Restaurant Review - The Ambrette, Canterbury

Originally published in The Kent Food & Drink Guide

“Indian food has graduated beyond Chicken Tikka Masala,” head chef Dev Biswal tells me after one of the most outstanding meals I’ve had. “But a lot of restaurants don’t show that.”

The menu, like his CV, takes south-east Asia as a starting point and heads west to Kent. A key stop on the way is Dubai, where Dev worked in top hotels cooking classical French cuisine. What he does with The Ambrette is take a generous portion of Kentish ingredients ­– 70% of the menu is locally sourced – add a handful of Indian-inspired spices and garnish with top-tier presentation and five-star service.

Other than the food, the relaxed feel is one of the best things about The Ambrette. The waiting staff are attentive without being in your face; the tables are generously spaced, giving plenty of privacy; and you can linger for hours without being hounded out to clear the table. I tried the ten-part tasting menu, which opens, like all the meals, with a mouthful-sized portion of something seasonal, in this case, pork with pea chutney and sea spinach. Packed full of flavours, it raises my expectations for the starters, my favourite being clove-smoked wood pigeon with rosemary and cinnamon-poached peach. The peach, like the mushroom samosa my partner tries, breaks so many rules yet creates something that’s so right. This really is like tasting the world anew.

Before the mains, everyone gets an espresso cup of soup of the day. My partner finds it tricky to pick a main, but goes for grilled mutton with pickled carrots and masala potatoes, and isn’t disappointed – it almost melts on the tongue. 

My tasting menu gives me two mains, hake with South Indian spices, then venison loin with spiced beetroot and pickled pears. It’s tough to pick between them, but the mung lentil kedgeree with the hake is divine, while I could happily have eaten a whole plate of the spiced beetroot.

After a shot of popping candy grenita, the desserts arrive and are just as outstanding, particularly the mango and vanilla creme brulee. I don’t need breakfast the next day, and I know when it comes to dinner, whatever I have isn’t going to get close to The Ambrette. It’s rare such quality comes at such a reasonable price, even on wine, with bottles under £20. Not to be missed.

FoodCycle’s Green & Pleasant Land dinner

Originally published on The Financial Times: How To Spend It on 05/03/16

Michelin-starred chefs get together to raise money for charity

Whoever came up with the proverb “too many cooks spoil the broth” was clearly unacquainted with the charity FoodCycle – and its Michelin-starred gala events.

Launched in May 2009, the group campaigns against food waste by collecting unwanted supermarket stock – mislabelled, damaged, over-ordered and almost-expired produce – and using it to prepare three-course meals for people who struggle to afford to feed themselves. With 29 volunteer-run projects across the UK, it has already provided more than 125,000 free meals, and is now running its second gala event to help fund its work.

The Green & Pleasant Land dinner at London’s Guildhall on April 21 will bring together seven chefs – including Giorgio Locatelli, Angela Hartnett, Shay Cooper and Cyrus Todiwala – to create a course each, and all proceeds from the £350 tickets will go to the charity. Menus are still being finalised, but the feast will include sambar masala-marinated fish with coconut-fondant potatoes, created by The Modern Pantry’s Anna Hansen, and Gloucester Old Spot porchetta with a Jersey Royal gratin courtesy of Salt Yard’s Ben Tish.

“FoodCycle is so important right now,” says Tish. “In our indulgent, careless times, it is making us understand our food wastage, then using this to help others. It couldn’t be more relevant.”

Hosted by food critic and broadcaster Jay Rayner, whose jazz band, the Jay Rayner Quartet – featuring Rayner on piano and his wife on vocals – will play live on the night, there will also be a silent auction, before the menu is rounded off with Australian chef Skye Gyngell’s almond tart with plum blossom ice cream and honeycomb.

In this case, maybe too many chefs will spoil the guests.

London hotel to provide a taste of Heston Blumenthal

Originally published on ttglive.com on 17 January 2011.

The mad scientist of the kitchen, Heston Blumenthal, will provide London with its biggest restaurant opening of the year when “Dinner by Heston Blumenthal” opens at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park on January 31.

The three Michelin-starred chef found fame with The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, but says his new restaurant will be something totally different.

“I didn’t want to do another Fat Duck and I am never going to do another Fat Duck. The Duck is such a labour of love,” Blumenthal said.

He described Dinner with Heston as a “refined brasserie”, and said that while he had been working on the restaurant for the last two years, the concept behind it started in 2005, shortly after he turned down the chance to open a Fat Duck in Tokyo.
“The menu at Dinner takes inspiration from historic British recipes, from the 14th century to 1940, but does not replicate them – I think people will be surprised and amazed at what we are doing here.
"Britian has got a culinary heritage, but the 50s and 60s killed our reputation for cooking. What has happened in Britain over the past 20 years in terms of cooking – with people being more experimental with what they eat – has been nothing short of miraculous.

Some dishes that will rear their heads on Dinner’s menu include meat fruit - chicken liver parfait that looks like a mandarin – parsley porridge, pigeon with artichokes, bone marrow with anchovy and pickle, and hay smoked mackerel with lemon salad.

Three unusual ketchups will also feature – mushroom, cucumber and cockle – and the introduction of a tasting menu of about five dishes is planned for March, along with afternoon tea – featuring toast sandwiches – from April.

Scallops with cucumber ketchup and peas

Hay smoked mackerel with lemon salad

A set lunch will cost about £25, while a la carte dining will average £50-£55 a head – although the restaurant is fully booked until mid-March.

Asked how he thought restaurants’ relationships with hotels had changed over time, Blumenthal said he thought the stereotype of “dingy, plush restaurants in stuffy, grand hotels” was a thing of the past.

“David Nicholls [Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s director of food and beverage] wants me to reflect my style here, in everything down to the dining room,” Blumenthal said.

“The restaurant is grand in that it has big windows and views over Hyde Park, but it is not stuffy. It hasn’t got a dress code – I don’t understand why any restaurant would have a dress code in this day and age – and there are no tablecloths or carpets. I want it to be noisy.”

The restaurant’s executive chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts – who has worked with Blumenthal at The Fat Duck for the past 11 years – said the restaurant would be “professional, slick but fun – very accessible, hustly bustly, with lots of wood and leather, and with uniforms designed to fit the concept”.

Blumenthal said he had chosen to open a restaurant in London because it was “the most exciting place in the world for eating out – along with New York”.

Looking to the future he predictably said he would have to see if Dinner “goes down ok” before thinking more seriously about opening another restaurant in a hotel.

In terms of the future of food, his answer was slightly less predictable.

“In the next 10 years we’ll see more insects being served in the western world. Lots of people are advocating that we do it to help the food chain, and I don’t see why it couldn’t happen at Dinner. I’d have fried mealworms with a beer.”

Basque cuisine highlighted at Spanish Tourist Office evening

Originally published on ttglive.com on 22 October 2010
Three Michelin-starred Basque country chefs cooked up a culinary storm for 250 guests of the Spanish Tourist Office at London’s Wallace Collection last night.

Andoni Luis Aduriz, Martin Berasategui and Pedro Subijana hold eight Michelin stars between them and provided a showcase of Basque food that included prawns with flambeed orujo liqueur, caramalised millefeuille of foie gras with smoked eel, and grey clay baked potatoes.

Juan Mari Arzak, who has three Michelin stars, wasn’t present but contributed his baby squid broth to the evening.

Basque cuisine has developed a reputation for creativity, with new Basque chefs using pioneering techniques, and the food at the Wallace Collection was served in a similarly innovative style.

The clay baked potatoes were made to look like pebbles on a sandy beach; waiters wore sandwich boards decked with anchovy, olive and chilli tasters; and a gazpacho-style soup was served in plastic medicine bottles.

Gastronomy attracts 5.5 million people to Spain each year and has been a key focus for the country in 2010.

The Spanish Tourist Board said: “We hope that this collaboration will further help promote the Basque country and its fantastic gastronomic offering and inspire travel industry partners and guests.”

Based on simple hearty ingredients, Basque cuisine has a broad variety thanks to the region’s blend of cultures, combined with its proximity to mountains and the sea. It takes in fresh seafood, cured meats and vegetables from the area’s fertile valleys.

Of the chefs present on the night, Andoni Luis Aduriz’s Mugaritz restaurant in Errenteria was placed fifth in The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards 2010, while Martin Berasategui’s eponymous restaurant near San Sebastian came in 33rd.

Click here to see photos from the event.