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Crossing over Madison, feeling bad on Lexington
Some time ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snow_leopard offered me some vouchers from the Times which entitled the owner to a meal for £10 at a participating restaurant. I guess she must read the Times assiduously, as she'd collected more sets than she could use.
I took the tokens with the condition I'd review wherever I went. So, here goes...
Having browsed the list of available eateries, I figured that I might as well book somewhere posh-looking. My first choice was the Cherwell Boathouse in Oxford (has anyone been ? it looks good) but they had no places left for cheapy, freeloading voucher-users.
Having fought with the Times' website (they wanted me to search by area, and I wanted to search by time-available and poshness) I booked a table for ChrisC and I at Madison's, which is the restauranty bit of the Washington Mayfair hotel. Which is in Mayfair, not Washington.
The restaurant is like an annexe to the bar, and is quite informal-looking and comfy. A uniformed waitress seated us, took away the enormous blue-glass plates that were sitting vaguely pointlessly on the table, and supplied us with menus. They were "Promotional Menus" rather than the more extensive real menu we'd seen on the way in, but with three options for each of the three courses they still looked pretty exciting.
So we drank drinks (fizzy water and warmish pinot grigio) and listened to the guitarist playing softly in the bar; pretty, gentle background music with a rather nervous-sounding drum machine for accompaniment. ChrisC's starter arrived and I have to say it was quite a disappointment. He'd ordered smoked salmon fishcake, and it arrived with a strange regularity of shape and uniformity of batter that made it look exactly like something that would come from a Findus package. It sat on a frill of pale green lettuce, surrounded by chopped radish. I'd have been excited about the radishes; ChrisC reported the fishcake as "very all right".
My starter - a sundried tomato and pasta salad - looked much more exciting. Sadly, the tomatoes were tough, the pasta was tough (how do you get pasta wrong!?) and the whole thing had clearly come straight out the fridge and was teeth-frighteningly cold. It was also "all right", but not at all superior to something that might come in a plastic tub from Tesco.
I don't remember ChrisC commenting significantly on his main course. Mine of teriyaki salmon and steamed pak choi was actually very pleasant. However, it was evidence once again that all restauranters should be made to sit down and tackle their own meals, in place. The fish knife I'd been provided with was thick-bladed and blunt - ideal for eating my nicely-cooked salmon. The side order of vegetables, however, was cooked very much on the crunchy side (which is a good thing) and my bludgeon of a knife wasn't equal to either them or the pak choi. I had to enlist help from ChrisC and his normal knife to tackle the broccoli and make it into eatable-sized chunks.
My pudding (a warm black cherry and almond slice) arrived looking too regularly triangular to be real, and again I briefly wondered if it had come from a packet. I don't seriously imagine Mr Kipling had been involved, but the taste and texture, while pleasant, were quite reminiscent of his homogenous cakes.
I assume (though forgot to check) that the dishes on the promotional menu also appeared on the real menu - if they were a fair representation then their £20 main courses are woefully overpriced. Our "extras" (one glass white wine, one sparkling water, two cokes and a side order of veg) totalled over £15, giving an approximate idea of the price range. (Ah, I've just noticed on the website that the menu we chose from is usually £19.95 for three courses).
So, overall, I can't say I was desperately impressed. As a three-course meal for a tenner, it was very pleasant and really good value for money. However, if they were hoping to tempt me back to their restaurant again as a full-paying guest, they missed the bus.
Despite grumbles, it was an enjoyable evening out and Snow_Leopard is Designated Hero of the Week for providing the wherewithall.
snow_leopard offered me some vouchers from the Times which entitled the owner to a meal for £10 at a participating restaurant. I guess she must read the Times assiduously, as she'd collected more sets than she could use.I took the tokens with the condition I'd review wherever I went. So, here goes...
Having browsed the list of available eateries, I figured that I might as well book somewhere posh-looking. My first choice was the Cherwell Boathouse in Oxford (has anyone been ? it looks good) but they had no places left for cheapy, freeloading voucher-users.
Having fought with the Times' website (they wanted me to search by area, and I wanted to search by time-available and poshness) I booked a table for ChrisC and I at Madison's, which is the restauranty bit of the Washington Mayfair hotel. Which is in Mayfair, not Washington.
The restaurant is like an annexe to the bar, and is quite informal-looking and comfy. A uniformed waitress seated us, took away the enormous blue-glass plates that were sitting vaguely pointlessly on the table, and supplied us with menus. They were "Promotional Menus" rather than the more extensive real menu we'd seen on the way in, but with three options for each of the three courses they still looked pretty exciting.
So we drank drinks (fizzy water and warmish pinot grigio) and listened to the guitarist playing softly in the bar; pretty, gentle background music with a rather nervous-sounding drum machine for accompaniment. ChrisC's starter arrived and I have to say it was quite a disappointment. He'd ordered smoked salmon fishcake, and it arrived with a strange regularity of shape and uniformity of batter that made it look exactly like something that would come from a Findus package. It sat on a frill of pale green lettuce, surrounded by chopped radish. I'd have been excited about the radishes; ChrisC reported the fishcake as "very all right".
My starter - a sundried tomato and pasta salad - looked much more exciting. Sadly, the tomatoes were tough, the pasta was tough (how do you get pasta wrong!?) and the whole thing had clearly come straight out the fridge and was teeth-frighteningly cold. It was also "all right", but not at all superior to something that might come in a plastic tub from Tesco.
I don't remember ChrisC commenting significantly on his main course. Mine of teriyaki salmon and steamed pak choi was actually very pleasant. However, it was evidence once again that all restauranters should be made to sit down and tackle their own meals, in place. The fish knife I'd been provided with was thick-bladed and blunt - ideal for eating my nicely-cooked salmon. The side order of vegetables, however, was cooked very much on the crunchy side (which is a good thing) and my bludgeon of a knife wasn't equal to either them or the pak choi. I had to enlist help from ChrisC and his normal knife to tackle the broccoli and make it into eatable-sized chunks.
My pudding (a warm black cherry and almond slice) arrived looking too regularly triangular to be real, and again I briefly wondered if it had come from a packet. I don't seriously imagine Mr Kipling had been involved, but the taste and texture, while pleasant, were quite reminiscent of his homogenous cakes.
I assume (though forgot to check) that the dishes on the promotional menu also appeared on the real menu - if they were a fair representation then their £20 main courses are woefully overpriced. Our "extras" (one glass white wine, one sparkling water, two cokes and a side order of veg) totalled over £15, giving an approximate idea of the price range. (Ah, I've just noticed on the website that the menu we chose from is usually £19.95 for three courses).
So, overall, I can't say I was desperately impressed. As a three-course meal for a tenner, it was very pleasant and really good value for money. However, if they were hoping to tempt me back to their restaurant again as a full-paying guest, they missed the bus.
Despite grumbles, it was an enjoyable evening out and Snow_Leopard is Designated Hero of the Week for providing the wherewithall.
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Er....Very easy. I'm somewhat picky about pasta and it tends to have to be either a poor selection, a baked dish or a very good italian to tempt me. It is far to easy to have it too crunch (undercooked) or slimey (overcooked) and depending on the type the timing can only be a minute or two. I also hate badly drained pasta where water end up dribbling out into a creamy/tomatoey sause.
Interesting review though.
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My best guess would be that someone cooked some pasta competently, then it got left to stand for ages before being made into a salad. But I've no idea if that would actually produce the right (wrong) effect.
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Your theory sounds plausable and normaly i would suggest in depth testing, but i can't say i really want to strive to make bad pasta - Good pasta on the other hand, with a little butter and cracked black pepper.....Could leave a messy hand !
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I did recently hear about a band threatening to sue a friend of mine for writing them a bad review and "damaging their image" in a magazine.
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I reckon that whatever the size of the band, there's bound to be a magazine which is small enough to give a toss, but also large enough that the band can't threaten them without defaming themselves far more than the original review could possibly have done. And no magazine is going to take kindly to a band which threatens to sue a reviewer, so it's worth offering them the opportunity to take the piss.
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Sounds like a story
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I think you mean "his exceedingly homogenous cakes".
I ate in the Cherwell B once, and it was very nice indeed: but that was about 20 years ago, so it might not be entirely reliable.
It really irks me that places charging £20 a dish can get the basics, like serving temperature, wrong. But I suppose they're charging for the location and hoped-for ambience rather than the food.
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I'd like to say that that's ridiculous, but sadly even I've fallen prey to such marketing wiles. Some time ago I ate in The (now sadly deceased) Spitz in London. It's a music venue with a cafe-bit downstairs and quite expensive food. At the time, we agreed the food was overpriced. With hindsight, however, we agreed it wasn't - it was exceedingly good food, and in a posh restaurant none of us would have jibbed. However, in a slightly rundown cafe with exceedingly manky toilets it seemed expensive.
I was slightly disappointed in me, as I'd like to think I'd appreciate good food regardless of the surroundings.
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That does sound a bit like hiding one's light under a bushel though. I guess people have an expectation (reasonable or not) that the quality of the food will be roughly on a par with the setting, so from a business point of view it doesn't make sense for it to be surprisingly better. (But that's still strongly preferable to it being surprisingly worse ;-)
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Glad you enjoyed the experience!
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