A few recent meals in London I:Pollen St Social/Gordon Ramsay With pics!

I was in London a couple of weeks ago for business and went a few days early with my wife and did some touristy stuff. In between the touristy stuff, we had some nice meals. I never take pics in restaurants, but since I apparently fricked up the NYC Chicken crawl thread by not taking any pics, I hope to rectify that here.

ETA: I had to break up into multiple posts due to length. The Gordon Ramsay post is here

Pollen Street Social
This is a Michelin starred place owned by Chef Jason Atherton. Atherton is a protege' of Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White and has the cooking chops and the disposition one might expect given his pedigree. He's also one of the hotter chefs in the UK at the moment and recently opened his first outlet in NY, the ClockTower in the Edition hotel. He has several restaurants in London, but Pollen St Social is his flagship. I had dinner here at the bar in April and did the tasting menu. Though the cooking was obviously first rate, I didn't really find most of the dishes to my liking (It was seafood heavy and seafood isn't generally my first choice). Nevertheless, I wanted to give it another shot, so the wife and I made our way for dinner in the main dining room this time. We ordered a la carte, so I'm showing her dishes and mine. Sorry about my photo skills, I was taking quick pics since I was there to eat, not run a photo shoot.

The first amuse is something they call 'Snacks', which is a tiered tray of goodies. As good as this meal was, and it was the best all around of the trip, the snacks might have been the most enjoyable thing. They were: Goat cheese churros with truffle honey, olive cracker with taramasalata, corn muffin with chorizo, mushroom tea with parmesan foam. Unfortunately, we ate all of this before it occurred to me to take pics, but here's what the tray looked like!


Also, here's some butter on the left, and some dill butter, which was disgusting because I hate dill.


Colchester crab salad, apple & coriander, black garlic, lemon purée, brown crab on toast .



They have really cool steak knives here.


Cumbrian suckling pig, roasted apple, king cabbage, granola clusters. This was outstanding. There's loin, with skin, belly, and shoulder compressed into a little square. All of it was delicious.



Roasted turbot, Orkney sea scallop, new season garlic risotto and cockles. My wife got this and she loved it. I didn't try it because I don't like tofu from the sea (aka scallops) and I don't like cockles.



This is the spring garlic risotto. She loved this also. I didn't eat it because garlic destroys me.




Stupid cheap cheater glasses broke.


After we finished our mains, they moved us to the 'dessert bar'. I thought was odd, and it was a first for me. Then I realized we were the only table in our section who ordered a la carte, so by moving us, they freed the table up for another tasting. I was fine with it as I enjoyed watching the pastry chefs make desserts, and I could see into the kitchen, which was also fascinating. This is the cheesecake, which my wife got. I didn't care for it and don't think the Brits generally do cheesecake well.



I got the pistachio soufflé with chocolate sorbet. I thought it was wonderful all around.






This was a 'strawberry mess' dessert the pastry chefs were assembling. It's a meringue shell, underneath which is a bunch of strawberries and custard and stuff. It was pretty cool.



The best part of sitting at the dessert bar was watching the kitchen. Jason Atherton was in the kitchen running the pass. What was remarkable was that he looked at every single item produced by the kitchen and the dessert station before it was brought to a table. The trays on the counter are filled with plates, the waiters come over to pick them up, he looks at them, nods or takes stuff off and yells at the appropriate line cook, and then the tray goes out to the table. He called the pastry chef into the kitchen and made her make a souffle for him so he could taste it. He wasn't happy with it, gave her some comments and made her do it again. So if you want to know what kind of stuff it takes to get a Michelin star, this is a good example. This guy is a rock star in the UK, yet he is in the kitchen and working his arse off, on top of every single thing going out of his kitchen. At least that night.