hungryhippo

Thought it worth resurrecting this thread to flag up 5 North Street, after a recent (first) visit. Was a little intrigued about the place, having heard from others who have dined there, and having read David's old review. It really is quite a small place, but one that's actually very cosy and charming. So too was the quickly delivered amuse of Welsh Rarebit - clearly something of a signature item. Freshly baked bread followed - arriving on a board with a knife and left at the table, this pretty much acted as an indicator of the style of the place. Clearly the idea here is to deliver on taste rather than follow the stuffy napkin route to Michelin star-dom. Another freebie of soup (tomato and chilli, if I remember) followed - a little predictable, but still very nice. And then we headed into the tasting menu. Fish is not something I ever usually order when eating out, yet here two fish dishes were the real standouts of the evening. Even more surprisingly, the best was a dish of lobster with pasta. Lobster I tend to think of as overrated, overpriced, overchewy (or fluffy) and usually used lazily by chefs to indicate some sort of fine dining experience. Here it just tasted really bloody good. The second dish showed just how refined and subtle the chef can actually get - with a beautiful nage containing various tidbits, including tasty little crustaceans, deep-fried seaweed, and nicely finished fish. Think it was halibut, but to be honest it more of a supporting player to the other great ingredients. This was a real briny taste of the sea. On the meat side, a terrine with quail and foie gras was tasty and perfectly done, if again a bit predictable and old fashioned. A duck breast dish, on the other hand, really surprised. It didn't have the 'wow factor' ( © GBM 2012) of the fish dishes, but it was big on flavour, and perfectly cooked, with the fat layer perfectly rendered out. Then it was on to the cheese (another surprise - the selection on offer really lifting it a notch above so many other cheeseboards), and dessert. I'm embarrassed to say I can't really recall much about the sweeter stuff, but do remember it being pretty, pretty tasty, and thankfully with a little bit of tartness here and there to offset the sugar rush. Service wasn't entirely flawless - a couple of extended gaps between courses highlighted the one issue with trying to turn out complex food and a lot of different dishes from a small kitchen. And it wasn't exactly cheap, at least not in comparison to other places round these parts. But I definitely want to go back. Which is much as you can ask for, really.

Very much my view. I am not a serious food blogger. I find the action of people taking photos of their dinner quite annoying. In fact, the next time I see it happening in a restaurant, I am quite tempted to curl one out on a side plate and present it to the photographer. Cuts out the middleman. Personally I find it more amusing than annoying when other diners whip out some super-lensed SLR, but can understand how it might offend. The trouble is, the most interesting posts and blogs are those with good quality photos that you can practically salivate over. We - or me at least - want to have our cake and eat it. Even as a diner I sometimes find myself torn between wanting to enjoy the moment and to capture some pictures of particularly special meals for posterity. And of course, when it comes to some self-appointed food reviewers (no names, you know the drill), the photos are way more interesting than the text. At least you can't make basic grammatical errors or pile on the clichés with a camera. When it comes to arguing whether a meal is 'worthy of 2 stars', nobody is ever going to win. Michelin's system is wonky and idiosyncratic at best. Always has been, especially in the UK. What they proclaim isn't right or wrong, it's just their opinion. Anyone who says their views are objective is mad - you can't take personal taste, appetite on the day, general mood, how buzzing the restaurant is when you visit, the inertia of previous years' scoring, or whatever out of the inspecting equation. It's food. It's personal. You can't reduce it to a score sheet. And does anybody still believe that Michelin visits every restaurant multiple times a year to get a more balanced view? Blame programmes like Great British Menu for peddling the idea that the Michelin guide is some kind of bible. No one guide is perfect, which is why they are several, and why people either cross-reference or choose one that aligns best with their own tastes. But the point is, for better or worse, we each now have our own idea of what a 1 or 2 star meal should be, so David or anyone else is entitled to say if they think something falls between that imagined standard. Doesn't make them any more or less right. (Personally my one visit to Le Champignon was also coloured by a lack of warmth or atmosphere front of house, and - even after getting excited by the Essence book - the food just didn't do it for me or the missus. Not what I'd expected from a 2-star. But for others it clearly is, and KaffirLime's lovely story shows just how they can really deliver.) What's less valid is posting something online that is so obviously over-coloured by a bad mood (in this case offence about not being able to use a tape recorder) but which doesn't fully explain why. Full marks to the chef for responding so calmly. I don't doubt that his view is just as subjective - I daresay with a man-and-wife operation that any offence taken front of house will be taken even more personally by the other half - but at least he helps paint the bigger picture that David so obviously avoided giving, and is clearly usually prepared to let the food do the talking and take the rough with the smooth, review-wise. After all this I too hope David keeps eating and posting - I just hope he takes a little more care in future. And for Le Champignon's sake, I hope somebody else eats there soon and posts about it - this constant discussion about one bad review must be bloody annoying.

Last time I tried making them I noticed that the bath can be too thick after just a couple of hours - presumably because the alginate, while it looks to have dispersed, hasn't really fully dissolved (or maybe it's just got loads of tiny bubbles trapped inside). Try leaving it in the fridge overnight, and see if it thins back out again to a consistency that stops gel blobs forming on the surface when you do the dropping. If the mix is right it shouldn't really matter too much what height you drop them from, or even how thick the liquid you're spherifying.

That's the weird thing. It's a jolt to have a 3-star restaurant's chef produce something so homely. Right down to the use of collages instead of actual plated pics. But in a way it does reflect the elegant simplicity of the restaurant's food. If not its prices. Agreed. I guess the other magic bullet with regards his food is clearly nothing more than old-fashioned cooking skills. But then it's not so easy to write six volumes' worth of material on that.

You're not kidding. It's inspiring, but there's something perverse about such an expensive an restaurant turning out such a cheap, and cheap-looking book. And it's almost disappointing to find out that there are no magic bullet cooking techniques that explain why the restaurant's food is so amazing. Guess having your own veg farmed and shipped in every day helps.