What the critics say: The Goring, The Seafood Restaurant…

16th February 2010, 12:35pm

A round-up of the latest reviews

Downstairs at Terroirs, London
Giles Coren, The Times, 13 February

"Downstairs has been open only a couple of months, though, so I have less to reproach myself for there. It used to be a Davy's wine bar, I believe, and has that exposed brickwork, dungeony, crypts of old Laaaandon Taaan thing going on, but with much better furniture now, a lot more ceiling height, and incomparably better food, wine and service. 

"Esther and I had some first-rate squid a la plancha with a zingy aïoli and a plate of big clams with ham, garlic and chilli in about a quart of olive oil, and different glasses of I don't know what excellent white wines from their 200 bins, and then shared a first-class cassoulet (there are so many second-class ones around, indeed I make a respectable third-class one myself) with a salad of leaves from Secretts Farm (dressed very oily and salty as the Frenchies will), a plate of smoked duck breast with beetroot and hazelnuts and a carafe of red wine so natural it was just a bunch of grapes squeezed straight into the glass from a Frenchwoman's armpit."

Le Jules Verne, Paris
Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph, 12 February

"The menu is also offered in English, which always makes me nervous. I'm also concerned about the twinkly period music, which even includes the refrain 'just jump'. Is this the only option once you've received the bill? 

"Chef Pascal Féraud, lured from Spoon in London's Sanderson Hotel, rustles up a challenging mix of canapés, but my starter is so beautiful it should be hung in the Louvre: gilthead bream marinated in lemon juice like a ceviche, sprinkled with lemon rind and mimosa, herbs and caviar. The fish shimmers as if it were a giant pearl, its texture satisfyingly chewy."

Dean Street Townhouse, London
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 12 February

"I started with the hot-smoked salmon with beetroot and horseradish (£7.25), featuring golden as well as purple beetroot, punchy but not psychotic horseradish and a good, fleshy bit of fish, full of flavour. M had the Dorset crab mayonnaise (£10.50), which was delicate and highly Ivy-ish, extremely simple, 100 per cent expert, you could close your eyes and think you were… well, at the Ivy. B had a twice-baked smoked haddock soufflé (£8.50), and this was spectacular: the soufflé was light but tasted like serious business, a powerful, substantial, delicious dish. On the side was a buttery, chivey, winey sauce that was so good B and I ended up dipping our fingers into it, like delinquents or starving people."

Empress of Sichuan, London
Fay Maschler, 11 February

"Grilled lamb skewers and 'Lantern Shadow' beef are two first courses carrying the red asterisk. The deeply savoury lamb showed how this dish should be done. The equivalent at the recently opened Seventeen in Notting Hill Gate, also of course boasting a Sichuan chef, was a string of gristle. Lantern shadow refers to the fine cut of the beef, so thin it is translucent, cooked in two methods to a sweet/spicy chewy result, more of a snack than a dish. Naomi's recommendation of marinated cold noodle in spicy sauce had us clashing chopsticks to get at the last strands. If noodles are what you are after, this is better in my view than the Empress's rather tame version of dan dan noodles."

The Seafood Restaurant , Cornwall
John Walsh, The Independent, 13 February

"The Seafood Restaurant was once a nightclub when Stein opened it in the early 1970s after he left Oxford. Inexplicably, not enough Cornish glam-rockers showed up to make it a moneyspinner, so it was reinvented as a seafront bistro in 1975. Over the past 35 years it's become a shrine to piscine perfection, while acquiring a deserved reputation as one of the most jaw-droppingly expensive eating-houses in the country."

"The menus are enormous documents, the size and texture of public decrees that were once yelled at the locals by town criers. They reveal that Stein's current strategy is to offer both sturdily traditional Victorian dishes and subtly tweaked, spiced and gussied-up Asian treats as a contrast. For every classic fish soup or potted shrimps there's a sashimi of hand-dived scallops or a shangurro (crab stuffed in the Basque style with tomato, garlic and olive oil baked on the shell). Of course you can have local cod and chips – at £17.50 the cheapest main course by a mile – but you know you really want to try the hugely flavoured Singapore chilli crab."

The Goring Hotel, London
Jay Rayner, The Observer, 14 February

"For my main course I had, from those marked 'War years and rationing', the steamed oxtail pudding. All I can say is that you can take a theme too far. A thick suet shell gave way to not very much at all, and certainly not the luscious, gravy-slicked strands of meat I had expected. The war has been over for 65 years. I didn't need to re-experience the privations in a luxury hotel dining room. A shamefully tiny number of curiously pink nuggets of slightly tough meat clung to the doughy enclosure as if for safety. I finished in the Edwardian era, with jam roly poly and custard."

"It was such a disappointment. My companion, who had suggested the Goring – I need to blame someone – had thought, reasonably enough, that a place that had endured for so long would specialise in the eternal verities. There is certainly something solid and reliable about the hotel, from the bowler-hatted door staff through to the plush bar and the Viscount Linley-designed dining room. It is a fantasy of cream and beige, the tables laid with crisp linen of a thickness whole families could easily camp under."

Wallace & Co, London
Matthew Norman, The Guardian, 13 February

"You see the appeal to a green¬grocer of ribollita, the Tuscan soup made from leftover veg, but this horrendously thin, weedy, olive oil-free, pink liquid appeared to have been made from leftover washing-up ¬water. Smoked mackerel pâté was all right, but it was too sweet, looked ¬unnervingly like coffee ice-cream and the chef hadn't conjured up the zeal to toast the bread as advertised on the menu. And the rendition of that culinary hero du jour, the scotch egg, was peculiarly bland."

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