Andy Lynes

As you may know, La Trompette is part owned by my friend Bruce Poole. I have already reviewed the place on my website (based on an earlier dinner) so I don't really want to add too much, other than the wine we drank was a 1999 Bourgogne Blanc from JP Fichet (£25.00), a glass of Pedro Ximenez by Lustau at £4.50 and a glass of Spanish dessert wine which I can't remember a thing about except it was £5.50. It was a very good lunch and although late, I didn't feel all that dishevelled.

In a minor bit of housekeeping, I have moved the following post from yet another thread about this restaurant. Cappers writes : Mr Andy Lynes and myself made our way to Turnham Green on a very wet Monday lunchtime for the La Trompette experience which impresses me more every time I go. WOW. As we both arrived, late and dishevelled, we were seated the menus presented. 6 choices for starters and main courses is an excellent range of options for a 19.50 set price lunch. After much perusing over the menu and a beer, it was time for the show to start. The Chef, Ollie, came out and said hello before the meal which was a really nice gesture. Ollie then presented us with a lovely 'present' as a pre-starter. A beautifully cooked bit of John Dory with some cep mushroom and diced spring vegetables. An ideal start to any meal. Starters I had the loveliest starter I have ever had in a long long time. It was a salad paysenne with duck confit, field mushrooms and served with a cup of duck consomme. The textures of the warm salad and the flavours were brilliant. The confit and the mushrooms also blended together well. Beautifully presented and with a generous cup of the consomme to go with it. The best starter on the menu. Andy had the thinly sliced rib eye of beef with parmesan, baby artichokes and truffle vinaigrette. Looked lovely. Main Courses I felt adventurous and went for the poached calf's brain with caramelised ox tongue, oxtail consomme and sauce ravigotte. This was a real chef's dish. Complex, full of flavour and executed to perfection. The brain was a first for me. The texture of it was smooth and silky and had a subtle flavour. Also, it was accompanied by some ravioli filled with oxtail. delightful. The sauce ravigotte arrived in a copper pot and was dolloped generously for me over the brain. Great. Andy had the roast halibut with salt cod brandane, cockles, swiss chard and herbs. Before i go into the puddings, the service was spot on. Very friendly and VERY knowledgable about the food. Also the bread was heavenly. They had salted olive crust, walnut and raisin and bacon and onion. I kept my bread plate till pudding despite the staff attempting totake it away after every course! Also, we had a bottle of white wine. Andy chose it so he will tell you about it. It was nice. However, they didnt put it in an ice bucket. Desserts Another surprise from Ollie arrived before the finale. It was a strawberry pre-dessert. A small layered creation with basil and strawberry at the bottom, strawberry foam in the middle and a small scoop of strawberry ice cream on top drizzled with a little bit of basil on top. It just bursted with the taste of summer, sunshine and Wimbledon - New balls please! I went for the assiette of chocolate. Here there was a small chocolate tart, a coffee and chocolate cake and the star of the show - a scoop of white chocolate ice cream. WOW. Beautiful flavour to the ice cream. Really truely beautiful. As Andy told me white chocolate ice cream is hard to make. Andy had the profiteroles which were amazing. Really large creamy chocolately balls with a warm chocolate sauce. mmmmmmm A lovely meal from start to finish. Thank you Ollie and all the team in sunny Chiswick. Andy, its time to put your bit in now......

Majumdar is in New York I think, where they don't have computers apparently. I have eaten at The Greenhouse when Rhodes was in charge (he was in the kitchen that night) City Rhodes twice (once when he was in, once when he wasn't) , Peoples Palace once and Rhodes and Co in Edinburgh (now closed) and Crawley once each. I have many of his books and have cooked a great deal from them. I think he is a wondeful cook, a very good communicator, but makes annoying TV programs (which I never miss because the food is so good). I have heard conflicting stories about his behaviour in the kitchen, some saying that he is exactly as he appears on the TV (can't quite imagine that) others that he is a bit of a tyrant. I am looking forward to his new venture in central London (Portman Hotel?) and will be interested to see how his relationship with Sodexho develops given his outside interests at Lygon Arms and the Portman thing. I believe there is to be a Sodexho backed Rhodes and Co in the West End bofore the end of the year as well, so it all sounds rather complex.

I'd like to try John Campbells food at The Vineyard . Ludlow is less than 3 hours drive from london BTW.

You could always do "Simply Poussin" on the second night of course.

I ate at the original Le Poussin (now called Simply Poussin) in the high street in Brockenhurst a number of times as I used to work a bit in Southampton which is a short train ride away. The first dinner I had there, I was their only customer all night and Alex served me some of the dishes himself. He ended up giving me a lift back to the station which was really nice of him I thought. I also spent an evening in his kitchen after I had finished work on another occasion. He told me he would usually have the tele on but turned it off in my honour! he gave me an enourmous bowl of braised venison for my troubles and a nice glass of red to go with it! His food really knocked me out, really gutsy and generous with it. Alex's son used to work in the restaurant as sommelier but then moved up North. I was working in Preston where the only decent place to eat is Heathcotes brasserie and so I ended up there most nights. Who should be the restaurant manager there but none other than Alex Aitkin's son. A small world etc etc.

Momo = Toto?

Just think, someones CV reads "peeled bison testicles for the Union Square Green Market". I'd love to be a fly on the wall at their next job interview: "Well, I'd always wanted to work with animals......."

A huge thanks on behalf of the eGullet team to Shaun Hill for taking part in this web event, to everyone that asked a question and to all those who have read the results. I'm sure you will all agree it was an excellent session: interesting, illuminating and entertaining. The thread will now be locked, but will remain here for a while to allow as many people as possible the chance to read it through, and copy Shaun's Butterscotch Tart recipe of course! The winner of "Cooking at the Merchant House" by Shaun Hill will be announced here very shortly.

I do not cook halibut often so I am relying on the advise contained in UK chef Ian McAndrew's book "Feast of Fish". He recommends a cut from the middle as the tail doesn't lend itself to many recipes. He says that cooking on the bone will help to keep the flesh moist as it tends to dry out. He includes recipes for the fish, poached, grilled (under a salamander, not in a grill pan) and oven roasted as Tommy suggests. He accompanies a poached fillet with a salad of white beans, grilled with sweet pepper cream and tapenade, and the roasted fillet with a mussel, spring onion and marjoram broth. I think it would go well with Simon Hopkinson's saffron mash recipe, perhaps served with some aioli. A leek puree or risotto of leek would also be nice. Spinach and hollandaise go well with any meaty fish I think. Dare I suggest my own recipe for braised cod (click here) simply substituting your halibut.

Steve, a really fascinating post, I wish I could have been there! I was interested in Tom's reported comment “How much can we change something for a critic? What can we do, give them the center cut of a piece of meat? There isn’t really anything we can do to make the experience not a typical one.” I know you are not a critic as such, but would you say your experience was a typical one? Sounds like you had a pretty special time to me. As far as the menu goes, I think Devo summed it up nicely when they said "Freedom of choice is what you've got, freedom from choice is what you want".

That must be a first! I don't think I've ever seen a critic mentioned on a menu before. I'm booked in at Yming as part of a party of 10 in June (a works do). I will take great delight in pointing out Jay's name to anyone who will listen and saying "That bloke, right, I know him! (Sort of)."

Are there special limitations inherent in creating food for airlines and if so are they more noticeable the lower down the cabin class structure you go?

I e mailed Heston with the URL to this thread, and although he has obviously decided not to reply directly, he responded to me with the following: "The salted butter caramel indeed is in Olivier Roellingers book but it comes from the patissier, M.Roux in Quiberon. It is something that pops up now and again on the lunch menu. The tobacco chocolates however, are something that we came up with here a couple of years ago and was inspired by Michel Tramas use of tobacco a few years ago. I believe that the brilliant French Laundry have now started to do them as well." Hope that is of interest to some of you.

BTW - I meant gobsmacking of course! Adam, I think you may be right about this, but we don't entertain that often, and it's a good excuse for me to spend the whole day in the kitchen listening to the radio! I enjoy it when people are suprised by what they get and they do appreciate it I'm sure, I think I just need to lower my expectations of the importance my guests are going to place on the food as opposed to the opportunity to relax, drink some wine and have a chat.

I eat quite quickly at home if it's just something I have thrown together - a chilli or rice salad or something, and more slowly if it's something I have laboured over which is therefore going to be more interesting and complex. I follow this trend when eating out. I probably gobble down a pizza, but take my time over a dish at The Square for instance. My wife eats quicker than I do in restaurants, but not a great deal. I drink more quickly than she does however. One thing I really bloody hate is when people come to dinner, I do something really special and they just shovel it down. It's not meant to be insulting I know and I realise that people eat at different speeds but I find it a bit godsmacking when food I have taken hours, if not days preparing, disappears in seconds. Anyone else experienced that?

Shaun, what changes have you noticed in the UK restaurant scene during you career. Do you think things have improved or got worse in any way?

I agree, I don't get it. I think it's to do with the way it sounds on a menu, which is then carried over to a recipe which then carries over to the way people talk about food.

Confit is now such a loosely applied term as to be virtually meaningless. When not used it the strict sense of the word you have identified, it will usually either mean slowly poached in olive oil, or slowly cooked until soft. For example Gordon Ramsay's confit tomato recipe is slices of tomato flesh brushed with olive oil and baked on a very low oven for a couple of hours.

I'm afraid that sounds exactly like me when Gill is in the kitchen, I can't keep my nose out.

It's fairly even in my house, although I tend to do the posh complicated stuff. I am terrible about doing the washing up after, but do try and clean and tidy as I go. It depends how complex the meal is as to how much I manage to do. Sometimes Gill, my wife has to bail me out so that I can concentrate on the last minute bringing it all together bit.

Shaun, your "signature dishes" cover a wide spectrum of raw materials : Scallops with Lentil and Coriander Sauce, Steamed and Crisp Fried Duck, Sweetbreads with Potato and Olive Cakes to name a few, but do you have a particular favourite ingredient amongst those you use regularly that you like to work with best?

I was browsing this book today in Books For Cooks and I must say I thought the section on the restaurant looked wonderful, but I disliked the style of the food photography. I suppose I wanted the dishes contained within a plate, I couldn't quite understand how the recipes would actually work with all the elements seemingly spread across a wide flat surface. Have I misunderstood this?

The Q and A with Shaun Hill will run on exactly the same basis as our first session with Tom Valenti. We would therefore ask you to post a question as a new topic which Shaun will then reply to. In order to keep things simple and avoid presenting Shaun with an openended task we would request that you do not pass comment on either questions asked or Shaun's reply to them on the Q and A board itself, but rather, start a new thread on an appropriate board if you wish to debate any points raised. Following the trend started by Fat Guy, I will put the first question, because I want to and to give you an idea of the format. Please read "About Shaun Hill" by clicking here in order to avoid asking anything that may have already been covered. You dont have to wait until the 8th to begin posting and remember the best question, as judged by me, wins a copy of "Cooking At The Merchant House".

Bowels of course - you change the cooking water after and I guess you would skim it. Cain wrote a cookery book as well, out of print though I think.