![]() The food was fine but it’s nothing spectacular. Would I head back to Sketch again? Very unlikely. and note, it’s 5 “glasses” of 125mL each – 2 glasses of champagne and 3 glasses of wine in total. How much was the damage? Lets say the food itself was 1/3 of the total bill – the other 2/3 was on 5 glasses of alcohol (and we weren’t exactly choosing the most expensive ones either – the final bill could have been far more eye-watering if we had gone for the top ones)…. The bill was presented inside a book… OK, I guessed that’s the theme of the “Lecture Room and Library” then. Tasty but the lamb was somewhat on the chewy side. The dish on the side is couscous with chickpeas, Grezzine courgette and dry apricots cooked in an Oriental bouillon. The next fish course was the flaked confit line-caught pollock served with an Ostrecia caviar buerre blanc.įor the meat course, it came on 2 dishes (which wasn’t so bad I guess – at least I didn’t really have to rearrange the dishes) – it’s Welsh lamb marinated with oregano with organic lemon paste, Swiss chard and wild garlic pesto. Cocotte of Fresh Morels with Madagascan Peppercorns Milk Foam Poached Scottish Steelhead Trout Fillet, Poached Scottish Steelhead Trout Fillet, Hollandaise Sauce, Fresh Peas, Broad Beans, Home-Cured Ham, Crunchy Speltįollowing on from the fish course was a cocotte of fresh morels perfumed with liquorice, lettuce and limousin veal sweetbread, with a milk foam infused with Madagascan peppercorns, and also with pickled baby turnip slices scattered in the dish. The fish course was poached Scottish steelhead trout fillet – thank God it only came on one plate! The fish was nicely cooked – did the combination of all the ingredients and the execution live up to 3-star experience? Not so sure. The amuse-bouche were presented quite beautifully but they were all presented at the same time on the table, resulting in quite a bit of musical chairs with the crockery. However, there’s a good reason for that – the drinks were ridiculously expensive (well, I’d like to say the markup was way too unreasonable). We decided to go for the tasting menu, which was quite reasonably priced at £165 per person, considering that it’s a 3-star restaurant in Mayfair in London. Still, that’s just a personal preference. The decor in the Lecture Room & Library somehow reminded me The 8 Restaurant in Macau – there’s a real heaviness that I never really like. Now, if I had invited guests who came to the restaurant separately, I would only have told them that the meal was at Sketch, and not have told them which “dining room” the booking was. I said I couldn’t remember, and instead of looking it up straight away on her computer, she waited for me to look my reservation email up on my phone, because she had Google Search open?! In the end, she suddenly seemed to remember that she could have easily checked on her system and also on the paper printout that my booking was for the Lecture Room & Library. It didn’t go well for me at the reception – told the receptionist my name, and then she asked which “room” did I book the reservation. But by rousing the blood and raising the stakes – and showing the possibilities of change – Graham and Goold “won me over”.There is a certain minimum standard you expect from a Michelin 3-star restaurant from the time when you walk into their premise – after all, first impression counts. As someone who doesn’t follow football, I came into Dear England feeling at a possible disadvantage. That Britain could be floundering as a result of a similar “sense of inherited privilege” is a point he does not need to batter home. Graham gives us a vivid sketch of the mess the team was in before Southgate took over: seldom winning, yet still considering itself a “top talent”. The play’s title, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer, alludes to an open letter Southgate wrote to fans in 2021, pleading for a “more generous” and “interesting view of what the country could be”. Some of the characterisation, however, is cartoonish: Harry Kane, Gary Lineker, Greg Dyke and many others appear in no more than amusing caricature. ![]() The staging is “thrilling”, and Joseph Fiennes gives a performance of “almost AI-grade exactness” as Southgate, said Quentin Letts in The Sunday Times. And with “Dear England” – a “wildly entertaining romp” given a pulsating staging by Rupert Goold – he has “hit the back of the net once again”. He has made “genuinely classic work” out of such unlikely subjects as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, and parliamentary whips’ offices in the 1970s. As a playwright, James Graham has long displayed the world-beating form that still eludes England on the biggest stages. Groundhog Day review: a simply sublime return to The Old Vicīut fear not.42nd Street review: new production has ‘energy and pizzazz’.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |