Medlar, King's Road

[MaLO]

Had an excellent dinner at Medlar a few weeks ago.

We ate

Ajo blanco with scallop, apple, celery. A similar dish featured on the recent Simon Hopkinson programme so I was happy to give it a try.

Tripe with polenta, fennel, tomato and gremolata. Tripe being another of those ingredients that don't commonly feature in many UK restaurants. This was a very tasty plateful, tender and meaty. The polenta was also very good. I generally dislike polenta but this was excellent.

We also tried seabream carpaccio with tempura prawn, sauce vierge and cucumber. I do like raw food. Delicate and fresh, this was very nice.

Foie and prune terrine with brioche was also good. Rich, sweet and very indulgent.

On to mains.

I opted for 55 day middlewhite pork with carrot purée and cider sauce. This was quite a plateful. Assorted cuts and preparations, good vegetables and a good sauce. Different textures and very good flavours made for a very nice plate.

Ballotine of rabbit with roast leg, potato terrine and sauce nicoise. Not mine but the bit I tried was very nice.

Next came a board of Comte from Bernard Antony

Desserts were elderflower jelly with roast apricot, gooseberry, yoghurt sorbet and hazelnut crumble. Quite a welcome light fruit / acid flavour and pleasingly cool

Lemon curd ice cream with blackcurrant compote and meringues also made an appearance and was very nice on a hot evening.

And finally Pine kernel and cherry tart with clotted cream

An excellent meal. The food at Medlar is simply very good to eat. The cooking is good and the portions generous. It is one of those places where everything on the is menu appealing too. We also had a wine pairing that was equally impressive.

Really excellent service, really good food and wine.

The photos are not great but it was getting dark and I didn't want to use flash. There was enough flash from the thunderstorm outside!