Petrus lunch on Wednesday

[Fibilou]

We had the set lunch with an additional cheese course (shared), 2 glasses of dessert wine, 2 bottles of water, 2 coffees and a bottle of New Zealand Pinot Noir. Bill came to £160 (ouch).

The restaurant is comfortable and very dramatic. Chairs are the standard restaurant chairs - unfortunate as I infinitely prefer club armchairs, which seem to be pretty standard in the continental michelin experience. I do wish more restaurants here would adopt them.

Menus were presented at the table. Three menus are available for lunch - the set lunch, the a la carte and the full tasting menu. Champagne is presented on a liqueur trolley, by the glass from a selection of bottles, but we had already had G&Ts in the Caramel Room so passed on that.

Amuse Bouche was a cauliflower soup with a froth served with very long, thin cinnamon biscuits. Very nice. 4 types of bread were served; white, sourdough, wholemeal and potato. They were all wild yeasted breads in the French tradition and were served in slices, not rolls. They could have been more generous with the butter, although it was replaced shortly after it ran out. The bread service could have been improved by having sea salt flakes on the table as I love to sprinkle them on unsalted butter like a tartine.

I chose the rabbit salad, which was consisted of 3 styles including a ballotine, a terrine and was served with a lyonnais salad. It was very tasty, although the addition of a hot element would have been nice. David had roasted quail with sweet adn sour red cabbage. The starters were nice, but nothing out of the ordinary and to be honest, quite forgettable.

For main course we had best end of mutton; this was delicious and extremely tender. I have not had mutton for an extremely long time and I will now be seeking some out, as I thought it had a much better flavour than simple lamb, while retaining quite as much of it's tenderness. A really good dish.

We shared a plate of cheese after the main course; the trolley has a good selection of different milks and sets; we chose mainly blues and goat milk cheeses, which were accompanied by a choice of water biscuits or breads (raisin or walnut). They are a bit stingy with the grapes (he gave us 4 between us) and we had to ask for more.

Husband chose Custard Tart for his dessert which was really, really good. Unctuous and particularly well flavoured with some spiced pears. I chose prunes with amontillado foam and chocolate sorbet. Again this was very good; these flavours are all very rich and it would be easy to to an overkill. The portions were very small and therefore avoided that "can't possibly eat any more" feeling. The female sommelier made 2 good pairings of Vin de Constance by Klein Constantia for me and a vendages tardives for David's custard tart.

The bon bon trolley consists of 6 different chocolate truffles - the standard milk chocolate ganache; salted butter caramel filling (a triumph); plain with a soft passionfruit jelly like filling; white chocolate with blackcurrant; Malibu, coconut and lime (far too sweet and my least favourite of the fillings, I did not think this was particularly sucessful)

The service here is very polished, the staff are very professional but it feels a bit soulless. I have always enjoyed eating at the Gavroche at lunchtime as there is always a real buzz there, but I didn't feel that there was any real joy at Petrus. It was busy, indeed almost all the tables were full. The food was very good, if not exceptional, but it just felt as if something was missing. It feels almost like a formula of how to get michelin stars, but someone forgot to bring the passion.

They were clearly having a recruiting day as a trail of hopefuls kept walking to and fro to the kitchen through the restaurant. I do not think this is particularly professional, although it provided us with some entertainment. Certainly I would not have employed the one who looked a mess and said, quite loudly "well, if we get the jobs we can start right away", in full hearing of the whole restaurant !

i would be interested to go for dinner service to see if the restaurant livens up a bit in the evening.

Sorry, I forgot to add, we followed our meal with nachos (disgustingly prefabricatedly deliciously tacky and covered in jalapeno) and fries (cold and not at all nice) at the SPICE GIRLS concert at the O2 - which was fantastic !

Edited January 12, 2008 by Fibilou (log)

[Andy Lynes]

Thanks for the review and don't apologise about the lack of pictures. In the bad manners league, taking photographs of your food is second only to smoking at the table.

[Fibilou]

Maybe I could design a small 8 megapixel digital camera, with a high ISO setting to deal with low light conditions, and disguise it as a knife. Do you think it would sell well on the restaurant blogging scene ?

In really really good restaurants I do sometimes take a picture of husband pretending we are celebrating something, and make sure to include the plate in the picture

Edited January 12, 2008 by Fibilou (log)

[BertieWooster]

The two meals we enjoyed most last year were at LCS and at Petrus (except for at that new Manchester place, oooh, what's it's name? ; - ) ). Both taken above the norm because they were tremendously enjoyable experiences. Don't think (at least with the latter) that this experience of Petrus is shared by many, but we found it fun, the staff excellent but chatty and friendly, lovely atmosphere (helped by bitching at and about the elderly men and their paid-by-the-hour companions on other tables), actually quite laid-back. All things, I know, not usually mentioned in reviews of the place!

Maybe we were lucky, but also helped by the fact we tend to eat at the latest possible sitting in London places, so we're still there post-midnight when the staff wind down. Oh, and aided by ordering the Tarte Tatin (usually for two) just for myself, and loving every waist-expanding bite of it.