Matthew Grant

They did indeed say that about the French, interesting to see what happens now the cold weather is coming or indeed what happens if the quality of the food drops a notch or to (not saying that it will).

Strange, me and Rachel were talking about Atelier the other night before I read this. Our conclusion was that there is no way the British public would endure the queueing system (if it is still in place?) more than once or twice, especially on cold/wet evenings.

Scott - apologies, I suddenly realised that you were referring to the variances in quality between my meal and yours

The only variation in food standards came at the dessert stage - everything else was in my opinion superb. Desserts were, as Andy said, simple rather than badly prepared but this could also have been due to what we ordered. This has to be close to 2 stars and Hibiscus will be 2 stars (putting my neck on the line) This was some of the best food I have had in London for ages, I've been talking about it ever since and have in 4 days managed to persuade a total of 12 people to change celebration meals from a couple of other one stars I usually recommend to friends to here as I think it did have the buzz that so many restaurants are lacking. I also do a disservice to my 'waiter' who appeared to be the Maite D'. I'm afraid I didn't get his name. If PDT and TA are as good as this I will be a happy man!

We returned to Putney Bridge on Saturday night for the first time in a couple of years. I Definitely won’t be leaving it that long again. I’ll recount as best I can although dining with friends meant that we couldn’t concentrate on the food as much as we’d have liked. Good table next to the window overlooking the Thames just as requested a few weeks previously Started with a generous selection of Canapés which included a choux type cheesy puff, cheese straws and a small piece of Chicken Liver pate on exceptionally thin crisp bread. A nice introduction. Amuse was a bowl of Foie Gras cream with a cider jelly. Wonderfully light and smooth , the cider jelly was a good accompaniment although I would have preferred a little more as it was so nice. To start I ordered Fillet of Red Mullet, potato waffle, aubergine caviar, jus with Pesto. A single large fillet of red mullet, cooked to absolute perfection, the fillet rested on top of some gently fried onion resting on a potato waffle with a small trail of Aubergine Caviar and a drizzle of pesto. This was a wonderful way to start, the potato waffle tasted fresh and light and the sweetness of the onions was well balanced with the fish and aubergine caviar (not sure who cooked this first but it tasted very similar to Ramsay’s version). The Pesto was delicate enough not to be intrusive. The fish played a starring role. Rachel ate ravioli of slow cooked aromatic pork belly, Enoki mushroom, spring onions and choi. In reality this was a Chinese dish but none the worse for it. Tender pork belly served in Chinese style dumplings, the dish was finished at the table by the waiter who filled the dish with a Chinese style broth fragrant with star anise. This dish was sensational, completely unexpected in style, the soup was possibly made with a ham stock and the addition of the star anise meant it blended perfectly with the aromatic pork which filled the dumplings. The other dish on our table which I didn’t get to try was Roast Scottish scallops, smoked Ham flan, shimeji mushrooms, beurre noisette with cabernet sauvignon vinegar – it looked good and the scallops were large, that is about all I can tell you but it disappeared without any complaint. Next I ate Rabbit cooked two ways, roast saddle, confit shoulder ‘cottage pie’, sweet and sour carrots, roasting juice. WOW! This was so good, I haven’t eaten rabbit in a long time! Three finger sized pieces of saddle with a thick finger of carrot with only a hint of the promised sweet and sour, small preparation of cabbage which I now forget and a great bowl of Confit rabbit topped with smooth, light cheesy potato puree made with a lot of butter. I would have been happy with a large bowl of the cottage pie but the other elements of the dish were good enough to stand on their own. The saddle was cooked medium and the fat enveloping each piece melted away without any effort considering the light cooking the meat had. In my opinion this is the best single dish I have eaten in England this year. I suggested to our waiter that the ‘cottage pie’ be renamed ‘parmentier’, virtually the same I know but too many negative connotations with cottage pie and this dish deserves to avoid them. Rachel ate the special of the day which was English Organic chicken baked in a salt crust, cepes a la crème, roasting juice. Our waiter brought the complete parcel to the table and took great care in describing the cooking method and removing the large salt lid at the table to reveal a solitary breast of what he described as ‘English Poulet Bresse’, he seemed reluctant to divulge the breed of bird to us but beamed as I identified it as Label Anglais (spelling?). It was served with four tubes of pasta topped with a creamy cep sauce, the chicken was moist and flavoursome, cooked to absolute perfection under the salt crust, the skin must have been browned briefly before its final cooking in the oven. It had soaked up the flavour of the rosemary that was within the crust. Another fantastic dish that was finished off halfway through the course with a small bowl of the leg with a green salad. Our friends ate the Rabbit and Slow cooked fillet of Aberdeen Angus/Charolais beef, sweet potato puree, sauté of cepes and fresh walnuts. The beef was a crossbreed from Donald Russell (I always thought they solde purebred Aberdeen Angus?). This beef looked fantastic, cooked very pink, with very large ceps, unfortunately I never got to taste it but I presume this was very good as it was very large and looked very masculine, our female friend normally orders seabass and she finished the whole lot no trouble at all. Pre Desserts of passion fruit cream with white chocolate mousse was beautifully refreshing and the mousse was more like a foam but retained enough depth of chocolate to make it interesting and balance the tartness from the cream. Desserts were the only disappointing dish. Our table of four only ordered 2 dishes. Poached whole provencal peach . light strawberry juice and pink grapefruit sorbet was fine but lacked imagination. A glorified fruit salad with a small sorbet which lacked the sharpness that I expected from the grapefruit. The other dish was waffles (very light, crisp), wild strawberries, warm jus, lemon verbena ice cream. I didn’t get to taste this but the strawberries looked too large to be wild, they were arranged in a large pile alongside the waffle with a small pot of strawberry juice and a small portion of ice cream. It all looked nice but in a sort of simople way that wasn’t really in keeping with the rest of the meal. Maybe we ordered poorly but it was a slightly disappointing end to a fantastic meal. Good petit fours and coffee finished us off nicely. Total bill for four with 3 bottles of wine around the £25 mark was £270 – a veritable bargain for a meal of this quality. Our waiter was charming and knowledgeable and we briefly discussed its chances of getting 2 stars. In my opinion this is verging on 2 stars but may be hampered by its modern setting and large number of covers. I hope it doesn’t spoil its chances. Interesting aside this was the second best meal I have had so far this year, the other was cooked by Claude Bosi at Hibiscus – I believe he is Anthony Demetre’s best friend

Just back from Borough Market, Booths won't be getting White Truffles until next month!

Last year a single white truffle was coming in around the £20 - £25 at Booths, I dread to think what the price will be this year but will report back after I visit on Saturday.

I'm booked with friends on Saturday night , I've requested a Window seat that apparently "won't be a problem". I was really looking forward to it until I read your report! My last visit a couple of years ago was very good. As for the buzz I think this is the problem with a lot of restaurants thee days, unless chefs have apsirations towards 2 or 3 stars the buzz is too often lacking, as Marco Pierre White once said, it's winning the stars that is difficult, keeping hold of them is comparitively easy. I've tables booked at PDT and Tom Aiken in coming weeks so it will be interesting to compare.

I think any reasonable person who was working at any type of establishment under the "hellish" conditions you describe would be entitled to think of the employer as a "git". Whether I have been a stagiaire or not does not come into the equation, just because all stagiaires may (or may not) be treated this way does not make it any more palatable. AS for LML assertion that he shouldn't have made his thoughts public, I would tend to agree but if Ginger Chef feels strongly about this and has the courage of his convictions then fair play to him.

All things created by the chef/owner (in this case anyway) giving the Stagiaire ample cause to think of the proprieter as a "git".

Surely if life can be hellish for a Stagiaire at any restaurant it isn't unreasonable to for the Stagiaire to think of the chef as something a little stronger than "git"? This doesn't reflect on what he thinks of him as a chef, only on his attitude in the kitchen which has subsequently been described as "hellish"

Why shouldn't the atmostphere be foul? Maybe that is what caused BLH meal to be so disappointing? Bad atmostphere - Bad tempered chefs - Bad food. This seems like a pretty logical circular chain of events to me.

I can't find them online but I had a brochure from Denny's in the UK the other day and I seem to remember seeing them in there: CLICK HERE

Wasn't this a miniature DB burger (a centre of Foie Gras)? It was when I went?

WOW! Last year that dish was £30!!!! It was fantastic.

.....and a complete hole

Edit disclosure: Forget it, change of plan!

There was a follow up program on the restaurant during the week and several things struck me. A customer complained about the quality of the food and the prices charged the discussion that followed in the kitchen went along the lines of "What does he expect? It is a charity after all" - a very poor attitude if you are charging full whack for dishes. I thought that JO was very honest when he moaned at the chefs for using rocket that had been prepared the previous day. He told the guilty chef "What we do here is very simple food, we only get away with it because of the quality of the ingredients" I was amazed when I saw the 2 chefs in the 'bistro' serving what amounted to short order cooking and getting so tied up that they started sending dishes out when they were ready and then moaning at the waiter when he complained "But it would have been ruined if we had waited for the other dishes to be finished!" Anyhow to bring the topic back on track, maybe Bill popped in to see Tony and was told to give Jamies 15 a try? "Bill, they cooked me and Bertie Aherne a fabulous lunch, they got the recipes out of a Richard Corrigan cookery book. You really should try it" Then when Clinton failed to secure a table, Tony got Alistair Campbell on the phone to the press in an effort to trash the place for not letting Tony's good friend in

It really is not very pleasant though, if it is the cigar divan that you are thinking of ... I would have said that it was a prime pick up joint too. It is fantastic in an "Old British Hotel Cigar/Bar" sort of way . Good Cocktails when I was there. It does seem to lack a little atmosphere though. I can only echo what everyone else has said though, there is nowhere to drink in that area - maybe there is some sort of business opportunity there

Kofmann certainly didn't leave to go in pursuit of a 3rd star - He had 3 stars and lost one when he moved (a travesty in my opinion). That space definitely has the feel of a 3 star about it but I wonder if Wareing can do it justice, in my opinion his cooking at the old site seemed to have lost its edge, I wonder if this was due to the disappointment of not receiving the second star that everybody thought should be his? When Ramsay was at Aubergine his cooking was always one star (sometimes 2) ahead of his Michelin rating and it was pretty obvious that he was going to get the 3rd star. With Wareing I'm not sure whether he will ever quite make it, I hope he does, its about time the UK had another restaurant deserving of 3 stars.

Lindsay House was far and away the worst 'starred' meal I have ever eaten. There are numerous bad reports from Lindsay house on the web, I can onjly imagine that Corrigan hotfots it over to the kitchen himself whenever a suspected Michelin inspector arrives as a lot of the poor reports seem to coincide with Corrigans abscence.

Thom, I have a Smeg A1 Opera which heats to over 300 degrees and can go as low as 25 degrees (I use it for raising bread occasionally). These are temperatures measured on an oven thermometer but interestingly enough the oven thermometer is very accurate upto 250 degrees. I would also advocate buying Scalextric.

Shaun Hills menu states the prices 'include' service charge so it is a wrong to say that it isn't charged to the bill - it is hidden in the cost (something I would not begrudge Shaun HIll as he is so reasonably priced anyway).

Hello Man from New Tayab! I shall be visiting on Saturday 6th September - any chance you can arrange a portion of Batera for me? Incidentally I shall be comparing you to my current king of North Indian/Pakistani food - Mirch Masala in Norbury - you have a lot to live up to!

This was something that I noted on my visit. The wine top ups were so small as to be ridiculous and actually made me angry. At times they poured such small sips that the sommelier had to top me up again before he had finished topping up Rachels glass! Add to this that they often left us with an empty glasss (caused purely by pouring so little) for a few minutes at a time and that they refused to leave the botele on the table or give us a bigger serving (both apparently "not allowed" when we asked) this amounted not to attentive service, but in my opinion, very pour (excuse the pun) and bizarre service