Must try: Wild boar ragout with tagliatelle @Bistrot Bruno Loubet

Have you ever tasted wild boar ragout with tagliatelle? If not - or in case you haven't experienced this dish cooked to perfection - it's a matter of urgency to get to Bruno Loubet's Bistrot and have it there.
You never know how long they keep it on their wonderful menu!

Who is this Bruno Loubet who has created an admirable little gem in London's Clerkenwell? This eatery is so good that famously grumpy Jay Rayner comments: "It's what restaurants are meant to be like" - and All About Eatery couldn't agree more. But let's start at the beginning!

1982 was the year when Bruno Loubet came to the UK, to work as a Commis Chef for the legendary Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire. Let's mark that date in our calendar. In 1985 he was awarded the Good Food Guide's Young Chef of the Year. Bruno Loubet  then worked for Raymond Blanc, as Head Chef at Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxford (2 Michelin stars). Leaving Oxford behind,
he returned to London to become Head Chef at the Four Seasons, Inn on the Park. There he earned a Michelin star within one year. His next move - staying in London, brought him to Soho, where he opened Bistrot Bruno. This first Bistrot Bruno earned The Times Restaurant of the Year in 1993. His next Times Restaurant of the Year followed in 1996 with L'Odeon (opened in 1995).

After many very successful years in London, Bruno moved with his family to Australia in 2001, but only to return a couple of years later, in summer 2009.
He came back to help the the chef who market the very beginning of his culinary career - Pierre Koffmann - to run his pop-up restaurant on the roof of Selfridges. Less than a year later we are at the point in time where our wild boar ragout story begins: in February 2010, when Bruno Loubet opened Bistrot Bruno Loubet at The Zetter Hotel.

What's so special about Loubet's wild boar ragout with tagliatelle? Every child knows ragout Bolognese - in its most widespread generic form it's served across the globe. This  dish has nothing to do with wild boar ragout. My very first encounter with wild boar ragout was in a little trattoria west of Napels - a moment I will never forget. Boar has a mild gamey taste and gives the dish a divine (sorry for being so bold) flavour.
Naturally Loubet's ragout is cooked to perfection. The game and tomatoes form a perfect combination and the tagliatelle are absorbing the sauce - exactly as it should be.

The dish is served as a starter or as a main. My advice: if you've never tried it before and are not sure about game, maybe go for the starter size. However if you know you like game and bold flavours, go for the larger portion - otherwise you might be disappointed about not having more on your plate!

Thank you for coming back to London Monsieur Loubet. And please don't take the wild boar ragout with tagliatelle off the menu - don't even think of it - we will come back and ask for more.

Bistrot Bruno Loubet

St John's Square, 

86–88 Clerkenwell Road, 

London, EC1M 5RJ, 

phone: 020 7324 4455 

eat@bistrotbrunoloubet.com 

Skylon - Royal Festival Hall London. Head Chef Adam Gray

Amazing venue - but work to do on the menu

The Skylon is located in the Royal Festival Hall on London's vibrant Southbank. It features two dining options and an amazing bar. The fine dining part is simply called Skylon "Restaurant". The more informal section is referred to as "Grill". I've tested both, but now that Adam Gray has taken over the kitchen is was overdue to re-visit, so we booked a table in the Grill. Skylon Restaurant, Bar and Grill share one gigantic room almost as wide as the entire Royal Festival Hall, with a window front facing the river.

The view this place has to offer is really spectacular - but hey, London has many dining venues with a cool view - the Southbank alone has plenty. Just in case you need some hints - check out the Oxo Tower or even cooler, the restaurant on top of the Tate Modern. But back to the Skylon. We felt welcome from the very first second. Our waitress took us to a window table - that's exactly what I asked for when I made the booking. Overall the service was very attentive, friendly and professional. But we didn't come for the service,... We came because I was curious about Adam Gray's food. The "...Chef that makes people happy through food" (not from me,... this is a quote from Adam Gray's website).

We had three starters:
- Fried duck egg with seared foie gras on toasted brioche with devilled sauce
- Grilled sardines on toast, caramelised onions and Bloody Mary dressing
- Smoked fish board with Lincolnshire smoked eel, Cornish smoked mackerel and locally smoked salmon, served with horseradish beetroot dip and pumpernickel bread. 

All three starters were delicious, but none of them was really exciting. The overall winner - and it should turn out, not just of the starter section, was the duck egg. You cant really go wrong with this combination. The egg yolk was nice and runny, a decent slice of seared foie gras on toasted brioche. Lovely. However, there was hardly any devilled sauce - they could have been a little more generous with that.

The grilled sardines on toast had the nice rustic flavours you'd expect, but the Bloody Mary dressing could have been more generous again. It turned out to be more of a cool sounding item on the menu than something that really adds to the dish. The smoked fish board was very straight forward - not much culinary finesse but it was pretty much exactly what you'd expect. One exception though - the bread was not pumpernickel (see picture).

Moving on the the main courses: We tried the tuna steak with mashed potatoes, buttered tarragon carrots and the risotto.

The tuna steak was presented nicely, with half a lemon and garlic and herb butter. Cutting a tuna steak to thin is a very dangerous thing to do. The thinner the cut, the higher the risk of ending up with a piece of dry fish, burned at the outside and dry in the centre.

This particular example here came with an almost bitter taste from the grill marks, in fact the undefined grill flavour overpowered everything. There's not much more to say about the tuna steak, except that in addition to the the cut being too thin, it also wasn't of the quality you'd expect in a place like the Skylon.
The mash and carrots ordered as a side were decent, but couldn't compensate for the disappointment of the tuna. The mash was creamy and the carrots nicely buttered - no negative surprise there, except for the unmotivated presentation. If a portion of mashed potatoes comes at a price of £4.50, one might expect the rim of the little pot wiped clean before it's being served - but let's not get picky.
I usually don't complain about the cost of a particular dish, however £27.50 for the tuna steak and the two sides doesn't feel right though, given the quality.

Nothing major was wrong with the risotto. The presentation was very clean and without unnecessary garnishes. The perfect texture of a risotto is to some extent a matter of individual preference. Some like it more soupy, some less. The risotto served in the Skylon grill is less dense and has more residual liquid - but this is not a negative. The rice was almost perfectly cooked, maybe a little bit under. Overall, it had a nice creamy texture. Nothing serious to complain about there.

For desert we shared an apricot tart and Earl Grey sorbet. Both was ok, yet not exciting.  
In a nutshell, the menu needs more work. Maybe the meat options are more refined than the tuna steak - maybe we simply picked the wrong (Friday) evening. This time the food didn't make us happy - but the Skylon is definitely a place I will re-visit.

SKYLON
ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
LONDON SE1 8XX
020 7654 7800

skylonreservations@danddlondon.com

http://www.skylon-restaurant.co.uk