What the critics say: Kitchen, Mennula…

18th January 2010, 11:17am

A round-up of the latest weekend reviews

Kitchen, London
AA Gill, The Sunday Times, 17 January

"The food isn't quite as immaculately pristine as the Square, but it's probably right for the location. I started with a ravioli of mushrooms, mycologically deep and loamy and generous. Then stuffed chicken wings with foie. Our guest, Emric, had a velouté as smooth and fragrant as a novice cigar-roller's inner top front thigh. I had a pigeon — a woody, not one of those bland French squabs — and the Blonde had a sea bream. The best dessert was a crème fraîche tart. 

"Overall, the food is far better than anything else you can eat in Kensington, though it occasionally suffers from ingredient generosity: one flavour too many. Plates can become overwhelmed by good ideas and taste association. The room has been decorated with energy rather than élan. (Clever Ikea.) It's all a bit effortful, but it'll probably remind the neighbours of home, which is, of course, the point of a local neighbourhood restaurant called Kitchen."

Kitchen, London
Giles Coren, The Times, 16 January

"Of the seven starters, three were fully vegetarian, one mostly veggie, and one fish – a fantastic and totally coincidental beginning to my 'Back Off On Meat' (or 'Boom!') campaign. As it happens, we only had one of them: a dense, rich ravioli of wild mushrooms with melted onions and trompettes de la mort, which had all the complexity and wealth of flavour you could ask for in a meatless world."

"The vegetarian main was unbelievably good again – a roil of fricasseed chanterelles, cauliflower, salsify, leeks, spaetzle and parmesan. Salsify gives an especially good, earthy account of itself in the absence of meat and with the spaetzle for length and parmesan for depth, this was a dish to make me sure I could live for ever without meat. If I had to."

Brompton Bar & Grill, London
Toby Young, The Independent, 17 January

"I cannot resist starting with the pan-fried foie gras with sweetcorn pancake because I have such fond memories of Rowley Leigh's same dish when he was the head chef of Kensington Place. To follow, I order one of the day's specials: roast pheasant with creamed sprouts and cabbage."

"For pudding, we mutually agree on the chocolate and blood-orange mousse, but can't decide between the honeycomb ice-cream or the lemon sorbet, so end up ordering both. The mousse is OK, but there's no discernible orange flavour – just a segment sitting on top and a bit of syrup at the bottom – and the ice-cream doesn't have nearly enough bits of Crunchie in it. Best of the bunch is the lemon sorbet."

Mennula, London
John Walsh, The Independent, 16 January 

"My starter of seared scallops with lentils, baby spinach, chilli and almonds was a lesson in how to blend the crunchy and the al dente. The shellfish was properly seared rather than just shown a hot pan, and rode on a choppy sea of toothsome nuts, pulses and greenery. My date Angie's Sicilian aubergine salad featured 'the most creamy mozzarella I've ever had'. The aubergine itself was slightly undercooked and couldn't compete with the sweet touches of sultanas and sun-dried tomatoes."

"I had no complaints about the rabbit wrapped in pancetta with aubergine sauce. I'm always trying to find a rabbit dish which will make the hapless bunny taste like game rather than chicken, but I'm mostly disappointed. This, however, was lovely. There was a gelatinous feel about the meat, a slithery quality, to evoke which I must reach for a word mysteriously loved by restaurant critics, 'unctuous'. 

"The slow-cooked rabbit (first braised, then roasted) benefited no end from the thin-sliced and salty pancetta. An accompanying 'spaghetti of carrots, pine-nuts, sultanas and cavolo nero' was an artful cat's cradle of sliced carrot and cabbage, nuts'n'raisins, but it tasted good. It was, however, served tepid – an affectation in Italian restaurants in London 20 years ago, which I thought had been dropped."

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