Category: Brasserie (£££)
It is not easy to find good place to eat in Soho on 9 pm on a Saturday. It felt like hours that we were running up and down the streets between hordes of drunken tourist,increasingly taciturn and grumpy (hunger induced…) and cursing ourselves as we should have known better than not to book anywhere on a Saturday evening. Then the rescue presented itself in Arbutus. One of the restaurants which has been on my to do list forever,I was so happy that they could fit us in. In retrospect the Soho odyssey was worth it as the food we eventually got was divine. Arbutus is part of the team also behind Wild Honey in Mayfair and the recently opened Les Deux Salons in Covent Garden. The chef and co-owner Anthony Demetre cooks modern British cuisine with a European/French twist (or one could say modern European with a British twist?) to a very high standard (to Michelin Star standard to be exact).
The waitress recommended us to try the Squid and Mackerel Burger (9.95) which is their signature dish. Maybe the word ‘burger’mislead us,but we did not expect this plate of blissful and sophisticated flavours. The squid and mackerel in the burger were oft perfect consistency and were superbly flavoured with lime and a bit of ginger. The razor clams in white wine and the parsley sauce (the taste reminded a bit of pureed spinach actually) all worked very nicely together. The most interesting thing for me was the sea purslan,a kind of seaweed,carrying the salty taste of the sea. (I found the recipe online in case you want to give it a try)
I loved the plaice filled with shrimps (16.95). It came on a bed of white beans and Swiss chard and was overall only very subtly seasoned on the verge of being boring,wouldn’t there have been the delicious savour of the kaffir lime leaves. I have never seen them used in a non-Asian dish and I was surprised to see how well it worked.
Also very good was the Slow Cooked Venison (17.95). The only things to criticize here were that I would have wanted the venison a bit softer and I thought they were too stingy on the (very nice) sauce. The flavours though were lovely,with the sweetness of the beetroot and the pomegranate and the saltiness of the curly kale supporting the venison perfectly.
I have my dessert phase at the moment,must be the lack of light and the falling temperature. No doubt I had to try the Cold Chocolate Fondant (6.95),especially as it came with my new favourite ice cream flavour:salty caramel. Strangely I had a very similar dessert a couple of weeks ago in NYC (see my post here) and I would say they were equally scrumptious. The flavour combination of sweet chocolate,bitter dark chocolate and salty ice cream just works for me.
Very good food and with fair pricing,and I have even better news for the financially challenged among us:Arbutus does a pre-theatre menu for something like 19 pounds (for 3 courses).
- Food: 8/10
- Service: 8/10
- Ambiance:6.5/10
- Value for money: 8/10
- Chances of returning:65%
- Verdict: very good food (Michelin starred) reasonably priced
Da gehn wir hin!
Ok
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