Gary Marshall

not overtly but sounds plausible.

pinapple is glazed and brushed we could see them doing that regularly on the rotisserie. the cake is essentially a brioche base, from memory it too is glazed and syruppy but i'm afraid i can't be more detailed, i can tell you should amazon stock books from 1615 it is taken from a recipe for taffety tart from A New Book of Cookerie Bt John Murrell.

thanks for your help nayan, had to dash after posting last image!

Coffee & p4's

brown bread ice cream

tipsy cake

rib for 2

turbot

view of the room

savory porridge

salmagundy

yes i 've got pictures on my iphone but not sure how to get them off it! its popularity is unquestioned but for me there's better value/more interesting cooking elsewhere.

So dinner last night at Dinner, unlike bouloud no seperate entrance so it's a wander into the mandarin oriental and a vague poke around to discover the restaurant is over to the left. after approx 15 people smiling asked if we had a reservation we eschewed the bar (which is the hotel bar not the Dinner bar) and heading through a nice glass cellar corridor into Dinner. it's a comfortable room but a bit anonymous save for the glass kitchen, we were seated on the right, in the corner so had a good view of proceedings and i am happy to report the banquette was supremely comfortable! at the moment they are not turning tables so the room gradually filled to a pleasant hum and there were plenty of eager staff around keen to explain the historical context of the recipes and the menu. Given our greedy nature we wanted to try a few things and built a menu around a few starters/ fish/ steak & puds. there was plenty of (bought in) sourdough on offer but no other freebies, though iced tap water was in constant supply. Wine list is comprehensive and in line with the menu, in absolute terms expensive. There's a few sub £30 by a pound but majority of the drinkable list resides in the £50 - 60 level, and obviously beyond. A very helpful somellier got me out of the usual gruner/riesling / chard rut into a very good 07 Pacherenc at £59, it was really enjoyable fullish golden wine, i will have to look up the producer but it was very enjoyable. For the red we were even more adventurous heading to portugal for a terrenus reserva at £69, punchy prices but given the menu prices meant wallet was getting a beating whatever, in for penny .... after debating the merits of the starters plus a blog report the decision was made to go for the meat fruit, salamagundy and savory porridge. the meat fruit was as the world now knows a fake mandarin stuffed with chicken liver pate that could masquerade as foie served with grilled bread, it was very good. Salamagundy was an odd dish of marrow, chicken oysters, horseradish cream and salad leaves, quite a pretty dish but other than the oysters which i'm not sure how they were cooked but they were great, it was a bit underwhelming. Savory porridge was a riff on the snail porridge of the mothership, a oat base with parsley cod cheeks and fennel, again an ok dish but not revelatory and couldn't help but think that the preponderance of cheaper cuts is very arbutus-esque and probably better executed there, and given the prices charged , a very healthy margin for Mr b with not a prime ingredient in sight on the starters, as my companion sagely noted, there's a reason the cheaper cuts are cheaper... onto the mains, well in our case an intermediate turbot with cockle ketchup (i think - theres a preponderance of ketchups on the menu). this was a poor dish, an overcooked, underseasoned small tranch of turbot with a few cockles sprinkled, i'm sure there's slighly more to it but in essence that's what £32 buys, certainly prefer to take my chances at the river cafe for that sort of money. the if not quite the 64 million dollar question the £64 wing rib had a lot to live up to, we were recommended to order it 'as rare as we dare' we'd clocked the josper grill which although massively en vogue, to my liking doesn't crust meat sufficiently. we said they could cook it rare as along as it had a crust. guess what? well it came looking a little wan but it tasted better than it looked, nicely rested , seasoned and sliced, about a kilo of o'sheas irish black angus. it came with excellent triple cooked chips, a sharp almost vinegary red wine redcution and mushroom ketchup (not a million miles of hp brown sauce with chopped button mushrooms in it) We'd pre-orderd the tipsy cake , featuring the signature roasted pineapples seen through the kitchen grilling on the clockwork rotisserie. this was a good dish and the briochy pudding a nice artery clogger but the star was definitely the brown bread salted caramel ice cream, i think they must have listened to inital reports oon poriton size as this was a decent quenelle and was probably the hit of the night. a decent large espresso to finish accompanied by a rather random earl grey tea petit four with a spiced biscuit that jarred to our taste. So all in all it wasn't a bad night, it wasn't a great night, the standard bsitro dishes are well executed but given the chances of getting a table, steak cravings are likely to be as easily satisifed at goodman / hawksmoor et al, and the more adventurous dishes are knocked into a cocked hat by the likes of the Ledbury, bill £323 inc service so its firmly in 'fine dining' territory. Heston was in back slapping selected guests (ie not us) with a guest appearance by daniel boulud in whites and alain ducasse in a suit added a bit of glamour, i was suprised to see the room wasn't full of eager blogger tables for one with a D-SLR for company! i have another reservation for may and really am not convinced it's worth another trip on last nights showing.

hot the heels of the goodman burger the other week also managed the hawksmoor seven dials burger too. It was a decent burger but i don't think as good as at the mothership, iirc this one is slighty smaller and doesn't come as standard with bacon and a small bearnaise as it did at spitalfields, i think that is still the standard bearer but i know what you mean about the cuisson, they tend to be under rather than over cooked in my limited experience.

looks like i'm going tuesday, february nearly here already.

F*ck me the star (at harome) have lost theirs, that's quite a shock.

heading to goodman for a burger at lunchtime, restaurant is full - tuesday lunchtime - what recession?!

i agree the goodman burger is the value pick there deffo, quite liked the byron burger but not the experience, nearly as expensive as the goodman burger by the end in a fast food setting. worst value burger - but i have one every time and it's always packed - burger king at geneva airport £9+ for big king meal on sunday night!

hawksmoor has the edge on the goodman burger. there is more burger choice at the seven dials branch than city. boulud also good. depends on your criteria, hawksmoor is certainly the largest, and comes with a side of bearnaise which is always welcome.

i see the black swan at oldstead got 3 rosettes which puts it in some exalted company, it was an espoir last year so may well be in for the upgrade this year. i went about a year ago, i thought it was a lot of style over substance, very cheffy plates - the antithesis of something like the sportsman but if it's working for them then good luck to them. The rooms are supposed to be good so i guess it ticks a lot of boxes from the michelin view point.

haven't been since the glory days of the schwabs but there's obviously something not chiming with michelin, the place was nice enough internally for 2* and the menu shows similar ambition, they have had a lot of change on the chef front which i suspect is the issue but has had owner at the helm for a couple of years now. i thought they came over well on ramsay and i was pleased it didn't seem to have changed much, i thought they were unfairly pillored for not being able to do 40 covers in 2 hours when they'd probably only do 20 over an evening, after all they didn't ask the indian place to cook an 8 course haute tasting menu did they?

Having seen franco mazzei (sp?) fawn over a table of ladies including tommi miers and pru leith with an amazing looking tasting menu whilst i looked in amazement at what £35 of veal bought (2 scabby bits not even a whole piece) i'm not suprised other chefs think it is brilliant if they get the same treatment, whilst us paying punters pay through the nose for thoroughly average food with the odd high spot. maybe the michelin inspectors have had the same experience? its success owes more to the lack of options in the city than the quality of its operation, Zucca eats it for breakfast, and i dare say the other young pretenders do too, and at significantly less prices fwiw. pleased to see good old anthony worrall thomson up with events tipping chez bruce for a star.

looks like steve is still doing good business with his lunch menu.... http://www.thestaffcanteen.com/menu-watch/steve-crane-head-chef-ockenden-manor-in-sussex/

interesting interview with marc .... http://www.thestaffcanteen.com/the-staff-canteen-meets/marc-wilkinson-chef-patron-restaurant-fraiche-oxton-the-wirral/

nice piece, adrian aka basildog was on there the other week too. glad to see it is working out for them , my first meal was a painful experience, it was easter bank hol saturday, they were rammed and the food was just too complex to get it out quickly enough, just had the feel that they could do it for 20 covers but not 40 plus, and it was very 'ramsay' right down to the arancini canapes that ramsay used to do (and probably still do. we had an eary start the next day and i think we cut the last courses and left, which as anyone who knows me is not my style at all! lunch under the new 'regime' was infinitely better, more relaxed but the food & service was top notch, it was one of the standout meals of the year. Nathan outlaw always seems to get a star so maybe cornwall/padstow will have 2 this year?