to use my new microplane to grate the potato for the galette. This was a bit of a mistake as, although its a medium blade, the resultant shreds were too fine. I squeezed out all the moisture from the gratings in a clean tea towel and I applied a little too much pressure as the shreds clumped back together again and would then not separate. However, the galettes were nice and crisp, if not quite the lacey "rosti" style I was aiming for. Cabbage was finely shredded, blanched then sauted with some butter and pepper. I removed the clingfilm from the fish parcel, fried it on the hob then cooked itin the oven for about 10 minutes, which turned out to be several minutes too long as it overcooked. I sliced it into 6, laid a galette on the plate, added some cabbage, then 3 fish slices, spooned over a little sauce, then another galette. I then poured around the remaining sauce. It tasted great but didn't look quite as smart as I'd hoped. All the while I had beeen very slowly cooking the chicken in a saute pan on the hob, skin side down in veg oil and butter. I boiled the sweet potato, mashed it then added evoo which had been warmed through with cumin. I stirred this into the mash. I made the pesto to Batali's recipe but substitiued pecans for almonds. The recipe is simply the nuts, red oinion, chilli and evoo. The result looked like pink sick but tasted OK. I would modify this recipe, maybe using scallions instead of red onion and some herbs, maybe corriander and adding some pecorino to make more like a standard pesto recipe. I grilled the corn on a grill pan, then sliced off the corn, then warmed it through with some cream spiked with tabasco. I finshed off the chicken, meat side down, then gave the skin a final crisp over a high heat. I didn't do anything fancy with the presentation, just dished it up, with the vile looking pesto on the side.

I'm late with this I know, but tonight I am going to atempt to cook : Tuna and Bacon sandwich with pecan jalapeno pesto (tuna wrapped in bacon, pan fried then sandwiched between potato galettes and served with the pesto around) Slow roasted chicken thighs with spiced squash puree, saute cabbage and mushroom sauce. I'll report tomorrow how it all goes.

Dinner for 6 a few weeks ago : This was a work related meal and I chose the venue on the basis that it was very convenient, I wanted to try Jun Tanaka's food and that no matter where I take my gastronomically disadvantaged work mates they always bloody complain. I had nothing to lose. The room is large, high ceilinged and with loads of green marble all over the shop. Despite all this, it somehow fails to avoid feeling like the hotel dining room it actually is, underscored by the casual attire and recently-showered look of many of the diners. That the staff began laying the tables for next mornings breakfast whilst we finished our drinks at the end of the meal didn't exactly help much either. It is nevertheless spacious and comfortable and grand in a way. The al a carte menu offers 8 choices at each stage, plus a cheese board. A 3 course meal will cost you between £31.50 and £44.50. The now inevitable cup-a-soup arrived unbidden to the table before the main event. Although rather tiresome, they are in fact a good way of judging the skill of the kitchen and what sort of experience you are in for. A parsnip soup with truffle cappuccino was a welcome twist on a tired formula and delicious. Tasting strongly of the main ingredient but not too sweet and with a wonderful fungal aroma, it would have made a great full sized starter. Bread was also top notch stuff. I began with a warn salad of mackerel with caviar, vegetables a la greque (£9.50). This was a precisely poached "ballotine" (at a guess I would imagine that the fillets had been laid top to tail then wrapped in cling film to create a cylinder, then cut in half across the length to make 1 portion) set upright in the centre of the plate, topped by a generous spoonful of caviar and surrounded by the not too acidic vegetables (potato, baby artichoke, carrot, mushroom and some others I've forgotten). A lace of frisee had been delicately arranged over the veg to good effect. It was a beautiful dish to look at and delightful to eat with well balanced, clear flavours. A signature dish of confit of salmon with chives and ginger, lasagne of crab and shellfish veloute (18.50) was equally successful in design and execution. A several inch think fillet of salmon had been poached in duck fat and turfed over with a bright green layer of chives and fresh ginger. This sat in a shallow rectangular plinth of cut-to-fit crab lasagne, with the soup-like sauce poured around. Each element worked well together, with no single flavour dominating. The ginger had been deployed with a judicious hand and added warmth and interest to the dish whilst counteracting the richness of both the salmon and crab flesh. The pasta was very fine indeed, and the veloute as deeply flavoured as one might have hoped. Crab lasagne with shellfish veloute is a long-standing highlight of The Square's menu where it appears as a starter and in whose kitchens Tanaka has in the past toiled. Adding to an already perfect dish risked gilding the lily, but in fact it worked a treat. I am currently on a mission to try as many variants of the poached pear theme as possible and despite already having had 2 poached courses, went for the oven roasted pear with blue cheese centre, baklava and port syrup. This was a halved pear, still in its skin which had been cooked in red wine then re heated in the oven for service. Scoops of blue cheese ice cream filled the hollowed out centres with the slightly solid baklava and syrup arranged around and about. Interesting and unusual. The wine list is surprising short and we drank an OK New Zealand Sauvignon at £25.00 a bottle. Service was very efficient but a little faceless. Tanaka is a very talented chef, with a great visual sense. His food is refined with pronounced and finely judged flavours requiring I would imagine a very disciplined and skilled kitchen brigade to produce it. It put me in mind of early Petrus/late period Aubergine. QC restaurant is not the ideal place to east this sort of stuff, a smaller more intimate room would suit the food better, but for now at least that is where you will have to go to if you want to experience it.

Thanks.

Mark, that may be a bit of a spoiler for those who haven't seen the movie, do you want to edit it? (Only a suggestion).

I was just using your post as an excuse to confess. I feel much better now.

I'm just glad that someone took one of my brilliant ideas seriously. i expertly PM'd jason and steven regarding this very idea long before you even registered. The reality is that from the word go, from the time when a mysterious gentlemenan with the initials AB was still involved, an eGullet recipe book/archive was on the cards. Yours truely was nominated to capture all the recipes posted to the site and save them on my hard drive for just such a venture. Well, I'm sure this will not come as a surprise to anyone (God, I hope it doesn't), but the number of posts has made this an impossible task and one that I quietly gave up quite soon after we launched and the traffic started to ramp up. I'm not entirely sure if it was anyone in particular's idea, but I'm fairly sure it could have been mine as I got stuck with the job of collecting the damn things, and I did have quite a few until my computer crashed in the winter of 2001, honest!

Loula - an official eGullet welcome to you. Zafferano has recieved a glowing review from Matthew Norman in the Telegraph this week click here (you'll need to register to read this) in comparison to the bloody awful one Jan Moir wrote (click here) for the same paper. I've never been, but I have heard very good things about the chef Andy Needham. True, it was his mate chef Richard Guest telling me the said good things, but I trust him

I bet we all can't wait for the Brian Turner opening (also reported at the link below). Shall I organise an eGullet outing do you think?

The Flaming Orange Gully in fact looked, well, orange, and was very nice I thought. I really liked the club and am pleased to have discovered it. It was a very good turn out, especially considering the main attraction had cancelled on us. I'm afraid I lurked at he bar with the Restaurant magazine mob and as a result was a bit drunk by the time we got to Le Pigalle. I seem to remember grilling Gavin over every detail of the menu before ordering, which he kindly put up with and provided useful comments rather than tellling me to just shut up and order something, which he could quite reasonably have done. Fish soup was OK, coq au vin was not. I wandered back to the Player after dinner to see if anyone else had returned, which they hadn't, and ended up having a quick drink and a chat with the manager Fiona, who I had liaised with over the event. An excellent evening which I really enjoyed.

Fat Guy won't be calling until about 10.30pm, we may well be elsewhere by then.