Last month I read a long interview about Gordon Ramsay in the Observer Food Monthly.
Ramsay is akin to Marmite, the public either love or hate him but I’ve never felt strongly either way. I’ve always thought the F-ing persona that he is famed for is staged and I actually felt sorry for him when the red tops went to town on his personal affairs and financial problems at his numerous restaurants. The Observer article is worth a read and sets the scene well for the reopening of Petrus so when I got an invite to go there with work I couldn’t turn the opportunity down.
After finishing late at work yesterday I dashed through the streets of Knightsbridge onto Kinnerton Street which is an oasis of charming but (unfortunately for me) unaffordable white mews buildings and flash cars. From the street I wasn’t sure whether Petrus would be another stuffy fine dining establishment but the nervously efficient staff couldn’t have been more welcoming under the smiling but firm direction of slick Belge restaurant director Jean-Philippe Susilovic.
The claret and oyster coloured interiors designed by quintessentially English designer Russell Sage curve round an impressive glass cylinder centrepiece which is stacked high with bottles of wine. Our party crammed ourselves inside and fondled the metal core which is sprayed with holes that blow out cold air to keep the red and white wine at an optimum temperature.
We had quaffed a nice glass of Henriot Brut Souverain on arrival with sweet paprika and black pepper and lemon popcorn and were whisked downstairs to the chef’s table which directly faced onto the chrome kitchen. This is the third chef’s table I’ve had the fortune of trying and it was by far the most exciting as there was real interaction between the chefs and diners with no pane of glass to drown out the expletives that would be thrown around by executive chef Mark Askew as the evening progressed.
We grazed on parmesan and black olive polenta chips with tomato sauce (posh chips) which were pleasant but not mind-blowing. The next course of Cinco Jotas Jamon was and was washed down with a gorgeously fruity glass of Wien 1 Austrian white wine. The coarse ham, we were told, is the most expensive in the world. I wouldn’t mind being a 5J ham -bar the slaughter obviously- the piggies spend most of their lives roaming around beautiful woodlands in Western Spain and snuffling acorns which gives their flesh a really rich nutty flavour. It was some of the nicest ham I’ve ever tasted and the thought of eating slimy supermarket Parma ham again makes me sad. Next to the plating up counter they had a whole leg of it in a vice that looked very similar to the ham I photographed in my last Borough post. I asked our host how much it would cost and he said around £350!
The next amuse bouche of onion veloute with chives was served in a miniature chefs hat and was divinely creamy, I would have liked a whole bowl of it and mopped up the last dregs with a piece of crusty bread.
Next came crispy veal sweetbread with choucroute carrots and a sherry vinegar sauce. The texture of the carrots against the meaty sweetbread was lovely, some of the group found the vinegar a bit overpowering but I’m always overly liberal with it on salads so found it just right. Sweetbreads are another food that I have to detach myself from when eating and just taste the flavours as thinking about a gland of an animal unsurprisingly makes me lose my appetite. Silly really as one eats their muscle and skin without a second thought.
The great thing about a chef's table is that it pushes you to try dishes that you would not naturally choose off the menu. A case in point is the next course, which was John Dory with mushrooms lardons and a classic Bordelaise sauce. I wouldn’t think of putting a punchy red wine sauce with fish but it was really flavoursome and held its own. We had a lovely Pinor noir with it – Harwood Hall (2008) from New Zealand. This was very drinkable and my favourite tipple of the evening so I’m hoping I can find somewhere local that stocks it at a reasonable price.
Sean Burbidge is head chef of the restaurant and was there on the night but Askew had his eagle eye on everyone in the kitchen and seemed to be calling most of the shots. He came over to talk to the group at the beginning of the meal and was very likeable though had a foot tap which suggested he was impatient to get back to his boys in the kitchen.
He returned later on to invite us to plate up our next course which was Gressingham duck breast with confit leg, braised beetroot and ginger sauce. Another journalist Lorraine was tasked with the julienne of beetroot which was full of juicy sultanas. I took charge of the beetroot leaf which looked like braised spinach and the slices of duck breast. Each of us had a seemingly simple job to do in the production line but I still managed to cock it up wherever possible. The duck was served with potato dauphinoise and the most delicious buttered and zesty lemon broccoli I’ve ever tried- both served in mini silver pots. This course was probably the highlight for me, the duck was beautifully pink and was brought to life by the tangy fruity beetroot.
At this point I was comfortably full so probably didn’t need the creamy hunk of St Simeon cheese with oatcakes and semi-dried grapes which followed but when does 'need' come into it?! The grapes were a revelation. On first glance they looked a bit droopy and sad, like a forgotten bunch that should have been binned weeks back but they were deliciously sweet like prunes and half way to becoming a raisin. I polished off the last stragglers before the plate was snatched away (was a shame for them to go to waste after all) and reflected on the two desserts and petits fours which remained.
A blink of an eye later and our smiling host was back with a round of Meyer lemon cones to cleanse the palette. The Meyer lemon is apparently like a hybrid of a lemon and a sweet orange. We inhaled the refreshing citrus syllabub and munched through the biscuity cone in a matter of seconds.
First pudding out was fennel crème brulee which had the perfect crunch – I’m not keen on liquorice/anise but the fennel seeds added a really subtle aromatic dimension to the custardy vanilla cream. Gordon has a guest chef recipe for Waitrose which sounds very similar and one I plan to give a go.
Back to the kitchen to construct the piece de resistance- the chocolate sphere with milk ice cream and honeycomb. The critics had been divided on the trademark pud but largely reeled over it so I was excited to be putting it together myself. First we used a heavy pressurised contraption to pump a mound of condensed milk onto the plate before sinking half a chocolate dome into it which had been glazed with gold dust. Next we had to squeeze chocolate cream into the middle, twisting and rolling the piping with our hands which felt a bit like milking a cow, I imagine. I was struggling to plate up while documenting it all with my iPhone and started to have problems with the pump but the pastry chef helped put things right again.
Afterwards came lots of honeycomb, I added twice the amount taken by the rest of the group (not unintentionally) and managed to sprinkle it over the white mound of condensed milk which didn’t go unnoticed by Askew who joked that a drunken hen party had managed to do it with more finesse a week earlier despite sinking nine bottles of wine!
I pulled it back with a generous scoop of milk ice-cream and the second demi-sphere lid which hid the mess inside.
Back at the table with a sweet glass of 2007 Maury wine in hand, our host poured molten chocolate sauce over the plate and the sphere peeled back quickly to reveal the honeycomb inside. The pudding bought back school day memories of a melted Cadbury’s Crunchie and had the same wow factor as Ice Magic did on me as a child when I saw it harden on a bowl of vanilla ice-cream.
We were all pretty knocked out by the end and eased back into our seats to digest. But it wasn’t the end, as Askew kept on giving and reappeared with a silver dish in one hand and an oversized syringe in the other saying he had another surprise for us. He pumped the syringe into an opening in the top of the dish and dry ice smoke plunged out as he unveiled a round of frozen white chocolates on sticks.
Warm, comforting eggy Madeleine cakes from the oven appeared after with my macchiato along with cocoa dusted chocolate almonds and dark square chocolate thins housed in something that resembled a narrow cigar humidor but by this point the table (apart from me) was defeated.
The whole meal was so memorable, not because of the buzz of being at a new opening, which was exciting, or because the menu homed in on personal favourites, which it did, but because the brash risk-taking Ramsay is often accused of was nowhere to be seen.
Chocolate sphere video:
