Been a while since anybody has been to eat here so off I go. I recently had lunch at Petrus and thought it was quite good. Th meal started off with a dish of croutons and a small bowl of houmous. The houmous was ok but not anything to rave about, I was busy downing champagne anyway so I didn't really eat that much of it Our bouche came and it was a shot glass of roasted tomato soup with a basil foam, it was nice but my complaint about it was that the soup was extremely hot and seeing you had no spoon to use you had to hold the glass and burn your hands! Starters followed, I had a Buffalo ricotta ravioli with creamed spinach and truffle butter while my companion had a Jerusalem artichoke veloute with walnuts, apple and dolcelatte. I enjoyed the ravioli, the ricotta combining well with the aromatic truffles and creamy spinach, there were so many truffles on the plate I was worried it might be overpowering but it worked, just. The veloute unfortunately did not work as well, H said the dolcelatte was too much and there was not enough apple to balance the flavours. Fort main course I had a poached breast of chicken, sauteed fois gras and ceps while H had Roasted sea trout with baby artichokes, tomato consomme and fennel salad. My chicken was cooked well and the flavour from the ceps was fantastic, fois was...well fois gras. It was a nice dish but heavy, and I'm sure truffle oil was put on this as well which detracted from the ceps in my opinion. The sea trout was nice , cooked slightly pink ( imo best way with sea trout) and both the fennel salad and artichokes went well with it, I just wish more artichokes were given as it seemed a bit miserly. For the pre dessert there was an amazing combination of Sauternes and honey jelly, natural yogurt, peach granita and candied almonds, I really enjoyed this and would happily have had this as the dessert but alas that was to come. Me and H decided to share an Apple tarte Tatin and it was worth the wait. The tarte arrived and was cut in half at the table ,it was served with a generous amount of clotted cream and two scoops of banana ice cream. The tarte itself was fabulous, deep caramelized apples with a crisp, crunchy puff pastry, the banana ice cream complimented it well as it was not too sweet and the clotted cream was just there if you wanted to pig out and really pile on the pounds! After that I was stuffed and could not manage the bon bon trolley but it had a nice selection of macaroons and truffles, including the salted caramel balls(does anybody NOT do them??) . That signalled the end for me of an enjoyable lunch, the starters and mains were good but for me it was the desserts that shone through and for thirty quid you can't really complain. The service we received was excellent especially since it was quite busy, the FOH managed on the day by Gianfranco who was taking charge in the absence of Jean Pierre. I think this restaurant warrants a return visit but for people who think that this restaurant is worth a promotion to two star's I am not so sure but I guess when I come back to have the carte I will really know then.
