Ransome's Dock

[mogsob]

We ate at Ransome's Dock last Friday for the first time. Excellent meal.

Starters: Leeks à la grecque with buffalo mozzarella & toasted foccacia bread; Seared Scottish scallops with baby spinach, verjus butter sauce & puff pastry scallop. I think the scallop dish was different than the version on the electronic menu, but the taste I had was excellent.

Wine: 2000 JJ Prum WS Kabinett (17 pounds for half bottle). Very fine Kabinett in what was a difficult vintage.

Mains: Grilled new season's English lamb with tapenade & peperonata; basil bread & rocket; Monkfish wrapped in pancetta with grilled vegetables (special). The lamb was a bit overdone, but the monkfish was a revelation.

Wine: 1996 Clape Cornas (55 pounds). Good value for an excellent wine. Full and ripe (we gave it 30 minutes to open).

Desserts: Sablé of English raspberries & clotted cream; Baked banana with dark rum, orange, cream & cardamon. Didn't like the banana much, but that's not really my thing. Loved the raspberries.

Wine: 1999 Kracher TBA No.2 (38 pounds). Fabulous wine.

In all, very good food and the best value wine list I have found in London. Combined with very good, but casual, service, a very nice night.

BTW, the main dining room is no smoking (one month trial, I am told). An unexpected bonus.

[magnolia]

We ate at Ransome's Dock last Friday for the first time.  Excellent meal.

Starters: Leeks à la grecque with buffalo mozzarella & toasted foccacia bread; Seared Scottish scallops with baby spinach, verjus butter sauce & puff pastry scallop.  I think the scallop dish was different than the version on the electronic menu, but the taste I had was excellent.

Wine: 2000 JJ Prum WS Kabinett (17 pounds for half bottle).  Very fine Kabinett in what was a difficult vintage.

Mains: Grilled new season's English lamb with tapenade & peperonata; basil bread & rocket; Monkfish wrapped in pancetta with grilled vegetables (special).  The lamb was a bit overdone, but the monkfish was a revelation.

Wine:  1996 Clape Cornas (55 pounds).  Good value for an excellent wine.  Full and ripe (we gave it 30 minutes to open).

Desserts: Sablé of English raspberries & clotted cream; Baked banana with dark rum, orange, cream & cardamon.  Didn't like the banana much, but that's not really my thing.  Loved the raspberries.

Wine:  1999 Kracher TBA No.2 (38 pounds).  Fabulous wine.

In all, very good food and the best value wine list I have found in London.  Combined with very good, but casual, service, a very nice night.

BTW, the main dining room is no smoking (one month trial, I am told).  An unexpected bonus.

I am so glad you liked it ! If I had to choose...it's my favourite restaurant in London. I treat it like my local. There are so many good points about it. Last Friday I had two huge, yummy sardines (pan-fried?) for starter & steak bearnaise as a main, Alvaro Palacios Dofi and Maury Solera 1928 to drink. I'm back there tomorrow night to say goodbye to one of the employees who's leaving.

[bushey]

We ate at Ransome's Dock last year on a long weekend visit to London. A good friend has a flat nearby so we walked over for dinner. This is exactly the kind of place I'd love to have in my neighborhood. Though I don't remember exactly what we ate (jet lag), I know I had a lovely piece of fish with beetroot.

I agree about the wine list -- my one disappointment is that we didn't order the Cloudy Bay SB, which is hard to find here in the States.

[mogsob]

The Cloudy Bay is fine (and one of my dining companions is a NZer), but that was one of the few wines I thought a bit overpriced on the list.

Magnolia, I can only strongly recommend the Kracher if you like sweet wine. Kracher is by far (IMHO) the best producer of sweet wine in the world and it is a great opportunity to sample such a great wine at such a low cost. These wines are notoriously difficult to store, so I appreciate the investment a restaurant makes in them. The bottle we had was pristine.

[Gavin Convery]

moqsob,

I don't know much about Kracher but love sweet wines - is this a Riesling based TBA. Was that price for half a bottle?

[mogsob]

Gavin,

Alois Kracher is an Austrian winemaker. Despite the fact that his wines consistently outscore even the best of Sauternes (both WS and WA), his wines remain a remarkable, if rarely found, value.

The exact composition of his wines varies, although riesling is a common component in many of them. He has even made some extraordinary sweet wines from chardonnay of all things and also uses muscat among other grapes.

Kracher wines are graded in simple numbers starting from 1 and progressing based on the level of sweetness. The higher the number the more sweet and the more rare, as the sweetest wines are only made in excellent vintages. In great years, Kracher has turned out as many as 15 different wines.

The TBA #2 we had at Ransome's Dock was 38 pounds. Kracher's wines are generally sold, as in this case, in a 2/3 size bottle only.

[magnolia]

moqsob,

I don't know much about Kracher but love sweet wines - is this a Riesling based TBA. Was that price for half a bottle?

As Mogsob said, it's a 2/3 size bottle. But that price is not bad - it retails for about £30 I believe. Gavin what style sweet wines do you like? I can probably make some recommendations that will knock your socks off - but it's a bit off topic for this thread. We can take it to the wine board, or if you are at Dim Sum on August 31, we can chat then...? Let me know.

[Paul Bell]

Went to Ramsomes Dock on Friday night. It was probably the first 'proper' restaurant we went to in London (about 4 years ago), but have never got back there, and after Friday I cannot think why, we had duck salad and scallops with verjus to start followed by steak with a bucket of chips (as I ordered extra which they didn't think I would eat fools) and ricotta and almond tart and raspberry sable with clotted cream. All of it was very good, perfect for a Friday night after work and having driven up from Portsmouth via Swindon.

The service was informal and very good, they even offered to cook us an extra steak as ours were a little smaller than usual (although still bigger than most places offer).

The wine list as noted elsewhere was excellent and very well priced, a Seresin sauvignon and a marcillac for about £40 the pair is a bargain.

Paul