Brunch at Balthazar

Oh, to be one of the beautiful people...

I’m not sure if Belfast has many places where the beautiful people gather.  If it does, I don’t gather with them.  But as it was our last day in London, we decided to experience a taste of the glamorous life before we returned home, and headed for Saturday brunch in Balthazar, Covent Garden.

Balthazar first opened in New York back in 1997, but now London has its very own branch of the French brasserie.  It opened last year in a blaze of hype, with dinner reservations booked weeks, if not months, in advance.  The hype didn’t appear entirely justified, though, with initial reviews not exactly glowing about the food on offer.  General consensus was that the brunch was much better than the dinner, and as my friend Julie and I couldn’t say no to chance to start drinking in the mornings, we were happy to oblige.

Not that our morning started off very well...we made the mistake of relying on an iPhone to direct us to our destination, with some trademarked Hilarious Consequences.  We realised we were in the wrong part of London entirely ten minutes before our booking, and had to flag down a black cab to get us where we needed to be.  Which turned out to be a ten minute walk from our hotel.  I told you, Hilarious Consequences.

All of which meant we turned up at Balthazar looking less fresh than when we had set out that morning – especially as we had been carting our suitcases around with us, having checked out of our hotel. But that was fine, yes?  Just a relaxed Saturday brunch, who needs to look good?

Ah, yes.  The beautiful people.  I don’t think we expected the Balthazar staff to be quite so beautiful.  Wafer thin bodies, perfectly styled hair, expertly applied make-up...still even if we didn’t get a chance to be beautiful, we got to feel pretty cool.  Balthazar was packed, with even more people piling in behind us.  Requests for brunch from people who hadn’t pre-booked were met with a quick “we can only fit you in for an hour”.  Julie and I, on the other hand, were led to our table by our beautiful waitress, looking at the one-hour brunchers with disdain for not being as damn cool as us.

The interior of the London Balthazar all terribly New York – which is odd, really, considering the interior the New York Balthazar is a copy of French style brasseries.  The tables were fairly small, with not a lot of space between us and our brunching neighbours, but that was fine.  Or at least it would have been fine, if only one of our neighbours hadn’t been an unspeakably pretty, size 0 woman tucking into a giant sticky bun that caused me to a gain 7lbs just looking at it.  Ah, I love the taste of resentment in the morning.

We momentarily felt a pang of panic strike us when we looked at the menu and realised the mimosas we had been planning on drinking were not listed.  Fortunately when we mentioned this to our waitress, she was happy to have two mimosas prepared for us anyway.  Clearly, tourists with burgeoning drinking problems do not faze the staff of Balthazar.

It was decided we would start the brunch with one vaguely healthy dish each.  I opted for the granola with fresh fruit and natural yoghurt, while Julie ordered the fruit salad.  My granola was fabulous, which is not a sentence I say often.  It had a lovely nutty taste to it, and with a generous helping of the yoghurt and plenty of berries, it would have been perfectly filling on its own.

Julie also enjoyed her fruit salad, which appeared to have been covered with a sort of syrup or honey glaze which was beautifully sweet and went well with the fruit.

Healthy options consumed, we then ruined our good intentions with some rapid weight gain in a basket– a basket of assorted breads and pastries.  Balthazar has its own bakery separate to the restaurant, so we had high expectations for this part of the meal.

Our basket contained slices of fresh, white bread which came with three different types of spread to go with them.  Although the chocolate spread mentioned on the menu didn’t seem to materialise, the jams and marmalade we did get more than made up for this.  We particularly loved the marmalade, which tasted like pure oranges turned into a spread, and which Julie felt sure was slightly alcohol-infused.

We also had some chocolate bread to try out, though neither of us was very impressed by it, even if we both liked the idea.  We moved on instead to our croissant, which was the lightest, fluffiest croissant either of us had ever eaten.  The pastry practically melted on our tongues.  The same could be said for the pain au chocolat we had next, although we did feel a little bit more chocolate wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Next in the basket was a giant Danish pastry, filled with plump raisins and covered in sticky glaze with sugary icing drizzled over it.  I would normally avoid Danish pastries as I find them too heavy to be enjoyable, but this too had Balthazar’s light pastry and left us feeling as virtuous as a Danish pastry the size of a man’s head can do.

We left our favourite pastry of all to the end – the almond croissant.  In retrospect, this did mean that by the time we came to eat it, we were almost entirely bread-based, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Not to worry, though, as the almond croissant was as gorgeous and light as everything that preceded it.  If I had to be very picky, I would say it could have done with a little bit more almond filling,  but considering I was ready to be rolled out of the restaurant this is a minor point.

When our bill arrived, we noticed it came attached to a Balthazar postcard – not wanting to start an argument in the restaurant over who got it to keep it, we asked our waiter if we could have another one.  He returned with a selection of postcards for the pair of us, which we thought was a nice touch.  Bloody tourists, eh?

People were still crowding into Balthazar as we left, so I would say that booking ahead is a must.  As we emerged blinking into the Covent Garden daylight, our sense of being cooler-than-thou immediately evaporated, leaving us feeling like the travel-worn, pastry-stuffed women we were.  Still, it had been nice while it lasted.

Did we buy anything that couldn’t be bought at your average Caffe Nero on a Saturday morning?  Well, apart from the cocktails, no.  And at just under £70 for the two of us, Balthazar will never been a cost-conscious option.  But if you want a brief taste of being cool along with your croissant – and not forgetting the socially approved morning drinking - it’s a good choice.  

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

It’s never a good sign when the staff at a restaurant have to be told to “wash their hands more often” – but it’s perhaps an even worse sign at a two-star Michelin restaurant.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London, appears to have fallen foul of the same norovirus that previously closed his Fat Duck restaurant in Bray.  So, what better time to write up my norovirus-free experience of the place?

The food at Dinner is apparently inspired by “historic British gastronomy”, meaning that each dish on the menu comes complete with a year of origin next to it, with dishes dating all the way back to 1390.

Our initial impression of Dinner wasn't great – the girls at the reservations desk appeared to be judging my Primark cardigan as if I had turned up for lunch wearing an unwashed dishcloth.  However once we entered the restaurant itself, we were met by much friendlier staff who appreciated that people paying nearly £200 for lunch might not like being glared at too much.

We loved the table we were sat at – from my seat I had a great view of Hyde Park on a winter’s day, while my Heston-loving companion Julie had a view of the kitchen (and the not-terribly-unattractive chefs inside).

The cheapest wine on the menu was £25, so a bit different from my usual £5 M&S number, but we ordered it anyway in a fit of extravagance (we don’t get out much) along with some tap water.  And then on to the task of ordering food.

For our starter, we both opted for the most Heston-ish thing on the entire menu, the Meat Fruit.  Normally, anything called Meat Fruit would cause to me descend into innuendo-mode, but as I found myself in a classy joint I decided to aim for some higher ground.  The Meat Fruit is, essentially, pate shaped like an orange – as you do – with a slice of grilled bread on the side.

I had never actually eaten pate before, but as all the other starters seemed to include snails, tails and frogs legs, I was sort of at a loss as to what else to eat.  I therefore gingerly spread it on my bread, in fear I had opted for a £17.50 disaster.  I was pleased then, to find the Meat Fruit was a beautifully smooth and creamy creation, with the mandarin jelly adding a nice touch of sweetness.  Owing to my scaredy-cat spreading of pate on bread, I found I still had over half of my starter left by the time I finished my slice of grilled bread.  However, I didn’t even have to ask for another slice – as soon as the waiter saw I had finished, he let me know a second slice was on its way.

While we were eating our starter, the couple next to us was treated to a display of Heston’s famous liquid nitrogen ice cream in the making.  A waiter wheeled round his giant ice cream trolley and explained the dish with full theatricality...until the ice cream appeared to curdle, that is.  The trolley was then wheeled away and the ingredients refreshed before the couple could finally get to sample their tiny, tiny cone of liquid nitrogen happiness.

On to the main course, where Julie couldn’t quite decide between the roast halibut and cod in cider.  Our ever helpful waiter was called upon for a recommendation, and on his advice Julie opted for the cod.  We were particularly pleased by this, as he had actually suggested the cheaper of the two dishes – so no pushing of the more expensive meal on the diners.  The cod, Julie thought, was creamy, buttery and not dry in the least.

Being the fussier eater of the pair, once again I had some slight difficulty picking my main.  I’m not a big fish eater, I didn’t care for the idea of eating pigeon or umbles (entrails, don't you know?) and I didn’t want to spend £42 on steak and chips.  I opted then for the slow cooked pork belly with spelt, Robert sauce and black truffle.  I would never normally order pork off a menu as it can be a very heavy main, but this was an incredibly light dish and I cleared my plate completely.

We split one order of Heston’s famous triple cooked chips between us.  When the dish arrived, I couldn’t help but think how small it looked and how we probably should have ordered one serving each.  In the event, there were more than enough chips to go round.  The chips themselves were perfectly cooked – crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside.  Not being a big mushroom fan I avoided the mushroom ketchup that came with them, but Julie thought it was a fantastic addition.  It was, apparently, quite sweet for something made from mushrooms and contained tiny chunks of mushroom within.

On to the most important part of any meal – dessert.  Julie ordered the caramelised apple tart with Tahitian vanilla ice cream.  The tart was shaped to look like an actual apple sitting in cup of puff pastry, and contained a custard centre, while the creamy Tahitian vanilla ice cream helped the cut through the sweetness of the apple.

I, however, ordered yet another signature Heston creation – the tipsy cake.  Tipsy cake is a rum soaked brioche and, due to the preparation time, has to be ordered at the beginning of your meal.  It arrived in a small, cast iron pot and from the first mouthful I was floating on a happy, rum soaked brioche cloud.  The tipsy cake is pure comfort food, right down to the gorgeous custard it’s filled with.  It comes with a slice of spit roast pineapple, which might seem like an unusual addition but gives a nice sharp taste that clears your palette in between each rich mouthful.

Not feeling feeing even remotely rushed by the staff, we hung around for tea and coffee after our three courses had finished.  My coffee came with frothed milk to pour into it, while the loose-leaf tea came in a lovely clear glass tea pot with built-in strainer.  And just in case we weren’t already full enough, we were then presented with Earl Grey tea-infused chocolate ganache and caramelised biscuits.  Fortunately, it was just a small serving of ganache so you didn’t feel too greedy for eating it all.

In total, we were at Dinner for almost three and a half hours and at no point were made to feel like we needed to vacate our seats so other diners take our places.  By the time we asked for our bill, the sun was setting on Hyde Park and the jelly mould-style lights in the restaurant began to really stand out against the dark wood interior.  I would imagine Dinner is much more impressive looking at night time than during the day, when it all looks very neutral and traditional.

Our bill came to around £190, so a pretty pricey lunch but worth it for a one-off treat, we felt.  Our only real complaint was that, apart from the meat fruit, nothing on the menu particularly stood out for us compared to the kind of food Heston has on offer at the Fat Duck.  It was all very typical gastro-pub fare, though admittedly, very well cooked and very tasty.  And expensive.  Don't forget expensive.

All of which is why we found the news it had been temporarily closed due to the norovirus outbreak so surprising.  It’s hard to imagine any of our well mannered waiters or waitresses wouldn’t be familiar with hand washing techniques, for example.  I wouldn’t let that put me off returning to Dinner again, but maybe a little bit more Heston Blumenthal flair could be added along with the clean hands...