Union Hotel
Oops went to a hotel, in the city, on Friday night. Music is loud, and the place is packed. There are noisy tables free near the bar, but I've taken my chances outside, in the beer garden. It's quite nice out here. Most people out here are overflow from the main room, but I'm sure I'll have to put up with the occasional cancer stick tonight.
There's one now. :|
Right. I'm also perched next to a plant full of potting mix.
And now there's the loud hooting of a car alarm…
Smoked eggplant, heritage tomato, yoghurt & pomegranate.
This is an extraordinarily complex dish. I wasn't expecting this. You can see how many components there are here.
The meat is on the chewy and rare side, but that's fine. The real star here is the babaganoug. It provides a really strong smoky flavour to the meat. The sour cream goes with it well too.
The parsley, mint, radish, onions, tomatoes and olives all add random bits of flavour to every mouthful.
There is a bit of an issue with the lack of starch here. It's like a meat salad. There's some giant couscous, but it's not much.
Malibu creme Anglaise & raspberry sorbet.
The noise at the bar is almost painfully loud. (Well, for my ears anyway.) :) I point to the desert on the menu.
The pastry here is a bit chewy and interesting, as well as being fairly sweet. It's full of various tropical fruits.
The white fluff on the outside has a very light caramel flavour, but it's overpowered by the red sorbet, which has a very powerful raspberry flavour.
Pastry is usually nice with fruit, but I'm not sure it goes with acidic fruit. I want something less potent, like apple or banana. The whole plate approaches lolly-like levels of sweetness and fruit flavour. And none of the fruit flavours really go together. One minute, I'm biting into pineapple, the next it's a blast of raspberry. These tastes are fine on their own, but combine poorly.