I had looked forward to this for a while but in the end it was nothing special and a bit of a disappointment.
The arrival was a bit shambolic and we were left just sitting in the dining room unattended for quite a time.
The...amuse bouche was quite bland. The 1st starter of two prawns in a cucumber jelly was OK but the securing in place of the prawns using a blob ricotta was not a good idea as the prevalent taste was the cheese.
The scallop starter with a white chocolate garnish was served by the Chef, Mr. Longworth who explained his rationale in using the chocolate. Sound reasoning, BUT the whole dish was overpowered by using a sliver of pickled onion as the container for the garnish. Hence all that was discernible was pickled onion.
We ordered one of each of the mains. The pigeon was good, the fish was awful
It was not fresh and had a strong fishy smell. The whole concept of a fish in a "soup" relies on some taste, there was none.
I did point this out to Mr. Longworth and told him it was disappointing.
The dessert was nothing special
The wine chosen, on the recommendation of the sommelier, was Chateau Olivier Pessac-Leognan., 2001. It was bland and fairly tasteless but the real kicker was that there was lot of sediment, so much so that the server had to abandon the small remains of the bottle as our glasses were full of sediment.
Poor storage maybe?
A real kicker was that it was my partners birthday the following day and they piped a message and applied a candle to the petit fours plate, this was not a birthday gesture as I noticed everyone else got the same platter, minus the greeting.
Service was odd in that there was no designated server for our table hence every single question was asked of us twice by two different servers.
A disappointment and I feel I would be unlikely to return.More