Review: Midsummer House, Cambridge

[AdamLawrence]

Saturday lunch at Midsummer House, touted as Cambridge’s best restaurant, and the recent recipient of a Michelin star.

Nice building – a small Victorian house on the riverbank and Midsummer Common, from which it takes its name. Arriving, we were ushered straight to our table, set into a bay window overlooking the common. The sun (which disappeared twice to be replaced with snow and hail flurries during lunch) was shining straight in through the window – the wait staff noticed this during pudding and offered to lower the blinds. Should this have been done earlier?

Three courses from the carte run £42 with some supplements. We opted for the better value to be found in the set lunch menu – £20 for three courses, fifteen quid for two. Two choices for both starter and main, cheese or pudding offered to follow. Only one pudding option was offered, which I thought a little spartan.

The pleasant and attentive (and mainly French) front of house staff took our food and wine orders, and we were then greeted with the sight of the sommelier scuttling past the window through the snow. It turns out the access to the wine cellar is from outside. We felt guilty. Briefly.

Amuse-bouche was a cucumber and lime sour, similar to the green tea and lime version offered at the Fat Duck. Not, I think, as good, though: proposed as a palate cleanser it had, for me at least, the opposite effect, the flavour of cucumber (of which I’m not fond) lingered throughout the meal. Starter was either a frothy soup of haricots blancs with crispy mushroom slices and a slick of truffle oil (my choice) or a pressed terrine of smoked salmon and fresh anchovy with avocado ice-cream (picked by my two companions). The soup was excellent, if orthodox (though the froth didn’t last), but the terrine was terrific, the salty anchovy cutting through the oiliness of the salmon, and the creamy avocado flavour contributing well.

Mains were either a pot-roast chicken breast served on the bone with a veloute of foie gras, creamed pearl barley, glazed baby leeks and salsify (chosen by Lucy and Andrew) or roast fillet of cod with braised choucroute, pommes vapeur (which I think means steamed potatoes!), a potato rosti disc and a red wine sauce (my selection). The chicken was beautifully cooked but on the bland side, but the barley was excellent and the veloute quite delicious. The cod didn’t quite work; although the fish was superb, just cooked through yet with a blistered crust, and the heavily reduced sauce’s only flaw was its sparseness. The potato rosti, however, was too greasy, and the choucroute, to my taste, was intrusive in its vinegariness. Shame.

With these two courses we drank Riesling Reserve 1995, domaine Trimbach, which was magnificent but, after last week’s great value wine extravaganza at Croque-en-Bouche in Malvern (see post below) outrageously expensive at £57. This reflected the wine list as a whole; lots of good bottles but at horrible mark-ups. Probably not out of the ordinary in a restaurant of this kind, but my eyes watered.

Cheese was served with toasted Poilane, a currant bread, wheat biscuits and red wine jelly, and included Reblochon, Ragstone goat’s cheese and Bleu d’Auvergne, in good but not outstanding condition. The set menu didn’t provide access to the whole of the cheese cart, but rather saw them bring a plate of preselected cheeses. I thought this a bit prissy, but probably wouldn’t have worried if they’d explained it in advance. The sole pudding option was – for me – the highlight of the meal; a faultless pistachio souffle, served with pistachio ice-cream and crème anglaise. I had a glass of a sweet Bordeaux (not Sauternes but of that ilk - I think it may have been Barsac) with my souffle, and very good it was too. Espresso wasn’t up to scratch, especially at four quid a shot.

This review probably reads more negatively than I had intended. We had a highly enjoyable meal, and the company was first-rate, but a total bill of £180 for a set lunch for three (including ‘optional’ 12.5 per cent service) was, I think, just too damned expensive. The carte looked, inevitably, more interesting, but would have seen the bill rise in excess of £80 per head. I think that’s too much.

[Tonyfinch]

The Trimbach Riesling Reserve 1995 is available for £125 a case from Gauntleys.Admittedly this is an ex.tax price but even if it cost the restaurant,say £14 per bottle that's still a 400%+ mark up.

We appear to shrug our shoulders resignedly at these mark ups,tutting but paying up nevertheless.But other countries don't charge them.Why not?

[Andy Lynes]

The sun (which disappeared twice to be replaced with snow and hail flurries during lunch) was shining straight in through the window – the wait staff noticed this during pudding and offered to lower the blinds. Should this have been done earlier?

I had lunch at Bibendum about a month ago on a very sunny afternoon (yes in January). We had a lovely table just on the right hand side of the waiter station in the centre of the room. The light was flooding through a window on the far right of the room. The waiter noticed I was squinting at him as he took our order for champagne and lowered the blind without a word. I nodded to him appreciatively and he smiled back. Outstanding service I thought, which was maintained throughout the meal.

I second Tony's views on wine mark ups. It's very easy to just accept the incredible prices restaurants seem to want to charge these days.  What we should do of course is pull the sommerlier over and point to an offending wine and say "This is a joke, of course. Now bring me the list with the real prices."  

The sour is also very interesting. I think this points to the dangers of mimicking or adapting dishes from the likes of Blumenthal without fully understanding the processes that have gone into their creation.  

I am afraid we are seeing the birth of the ice cream and jelly school of cooking in the same way that the Nouvelle Cuisine of the Frere Troisgos et al was reduced to "tiny portions on large white plates with kiwi fruit" by less talented and less intelligent chefs back in the 80's. Thank god I only read about it!

[Lord Michael Lewis]

It is well to bear in mind that restaurants are primarily businesses, so wine mark-ups shouldn't be so surprising, and in my experience the restaurants who don't mark-up their wine a great deal generally charge over the odds for the food. And with so many restaurants going under, if we want them to tie up up valuable capital in in a cellar offering variety and quality we're going to have to pay for it. Incidentally if you look at food mark-ups they make wine price hikes seem philanthropic. The pizza is a case in point at 2000% but one rarely hears anyone winging about it. Anyway most restaurants will agree a corkage charge if you wish to bring your own wine.

Regarding the palate cleansing sour, as I have said before, it may well be on the Fat Duck menu and may well have got Blumenthal a lot of column inches but it's conception remains that of Ferran Adria. If you want confirmation of this look at the El Bulli web site or his books or ideally go eat in the restaurant but please, in light of your ignorance, stop trying to sound knowledgable. If as you point out we are going to experience a warm jelly and savoury ice-cream revolution it will be Blumenthal's press pleasing dumbing down of the ideas of Adria et al that makes him number one in the crocodile of blind led blind chefs.

[Basildog]

Just a wee message to say that 300% mark up on wine is what i charge at my small Bistro.I wont bore you with the details, but after the vat, staff, insurance, maintance, income tax, accountancy fees, bank charges, credit card charges,wages,rent, national insurance,buisness rates and feeding the dog.NET profit runs about 10 %. So a bottle of wine i buy for £3 and sell for £9 makes me a net profit of 90p

Unfair?????? Discuss

[Clare Leaman]

Can't say I enjoyed Midsummer House much, but 'Cambridge's best restaurant' is probably a true ascription, given the generally dire competition. About the only places to find something edible are the cheese shop (one of the very best around IMO) and the deli at the back of that grocer (Al Amin?) at the far end of Mill Road.

[AdamLawrence]

Tony - I hadn't seen the Gauntley's price, but it doesn't surprise me. And remember the restaurant won't have paid those prices - they'll get a wholesale rate. Wine pricing in restaurants is, in general, completely outrageous. End of story.

I hear  Ransome's Dock is rather more progressive in its pricing policy. And, as my review below points out, Croque-en-Bouche in Malvern is an oasis of good sense.

[Tonyfinch]

Maybe the question is,apart from restaurant with Michelin aspirations,do we need every other restaurant tying up capital in a cellar which results in a list like a book,when a couple of well chosen wines in a few broad categoies would suit 99% of diners perfectly well? But this is probably a topic for another thread.

[Geezer]

Lord Michael Lewis,

You are absolutely right about the sour,as is the crispy bacon tuille,the red pepper tuille, the use of the avocado as a dessert, the sweetcorn as a dessert sauce.

The tobacco truffles i think, may have been `borrowed` from,Michel Rostang in Paris, via Michel Trama in Puymirol.

etc etc etc

plagiarism rules       as long as you don`t get found out!!!!

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Geezer, why don't you expand on this? Perhaps you could lend the cause a little credibility.

[Geezer]

LML

In what way expand ?

[Lord Michael Lewis]

By giving details.

[Matthew Grant]

Just a wee message to say that 300% mark up on wine is what i charge at my small Bistro.I wont bore you with the details, but after the vat, staff, insurance, maintance, income tax, accountancy fees, bank charges, credit card charges,wages,rent, national insurance,buisness rates and feeding the dog.NET profit runs about 10 %. So a bottle of wine i buy for £3 and sell for £9 makes me a net profit of 90p

Unfair?????? Discuss

Basildog, I don't think we are worrying about the cheaper end of the wine list (up to £10?). We've already had a long discussion on this subject , which I can't find anywhere (damn that search engine). But some points that came out were :

A bottle of wine purchased by the restauranteur for £10 generally takes the same amount of preperation and time to pour as a bottle costing £15 so why the blanket mark up? We also discussed the fact that wine drinkers were subsidising the non drinkers.  If we paid for our wine by cash instead of credit card would the price be reduced....

If anybody else can find this thread please post it here!

[macrosan]

Basildog, there are two issues here. First, you are not making 10% on a £9 bottle of wine, and (by inference) 10% on food. In fact you're making probably 50% on the wine and a loss of 40% on the food. I think that as a business strategy that stinks, because it puts you in an unstable position, dependent on maintaining historical spending patterns by your customers. However, I recognizse that the whole industry does this, and you probably feel you have to follow the market, not try to create your own.

The second point is the one Matthew makes. A 300% markup on a £3 bottle (which gives a sale price of $12 btw) gives your business an overall 10% profit. The only extra cost to you of a wine costing £30 rather than £3 is the cost of tying up your capital. You're probably paying bank interest at 8%, and assume that a bottle in your cellar stays there for two years, so the extra cost of that bottle to you is £4.50. Therefore, to maintain your margin, you should sell it for an extra £5, which gives a sale price for the bottle of £17 and not the £120 that you do actually charge.

Fair ????? Discuss  

[Geezer]

LML

What details would you be after ?

ps see coupla books etc