London fine dining

[muichoi]

I had a shameful lunch at Tom Aikens yesterday. A mess, both literally and conceptually. The cheese and petit fours were good, though.

[Andy Lynes]

I'm amazed to hear that - I had the tasting menu at dinner last week and it was pretty much faultless.

[olivier]

I'm amazed to hear that - I had the tasting menu at dinner last week and it was pretty much faultless.

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It seems like Aikens would be ideal for us... unfortunately it's close on week-ends, and I'm not sure I'll be in the best condition to experience this kind of meal on a day I'll have to wake up at 5AM.

Oh, nothing a nap couldn't fix after all.

Thank you all for your kind advice.

[muichoi]

I'm amazed to hear that - I had the tasting menu at dinner last week and it was pretty much faultless.

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I should be more specific-an amuse bouche of something with lemon grass foam which tasted like the lemon mousse my mother makes, served in a sort of test-tube. Why? an entirely pointless, unappetising and wine-killing dish which presaged the excessive sweetness of the dishes to come, a dish of mousserons in which the featured item was barely detectable beneath some clumsy pasta which also featured a lot of very old peas and pea puree and a poached egg, not to mention the microgreens you mention which rendered the dish very difficult to deconstruct to the point at which it was possible to put into the mouth, followed by an equally misconceived dish of a tiny portion of John Dory with apricots, a combination as stupid as it sounds. What particularly ruined this dish was a garnish of half-moons of turnip filled with courgettes in something that seemed like hazelnut flavored raw egg yolk, the whole rendered inedible by the extreme quantity of salt.

Bread was very poor. Why? the way to bake good bread is no longer a secret.

I found the whole thing incomprehensible, it seemed like an eight year old showing off with his new chemistry set, and evidence of a more or less complete lack of gastronomic culture. Maybe it was a bad day. The wine list is quite good but graspingly priced.

[Scott]

I'm amazed to hear that - I had the tasting menu at dinner last week and it was pretty much faultless.

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I'm surprised to hear that. even on top form, there is no such thing as a faultless aikens menu.

he's pushing too hard to ever have a faultless experience, even when on song.

[Andy Lynes]

he's pushing too hard to ever have a faultless experience, even when on song.

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I'd be interested to hear about your most recent experience and where you felt it fell short.

[Scott]

he's pushing too hard to ever have a faultless experience, even when on song.

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I'd be interested to hear about your most recent experience and where you felt it fell short.

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lol. indeed

i've not been in 12 months, had the tasting menu 3 times, and always found it a jumbled, incoherent mess.

perhaps you can tell me how it's different now???

I'm not a fan of his style of cooking... however that's irrelevant.

his style of cooking doesn't lead to faultless meals, and I've never heard his greatest supporters suggest otherwise. Further, I doubt very much if messr Aikens himself would be happy with that, as it implies he's stopped pushing. which fault for some, favour for others, is not his raison d'etre.

saying you had a faultless aikens meal is as unexpected and uncommon as an innovative, boundary pushing meal at the Ivy.

[muichoi]

Jumbled, incoherent mess is right, and it strikes me on reflection that there is something specifically English about it in a bad way, as the nation of the Fork Cocktail(putting a little of this and a little of that on the fork then dipping in gravy) and unbridled behaviour at the buffet table.

[Jon Tseng]

Jumbled, incoherent mess is right, and it strikes me on reflection that there is something specifically English about it in a bad way, as the nation of the Fork Cocktail(putting a little of this and a little of that on the fork then dipping in gravy) and unbridled behaviour at the buffet table.

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Correct - that's the principle behind English fry-up right? A bit of everything on the plate, leave the diner to make his or her own combinations...

On the "jumbled mess" style of haute cuisine yup, its increasingly common in cutting edge restaurants to bung a load of different ingredients on the plate (often involve some sort of avant-garde combinations). This is the stylistic opposite of, say, a Locatelli or a St John where "Grill mackeral" will often mean exactly that - a piece of grilled fish, unadorned, on a plate.

That's not to say this style is necessarily a bad thing. Nuno at Bacchus is brilliant at chucking together four, five, six different things on a plate which, remarkably seem to meld well together. The chaps at Texture are also good at that. But I quite agree if you're not careful it can become a bit of a mess.

The other issue with this approach of food is that you often don't seem to get as much variation in cooking method - no outright crispy-deep-fry or slow-braised dishes or obviously grand roasted piece of fillet. everything seems a melange of general soft, sous-videy type mush with the ocassional bit of indeterminate crunchy stuff thrown in.

J

[muichoi]

Exactly so- in old fashioned cooking you may decide to have your sole grilled, meuniere, a la normande, veronique, sur le plat, a l'Anglaise etc. In Aiken's world it seems to have been decided that it would be more fun to have them all at once. Of course imperfections are much easier to hide...

[Andy Lynes]

perhaps you can tell me how it's different now???     

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I probably just wasn't trying hard enough to dislike it - I'll do better next time.

[Scott]

perhaps you can tell me how it's different now???       

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I probably just wasn't trying hard enough to dislike it - I'll do better next time.

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that'd be a no then?

[olivier]

I'm not sure anyone's really interested but just so you know, I ended up with booking a table at the Ledbury, mainly because it's open on Sundays and, well, I've read good things about it here. Would have loved to try Tom Aikens, too, but that's for next time, I guess.

Anyway, thank you all for your advice. I'll try to report about the Ledbury in the appropriate thread!