N1 had wanted to go to Marcus Wareing – by some accounts, London’s best restaurant - for a while, so it seemed the perfect place to celebrate her birthday. Situated in the 5-star surroundings of the Berkeley Hotel in salubrious Mayfair, this is not a restaurant for walk-ins or last-minute bookings. Our previous attempts to get a table had failed, so this time we got on the phone lines several months in advance, and even then had to settle for a reservation time – 6:30 – that seemed a little on the early side. In fact, that turned out to be a good thing. We chose the longest menu, worked through it slowly, asked for a pause at the end of the savoury dishes to finish our wine comfortably before the desserts turned up, and had a glass of armagnac to finish, so it was almost midnight when we left.
Lunch is simpler, but at dinner, there are a variety of overlapping menus of increasing complexity to choose from. Currently, the restaurant is advertising an à la carte at £80, the Taste menu with more courses at £98 (with a vegetarian alternative for the same price, and wine matching menus at either £85 or £195 for the fine wine selection), and the Gourmand, with yet more courses, at £120. However, when we went there last month, there was also the Chef’s Surprise menu, at £140. We figured that in all likelihood we’d only be coming here the once, and it was N1’s birthday, and we like surprises, at least good ones, so we put ourselves in the hands of the kitchen and waited to see what would turn up.
They’d put us into a side-room slightly cut-off from the main dining area, and we were the first people there, so we felt a bit isolated to begin with. As other diners arrived, we saw trends in the clientele emerging; we were far from the only anniversary celebration there, and some tables were indiscreetly moneyed – stoles and labels. Our neighbours, who apparently prioritised surroundings over food, chose one of the shorter menus, and dismissed a couple of courses to make their dinner a much shorter affair.
The canapés: a soft, smoked, deep-fried piece of chicken came with mustard. Pigskin crackling came as crisps to serve a taramasalata dip. Tiny grilled quail hearts came on skewers, looking like miniature barbecued kidneys, suitably blackened. An oyster came with caviar and a tapioca ball in a red-wine sauce. A thick onion soup had a parmesan mousse, and we could drink it or spoon it like a cappuccino. The most interesting canapé of all was the pickled egg with caviar, a vinegary, salty combination that tasted like something out of a modernist, molecular fish and chip shop.
With the mains in sight, bread came out. With a lot of food to come, we tried not to eat too much, and the bread was not particularly special, but the butter was fascinating. There was a run-of-the-mill unsalted butter, and then the same butter salted, melted, caramelised and then reset – a weird and delicious thing. We scoffed it. The last time I had anything comparable was in Asador Etxebarri in the mountains of the Basque Country.
It seemed strange to start the mains with a foie dish. Date purée (quite alcoholic) and fermented pear (like quince paste) and some crispy sides, to wit, walnut bread toast and a nutty caramel crisp, were all foils to the foie gras purée; a hit of salt first, then the sugar release, like an Oloroso sherry. This dish was a complete wine killer, and it could have passed for a dessert.
Cheese custard was wonderful – a beef consommé was poured onto the Tomme-based custard, in which we found mushrooms and slices of chestnut. The meaty consommé was superb against the salty cheese in an intensely autumnal dish.
Pan-fried scallops – soft, perfectly done – came with thin slices of cucumber, pineapple weed, toastlets of doughy, chargrilled bread and a yoghurt with chives. The scallops were clearly top quality, and we did wonder if they needed accompanying at all.
Just two (admittedly quite large) pieces of pappardelle pasta made up the next dish, with a butter emulsion, girolle mushrooms, herb, and very generous shavings of truffle. Simple, divine, delicious; probably the dish I most enjoyed all evening.
A divergence now. N1 got lobster (with pea purée, broccoli, seaweed, and a salty reduction), but as I’m allergic to lobster and its kin, I was given game: breast of quail with squash and goats’ curd. I think N1 rather preferred N2’s dish.
Fillet of seabass came in a beautiful matching act with “tastes of cauliflower” – a cauliflower carpaccio stood out – polonaise sauce and pine nuts.
I was surprised by how dark the pigeon breast was. Coming with wild sorrel, celeriac, chestnut purée and artichoke leaf, it was a dish straight out of autumn’s kitchen.
And there stopped the savoury dishes; this was, after all, a surprise menu, and I was surprised (yes, and a little disappointed, I admit) that there wasn’t a piece of lamb or beef – good job we hadn’t gone down the Bordeaux route when we ordered wine.
And so, post wine-pause, to the desserts. Redcurrant sorbet was billed as a pre-dessert – I suppose elsewhere they would have called it a palate cleanser. It came with chili pepper and white chocolate ice cream, and the taste of vanilla pervaded the dish. N1 found it too salty. Personally, I found the saltiness an attractive quality.
Hazelnut cake came with layers of sandwiched praline and chocolate. The thick lump of cream on top was very salty, and altered our appreciation of the whole dish. Again, I found this a very attractive quality, but it is a question of taste. This was still not the “main” dessert, but with the thick flavours it was the antithesis of a palate cleanser – a palate cloyer, perhaps?
Apple millefeuille was the showcase dessert, with apple in three different forms – sorbet, purée and jelly coming sandwiched between crispy, cornflake-like layers. The variations on apple are the “wow factor” intended to sway us to admire the dish, even as the cornflake irritated me a little; but as a lighter dish that did feel more like a palate cleanser, I can’t help but feel it should have been served before the hazelnut cake.
And there, sadly, ended the desserts. We’d been there so long that we were not feeling uncomfortably full, as tasting menus can sometimes leave you (more than one tasting menu has concluded in the battle between discomfort and delight). It is a great virtue of Marcus Wareing that you get the table all night, although a few diners on the shorter menus managed to be in and out quite quickly.
We’d declined a cheese option, although from what we saw going on at other tables, the selection was immense, and divided by styles, with every diner being invited to choose a soft, a hard, a goat’s and a blue. The waiters seemed impressively knowledgeable about the many cheeses on offer.
At this point the cognac trolley rolled over. They knew it was N1’s birthday, and referenced this – would she like a birthday cognac? I was sure that in the little spiel that was delivered at this point I’d descried the promise that it would be complimentary – N1 later said she wasn’t sure about that at all, and when we got the bill, it certainly hadn’t been complimentary at all, it was £35 worth of uncomplimentary. It was lovely, though, an Armagnac, in fact;
Laberdolive 1976
Nutty, even with notes of green olive, and a slight agave flavour like tequila. Fine, and with the complexity age can offer. Notes of candlewax, like white Bordeaux, make a showing. By all reports, Laberdolive is one of the finest Armagnacs there is.
Along came the petit fours, a selection of mostly dark chocolates. The Turkish delight was the rosiest I have ever had – “not sure I like it,” said N1, but otherwise, they were much what you would expect from your average superior chocolatier – peanut and caramel, banana, orange jelly, a coffee ganache, a very confected rum and coconut. Apparently some diners get post-dinner sweeties in the format of a takeaway bag, which would have suited us better after so much food and such a long evening.
This was an intensely seasonal menu, and with mushrooms, truffles and game on the menu, autumn is nature’s most flavoursome season; N1 has timed her birthday well. We associate such massively multi-course tasting menus with avant-garde institutions such as Alinea, The Fat Duck, and Arzak, with the associated experimental food; so the slow succession of relatively conservative (but perfectly-made) mains actually felt slightly strange, to the point where I was beginning to miss indecipherable cuisine. A tasting menu for those who don’t like their cuisine as a science lab? In the modern gastronomic age, we are spoiled for variety and experimentalism; many of the faultless combinations here would probably have seemed outré a generation ago. In any case, dinner was faultless, perfectly delicious, and to complain it was not experimental enough would be a perverse and uncharitable cavil. London’s best restaurant? It may well be. It’s a question of criteria: for a high-end anniversary blowout unsuited to the new age of austerity, quite possibly.
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