What the critics say: The Elephant, Café Luc…

19th July 2010, 10:18am

A round-up of the latest reviews

The Elephant, Torquay
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 19 July

"The set menu downstairs isn't the cheapest I've ever come across (£29.50 for three courses), but it's certainly not excessive. I started with a simple beetroot and goat's cheese salad, a pretty root mixture of pink and gold, with a scatter of cress and a wonderfully fresh-tasting, powerful elderflower dressing. When something's been sourced down the road, can you taste it? Normally I think that's phooey, but what sprang into my head was 'Garden! This tastes as if it all came from someone's garden!'"

"My Crediton confit duck leg was so soft it bordered on crumbly, so its black-pudding accompaniment worked very well on a textural level, though I felt something a bit less yielding and more bolshy might have broken up the richness (perhaps some ramsons of my very own? It's possible I was just jealous of the ramsons). A warm vinaigrette of apples and lentils was fine."

Café Luc, London
John Walsh, The Independent, 17 July

"The menu is 'classic' French-Mediterranean, and you tick off the predictable dishes with a yawn: foie gras, steak tartare, tuna and swordfish carpaccio, goat's cheese salad, sea bass, Dover sole, duck confit, braised lamb, risotto. The only bit of excitement is the £14.50 two-course menu that is innocently entitled 'Daily Express Menu'. My date and I wondered what a 'Daily Mail Menu' might offer. Ballotine of ghastly asylum seekers? Tartine of celebrity cellulite? Souffle of collapsing house prices...? 

"The food, though, was terrific. Madeleine's crab tian was a little work of art, a roundel of crab and avocado sitting on a spirograph of pink radish slices, surmounted by a quail's egg. The crab tasted good, although I'd question the addition of a wodge of cream cheese. My Scottish scallops were, unusually, steamed in a wine marinière rather than seared in a pan, and given a wallop of basil pesto. How odd to find, amid such sophistication, an awful lot of roughly-diced carrots that added nothing but crunch. ('How come, 'Billy Connolly used to wonder, 'every time you're sick, there's always diced carrots in it? I hate diced carrots.')"

Gauthier Soho, London
Allan Jenkins, The Observer, 18 July

"Our meal takes a turn for the worse with the fish dishes. My monkfish with girolles, baby turnips, cured ham and more chicken jus offers satisfying savoury mouthfuls. But John Dory with lime, leeks and lobster velouté is a dull piece of fish the size of an After Eight that isn't saved by its slick of bisque.

"The meat course sees a reversal of fortunes. 'Every other course is just mean,' my companion smiles as my saddle of Welsh lamb is un-domed, exposing four miniature fingers of meat. This would be fine if I were seven years old – but it is not as good as my companion's guinea fowl, which falls from the bone. The best she's ever eaten, she says smugly. The star of her dish is the accompanying crunchy chard with mousseron. As his 12 years at Roussillon show, Gauthier is a man with a sure talent for doing refined, lovely things with vegetables."

The Pump House, Bristol
Matthew Fort, The Guardian, 17 July

"The Pump House is a handsome, 19th-century building that was once, er, a 19th-century pump house, standing massive and purposeful on the quayside. I had been meaning to pay it a visit for a while because John Mills, Guardian reader and prop of Mills Kitchen Shop in Stroud, always asks why I have never been. Toby Gritten, chef/prop, he said, was doing some 'really interesting food'."

"Really interesting food? Hmmm. 'Hot smoked Bath chap, summer truffle, pickled pullet egg, nasturtium salad,' read the menu. Well, that sounds interesting enough. 'Salad of Creedy Carver duck, applewood-smoked breast, artichoke barigoule, foraged wild herbs and flowers.' Is there a restaurant worth its salt that doesn't employ a forager these days? You can probably even get a degree in it. Not that I have anything against foraging. In fact, as a minor-league forager myself, I'm all for it."

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