Hotel restaurant disappoints

As a pre-Xmas lunch with B’s old BT friends, we’ve decided to take up the offer of a set lunch for £25 with a champagne cocktail at the Tiger Green restaurant in the Hilton Green Park.  The street outside is full of smart cars with personalised number plates – and indeed as we’re eating a small convoy of two Rolls, a top of the range Mercedes and a Range Rover, each with similar personalised plates, steams by. The hotel entrance is very festive so we’re in a positive frame of mind as we head through the bar to the restaurant (regular readers note: we had had a drink in the pub beforehand!).

It’s one o’clock when we arrive, and there’s only one other table occupied. There’s no-one at the desk to greet us, so we hang around for what seems an age. The nearby tables seem to be laid for breakfast, complete with a set of egg timers for some reason.  There seems to be only person serving and she is taking an order from the other table. Good humour is ebbing fast.

Eventually the five of us are seated at a table for 6, nicely positioned by a window.  We wait again for the menu and wine list. B opts for the house white, a Spanish wine called Airen. Although a little on the sweet side, it’s very acceptable, even at £21 a bottle.   There’s another long wait before they take an order, and a while again before anything arrives – though to be fair there is some nice bread.   The champagne cocktails are good, though B2 and L have opted for soft drinks instead.

The room is classic hotel restaurant – no character or charm to it at all. Very cold and unseasonal despite the decorations at the hotel entrance.

B2 and L order the carrot and coriander soup, while B and S go for the smoked salmon and I have the ham hock “compression”.  The soup (pronounced “soap” by the Eastern European waitress) arrives first, several minutes ahead of the cold dishes for some odd reason. L isn’t impressed, but it’s warming enough to cut through B2’s cold. The smoked salmon looks to be a very small portion in a huge bowl, but actually it is tightly rolled up so there’s more there than it seemed. My ham hock terrine comes with an odd celeriac mousse on top and is very dense and really rather tasty.

The Fawlty Towers service continues as we wait again for our mains. By now the place is filling up, but with people having the afternoon tea – there must be a special offer on that too.

B2 has chicken makhni which comes complete with rice, breads, papadum, chutney and raita, the dishes attractively presented on a wooden board. This too helps with his cold, but otherwise looks pretty ordinary. L and S both have the baked salmon, which seems fine, while B and I opt to pay the £4 supplement to have the chef’s signature dish (so the menu says) of venison loin with chocolate, macadamia nuts, turnip, and spinach gnocchi.  This is impressive – the venison very tender, the chocolate bitter creating a nice sauce.

For dessert L has the apple and blackberry crumble crème brulee, a somewhat weird combination. B2 has the exotic fruit salad which arrives looking more like a knickerbocker glory – but he liked it. S and B both order sticky toffee pudding with salted caramel ice cream. The waitress returns soon after to say they’d run out of sticky toffee pudding (when only one other table was dining?). B asks to have just the ice cream, and the waitress has to go to check that’s OK, returning to say it was with an air of having done us a great favour.  S opts to go for the bread and butter pudding which I had also chosen.  Now I’m a great fan of bread and butter and pudding, and I have to say - - this was the worst I’ve ever had, I couldn’t get close to finishing it. It had no texture, no flavour and a very thin cream on top.

As there were two non-drinkers and one driver we only had the two bottles of wine. So the total, with 12.5% service, climbs to nearly £200.  Much of the food has been fine, the venison in particular. But the overall experience has been less than special – maybe it’s a typical hotel restaurant – so we won’t be going there again.

Cinnamon Club celebrations

Although TV chef Vivek Singh has opened up cheaper and simpler branches of his Cinnamon empire in Soho and the City, the Cinnamon Club in the old Westminster Library remains my top choice of Indian if we’re celebrating.  So I’m thrilled that H decides to have her 60^th birthday dinner there, and all the gang are joining her.  Then typically at the last minute C&L drop out, and we are 6 instead of 8.  We’re still seated at a table for 8 though, which restricts the conversation a little, but as you may see from photos I’ve posted , we still had a great time.

The charm of the old library still remains, and as it’s a Saturday close to Christmas the place is buzzing and lively. Despite its evident sophistication the place isn’t at all stuffy or formal, just classy.  Inevitably the wine list prices reach dizzying heights, but we manage to find a Bergerac Sec Sauvignon Blanc at £30, and later a Cahors Malbec at £32, both of which were fine.

Proceedings get kicked off with a “pre-starter”  - a light potato based snack.  Three of the group have the chicken breast to start – barbecued with a pineapple salsa.  Other selections were partridge breast  char-grilled with onion raita,  and mushroom galauti  (traditionally a minced lamb dish from the Awadhi cuisine of Lucknow, Google tells me, but here done with mushrooms instead)with tandoori Portobello mushroom.  I have the tandoori cod with mango puree – excellent.

We’re similarly limited in our choice of main courses, with three going for the tandoori prawns, which do come with a zingy curry sauce.  Two others had lamb saddle, and I have the red deer saddle. The deer was sensational – tender, spiced with cumin and cinnamon in a light gravy and accompanied by pickled baby root vegetables. We also have some breads and black lentils – again lovely, dense and rich.

As we’d told them it was H’s birthday,  they then arrive with a small “birthday plate” of of cake and ice cream, and a free glass of Franciacorta, an Italian sparkling, very generous. We’ve had three bottles of the Bergerac and just one of the Malbec, plus some water, taking the bill, with the inevitable 12.5% service charge, up to £415, or about £70 a head. So not somewhere to substitute for your local curry house, but a great place to celebrate.

October in brief

For a tapas near Waterloo try Meson Don Felipe. It’s a long-time stalwart with classic Spanish design with lots of high stools, and in the evening can get very busy. But at lunchtime after a visit to the Imperial War Museum, five of us were able to get one of the few ordinary tables without a problem.  We had the usual sort of mix of meatballs, chorizo, garlic prawns, chicken skewer, tortilla and salad, plus some excellent tuna croquettes and grilled sardines. A reliable and reasonably priced set of dishes.

If you’re in Cambridge, the Galleria Restaurant by Magdalene Bridge is an attractive place to go. Three of us booked in for a Friday evening  - though it wasn’t really all that busy. For starters we had smoked duck breast, which came cantaloupe melon and wasabi/soy dressing; a small king prawn salad, fresh with Thai dressing; and some olives with cardamom and paprika. Mains were monkfish fillets with prawns in a coconut milk sauce, Moroccan chicken fillet with couscous and tuna steak off the specials menu, all above par. The Spanish SB was not that great so we changed to a Chilean Viognier for the second bottle. £120 for 3 was pretty fair value.

For Sunday brunch in Cambridge we went to Bistro du Vin, part of the expanding Hotel du Vin chain. The set lunch was £24.95 for the soup (cauliflower, very rich), seafood and charcuterie buffet (a commendable selection with great stuffed chillies and excellent bread, kept frequently replenished), choice of main and a dessert. For mains we had the smoked haddock with hash brown and poached egg, roast turkey and steak and ale pie.  Desserts were the Bistro coupe (vanilla and pistachio with chocolate sauce), crème brulee (just 6/10 but then I am fussy about it) and a cheese board, which was a little mean but tasty. Two bottles of £25 Tabali Viognier and service brought the total to £145. Maybe not as successful as we’d hoped, but pretty good.

Six of us tried Hix in Brewer St for their special set menu lunch – 2 courses for £19.50, Chilean SB at £23.50 and Montepulciano at £23, so pretty reasonably priced. Unfortunately, despite its huge reputation it wasn’t a great hit with most of us. The schnitzel was very dry, nothing as good at The Wolsely. My seafood soup was good and the pheasant curry was interesting, but the others were unimpressed with theirs.