Hellooo July! Gosh time is flying by real fast. It seems like we just come back from our break in Sorrento but that was back in May! How you guys doing? We have gone past the half way mark for the year and its five, 5 months to Christmas ..
It is our anniversary month and we are celebrating true British cuisine at the Clove club. Last year, I was in Vegas, ate Twist and turned all the up for my girls birthday! Our anniversary is in 2 weeks, but getting a reservation at this Michelin star restaurant is no easy feat. You best believe we were glad to get it. So we are going to be doing the most up in here!
The taster menu was 8 courses paired with wine, but it felt like 16 courses including amuse bouche and pudding! It was darn good I tell you! Our meal started with 5 kinds of amuse bouche. Basically, chef was saying “you are not really ready for this” and we were not! When the brown crab and devilled spices came in a crab shell, I was like Okurr! Chef is incorporating real life elements to his dishes making us flash back to our time at L’angle.
We also had trout nigiri, albacore tuna sashimi, nasterium, tomato & raspberry, buttermilk fried chicken as well as melton gazpacho granita, charcoal cream and ham hock Jelly.
Our first course was fish. Smoked Wiltshire trout, almond blancmange, prune kernel and osciteria caviar. The way this course was plated up though? The trout was in a textured plate, but the blancmange, kernel and caviar were served in a champagne glass! listennnn!!!! Blancmange is typically a sweet desert, however, with the caviar it was more savoury (think sweet and sour). It went perfect with the smokiness of the trout especially as trout generally has a mild taste. The accompanying wine was El Hem 2015, an Altese white wine characterised by flower taste! Delicious!
This was followed by a salad of biodynamic vegetables turnip & sesame. We had Native breed lobster served three ways. The other course was hand dived spear caught plaice ‘pakora’. Looking at the lobster dish, it had pan fried lobster, lobster foam and lobster gelatine. I certainly didn’t see that coming, I mean lobster foam?
Our land courses consisted of Duck and beef. The duck was dry aged and had beetroot, cherry and wild chamomile. I really like duck, must be the oriental in me, lol. I particularly liked how this dish was plated up, it was about the duck. The beetroot, cherry and chamomile were like guest appearances to the duck show. The accompanying wine was pinot noir from burn cottage vineyard, central Otago. This wine was different, it was light bodied with pomegranate and red plum notes which really intensified the beetroot and cherry.
The beef course was superb! Medium rare cooked beef with black truffle (generous amounts of it) grioilles and Alliums. I am a sucker for truffle, so I was a very happy bunny. The wine pairing for this was also excellent! It was a 2016 Evangelho Vintage heritage wine from Bedrock wine Co. It was like zinfandel on steroids and I loveee me some zinfandel especially white zinfandel, probably my favourite rose or Pink wine as Mama G calls it.
The pudding wines were equally fabulous! The 2016 supreme de thou a French wine, was delicious. Intense colour and tasted of grapes and apples. We had this with wild fennel granita and sheep’s milk yogurt, and it was such a delight! Then came the second pudding – English strawberries & baked sake less custard. I mean it looked like a strawberry custard with fresh cut strawberries in it but tasted a whole lot snazzier! The wine for this? Lawwddd…was just divine! It was MV Demi-Sec-Nyetimber aka sparkling wine that was just so yummy. It tasted of lemon, honey but was light and I absolutely loved it with the strawberries. It was just the right balance of sweetness!
Whilst drinking the last dredges of the sparkling wine, we were presented with petit fours – peated barley cake & Dundee Marmalad cream, homemade salted caramel chocolate and spculous & hazelnut Ganache! I mean come on now? as well as a chocolate plate with happy anniversary written on it. You know Neal was in heaven at this point! All the chocolate he could want given to him all at once!
Ahh Clove club, I love how you make fantastic dishes with British produce, DOPE! Thank you for making this anniversary meal a special one.
Cheers
Ndidi & Neal
