Stamps
This is a surprisingly fancy (and good) restaurant, hidden amongst suburbia.
The staff here are odd, but interesting. :)
The male waiter doesn't quite ask "and what will Sir be having tonight", but has the dulcet tones and poise of the fanciest of waiters.
The female waiter, not so much. She hands the menu more to my face than my hands, and punts my drink right across the table to me, much like one would take a shot across a pool table.
With dill and capers.
"Capers" and "dill" are definitely in my dictionary. :)
I do a preemptive coriander check.
This tasted like chicken, but had a burst of salt and tasty herbs.
With puy lentils, parsnip bake, pear and red wine purée.
These puy lentils are a bit pooey. :) Lentils have a kind of a meaty quality about them, and don't really enhance the meat at all. They're also a little bit undercooked, and borderline crunchy, like undercooked rice.
The dots of pear and red wine purée are disappointing. They're overwhelmed by balsamic vinegar, which is a slightly harsh taste to be dipping meat into.
The parsnip bake is interesting. It's fairly unadulterated parsnip, but in thin slivers, it has an interesting texture. There's a bit of butter, pepper and salt in here too. Definitely a good use of boring vegetables.
With roasted almond ice cream.
The delice is a rich, dense chocolate mousse. It has a layer of airy chocolate cake on top, with a very thin layer of jelly on top of that (I guess that was the Turkish delight.) These don't really enhance the mousse very much.
The house-made roasted almond ice cream has a very strong toast almond taste. It's almost wasted on a chocolate mousse dessert like this. However, when I combine everything on the plate together at once, all the flavours go together well enough to give this some depth.