First of all I want to say that having previously eaten at L'Enclume I was already pretty sure I love Simon Rogan’s food. In fact I think I could eat it all day, which is just as well seeing as that is pretty much what we did during a very special lunch at Fera, Simon Rogan’s new restaurant at Claridges.
The first excitement was arriving at and having a legitimate reason to go into Claridges. With some pointers from a very friendly concierge we were shown in to the beautiful art deco dining room. First of all we treated ourselves to a cocktail from the special selection that were very much designed in the spirit of Simon Rogan’s cooking. I had "Herb bunch, sweet citrus, rum".
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| Herb bunch, sweet citrus, rum |
I’m not going to describe everything we
ate/drank, there was too much and the perpetually refilled alcohol possibly
affected my ability to retain vital information. But I think I took pictures of
pretty every course (as sad as ever) that I’ve matched up with the menu
descriptions. There were a few standout drinks/dishes that will get a special
mention. First of all came a series of
“snacks”:
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| Mackerel, caviar, seawater cream |
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| Stewed rabbit with lovage |
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| Puffed barley, smoked eel, watercress |
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| Chicken skin, thyme, roasted garlic |
They were all pretty and tasty, and came with decent alternatives on the vegetarian menu.
As we started to get closer to a "proper" dish (and the wine began to be poured) there came the dish that I was most concerned about-cheese and duck heart. I'm not especially keen on eating more unusual bits of animals, but I actually really quite liked the duck heart.
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| Winslade, potato, duck heart |
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| Portland crab with lettuce and seaweed |
The only bread we got was with a mushroom
broth, in terms of quantity of food any more would probably have been excessive but I was a little disappointed as I
really enjoyed the bread at L’Enclume.
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| Mushroom broth and bone marrow butter (not mentioned on the menu?!) |
Now we were on to the main courses and there was one more dish that I wouldn't necessarily have chosen on an a la carte menu-raw beef, it was actually perfectly edible/even tasted quite nice.
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| Raw beef, smoked broccoli cream, scallop roe, acidic apple juice |
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| Asparagus with savoury, onions, St George's and chrysanthemum |
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| Prawns from Gairloch, prime pork fat, borage, chicory |
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| Grilled salad, grilled over embers, Isle of Mull, truffle custard and sunflower seeds |
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| Plaice braised in nettle butter with radishes, shrimps, horseradish and salsify |
We'd notice that Simon Rogan had been popping out of the kitchen to serve dishes, but it was still very exciting when he came to serve our table. He described the dish and poured the sauce for some lucky people, I just got a view from across the table! The only question we had was what exactly is a hogget!?
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| Simon Rogan!! |
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| Dry-aged Herdwick hogget, sweetbread, hen of the woods, turnips |
After the hogget it was time for dessert. They were all lovely, the only thing I may have questioned was the order they were served-they was a dish in which the predominant flavour was beetroot that I felt would have worked well as a "cross-over" dish served as the first dessert, but I'm sure there was a reason that it wasn't served straight after the savoury dishes.
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| Baked yoghurt pear poached in perry, mint and muscovado |
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| Beetroot and buttermilk, licorice, apple marigold |
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| Outdoor rhubarb with melilot, linseed and sweet cicely |
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| Chamomile milkshake, chocolate malt |
The final petit fours came out a little
haphazardly but were very nicely presented, and included one that was smoked. Closing my eyes the smell of wood smoke very much took me back to being in L’enclume and in a strange way part of me wished that I was at L'enclume. As much as I thoroughly
enjoyed (pretty much all) of the food at Fera part of me couldn’t help but
think that there was something extra special and fitting about eating Simon
Rogan’s food in a place as beautiful as Cartmel/the Lake District knowing the
garden was just around the corner. But I guess Claridges is a different kind of
special.
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| Petit fours |
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| Petit fours |
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| The dining room |
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| Tree in the middle of the dining room |
The only other taster menu that I've had that was close
in size to this one was at the Fat Duck so I found it hard not to make comparisons. Overall I prefer Simon's cooking, although the Fat Duck was undoubtedly a spectacle. I found the food at the fat duck all a bit heavy, and was pretty much full before desserts had even started, whereas I felt nicely full as we were coming to the end of the desserts at Fera (and I'd been partaking in the matching wines). At the Fat Duck there were a few courses that I really didn't like, but there was hardly anything I didn't like at Fera.
For me the meal was pretty close to perfect, the only thing that let it down was that I felt the service wasn't as slick as it should have been, but the restaurant had only officially opened a few days earlier. Going back to see whether the service has improved definitely gives me an excuse to return and eat some more amazing food.
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