Well, this meal was elegant.. or was it minimalistic? It certainly won't put any weight on! I lost 2 pounds last week, which nearly brings me back to where I was before I went to Scotland.... only 2 more pounds to get to my one and a half stone!
The situation is weird.... an old redbrick manor house, approached by a lovely country single track lane.... and then you go over 6 lanes of the M5, and then you're in lovely woods... Ros and Andrew saw a deer! It sits in a Y shape between the M5 and the M49, with Cribbs Causeway in the wide top. On arrival, we walked past lion fountains and over the red carpet to the big front door, and joined the others on sofas for a drink, a tiny canape and olives perusing the menu in the sitting room. The day being wet and windy, we would have liked a roaring fire in the large fireplace.
After a forgettable amuse bouche, I started with diver-caught scallops... well, scallop actually... with a tiny square of pork belly and 1mm squares of chorizo jelly (I think), some strange cocoa beans and a smear of gaszpacho which was hardly worth mentioning. Scott had a Snail Garden... 3 garlic snails on a mushroom soil with tiny vegetables growing in it! Julie's duck egg looked really tasty. We all had different mains. Elmslie's fish looked well cooked and Lee and Ros's lamb was chunky but had us in hysterics as they searched in vain for the ratatouille! My tiny cylinders of rather tough duck wrapped in a leaf with blobs of apricot puree (and other blobby things) was so small, it looked like a taster dish. None of the main courses has enough to satisfy our hunger, so we had to go for the extra cheese board. Good variety and tasty cheeses helped to fill the hole, and by the time we had the chef's refresher of strawberry with balsamic jelly with cream (yummy) and the excellent but again, small, desserts, we had probably had just enough food. Scott's 8 textures chocolate looked the most interesting desert... very dark and thick with the chocolatiest chocolate, but the Sauternes verrine with creme caramel, caramel cream and William pear was absolutely delicious. The meal was pretty and tasty but a tiny bit mean and worked out around £70 per head.
The company of 7 Singers was fabulous, and funny, and we spent quite a few hours in the sumptuous dining room, admired the over-the-top luxury toilet, wondered at the French accents of the waitor and sipped the three £45-a-bottle wines very slowly indeed! With 6 of us being almost the same age, I felt very close to these people and enjoyed the evening immensely! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWqJOSHO7GI
No comments:
Post a Comment