Plum + Spilt Milk - British Classics by Mark Sargeant

Name: Plum + Spilt Milk

Where: Great Northern Hotel, Pancras Road, London N1C 4TB, http://plumandspiltmilk.com/

Cost: The average cost per person is in the region of £40 per person for a three-course meal not including drinks. The à la carte menu for dinner has starters ranging from £8 to £12.00, fish, meat or vegetarian mains from £9.50 to £32, puddings at £8.50, and a British cheese platter at £9.50. 

About: Opened in 2014, Plum + Spilt Milk is the restaurant on the first floor of the recently restored Great Northern Hotel in King’s Cross, with Chef Director Mark Sargeant, formerly head chef at Gordon Ramsay's Michelin-starred restaurant at Claridges.



Chef Sargeant also owns Rocksalt Restaurant and The Smokehouse upmarket fish and chippie in Folkestone.

The restaurant occupies a prime corner spot on the first floor of the Great Northern Hotel. With smart new solid wood parquet flooring, wood panelling, a high ceiling and banquettes of white leather and wood curving around the tables, the restaurant has a traditional British atmosphere, with tall windows overlooking travellers rushing through the restored Victorian facade at King's Cross Station.

Plum + Spilt Milk’s unusual name comes from the purple and cream liveries of the trains that used to run out of King's Cross Station, and today the restaurant markets itself as serving 'simple classics, beautifully cooked'.

What We Ate: The menu is short but well thought out, as is the wine list. For starters, we had roasted corn-fed chicken oysters (£9.50). I can't recall ever seeing chicken oysters on a menu - delicate and tender, they are my favourite part of the bird. Here, they were well-seasoned, flavoursome, and served with grilled leeks, shallots and capers.

Orkney scallops (£16 as a starter), on a bed of rich cauliflower purée, came with roasted cauliflower, samphire and sherry vinegar caramel. The scallops were sweet and tender, with crunchy cauliflower florets and a deliciously rich caramel.

For our main course, we spotted a Beef Wellington for two (£80) on the menu which we could not resist. The beef comes from Scotland’s North Highlands, and is 28-day aged.

The Wellington itself was very well made, with tender beef fillet having a great depth of flavour, and cooked medium-rare as requested. There was a tarragon-infused pancake (crêpe Cellestine) around the fillet, then a thin outer layer of puff pastry.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Wellington, my only minor regret being the lack of a duxelle of mushrooms between the beef and the pastry, which would have added an extra layer of flavour and texture.

The Beef Wellington was served with roast new potatoes and honey-roast baby parsnips with a hazelnut crumb, and buttered winter greens. The accompanying red wine jus was amazing - rich, velvety, glossy and packed with marrow flavour.

The desserts at Plum + Spilt Milk were excellent. The plum and spilt milk (£8.50) was a delicious concoction of baked brioche topped with caramelised plum, and a milk ice cream - magnificent.

The iced peanut and salted caramel mousse (£8.75) was also truly impressive. An upmarket version of Snickers (which I still think of as a Marathon bar), this had a smooth peanut parfait with just enough unctuous salted caramel to offset the sweetness. I felt a pang of sympathy for my peanut-allergic friends and family!

What We Drank: We shared a bottle of Avaton 2012 from Domain Gerovassiliou in Macedonia, Greece (£39). With a rich aroma of cherries and cedar, and gentle tannins, this was robust enough for the beef but not so powerful as to overwhelm the chicken oysters. In fact, it was one of those rare red wines that was a pleasure to drink on its own, but revealed unexpected depths of flavour and complexity in combination with the rare beef. Restaurants often focus on wines made from familiar French grapes, no matter which country in the world they come from, so I am always on the lookout for wines that buck that trend.  For me, this blend of three indigenous Greek varietals (Limnio, Mavrotragano and Mavroudi) was a winner, and at a very reasonable price for this quality.

Likes: The cooking was consistently good. I particularly enjoyed the Beef Wellington and the desserts. The wine list is varied and has some unusual and good value options. Good service.

Dislikes: Nothing to do with the food, but to my mind, the walls were crying out for some artwork. 

Verdict: For those who say there is no such thing as British cuisine, Plum + Spilt Milk is the answer. For excellent produce from the British Isles, cooked with love and skill, there are not many places I would prefer to eat. Recommended. 

The Sommelier’s Table at Hélène Darroze

Hélène Darroze at The Connaught is without a doubt one of my favourite restaurants in London. I have visited it on a number of occasions and written about it in The London Foodie, here and here.

Hélène Darroze’s cooking is exquisite – her use of outstanding ingredients (she works very closely with all her suppliers as seen here), the flavours and presentation she conjures up in her dishes are some of the reasons why I go out to eat or write this blog. 

From Landes in Southwest France, Hélène Darroze has held her 2 Michelin stars for years; she is the 4th generation descendent of a long line of chefs and was the right-hand woman for Alan Ducasse in Monte Carlo where she worked. Since adopting two Vietnamese children, her French cooking has taken inspiration from the flavours of the East – Vietnam, Japan and other Asian cuisines. I still dream of her steak tartare flavoured with yuzu ponzu, and caviar!

As much as I love getting stuck in some great burgers and street-food, Hélène’s cooking is something only a handful of chefs in the world can put together – it is unique, very highly skilled and something truly special. 

I recently returned to Hélène Darroze’s Sommelier Table. The Sommelier Table is a beautiful private room in the underground cellars of The Connaught Hotel where you will find some of the hotel’s 6,000 vintage wines. For groups of up to 8 people, you can enjoy a private 4-course lunch with wines included for £150 per person or perhaps a 6-7 course dinner for £1,200 (for up to a group of 8 diners, not including wines).

As the name suggests, there is a great focus on wine-pairing at the Sommelier’s Table, and the night we were there, sommelier Mirko Benzo did not disappoint. Guests are not told the identity of the wine in advance, and this blind tasting focuses the concentration on its taste, nose and harmony with the food – unconstrained by preconceptions relating to region, vintage or value. At the end of each course, the wine is revealed.

And now onto the wonderful, 7-course dinner that Hélène Darroze prepared for us. We started with a Champagne reception and a few delightful morsels of French ham and croquette canapés which got us off on a very good note.

Hélène’s focus on ingredients really showed on her menu – the dishes’ names were given by the use of the main ingredient in each dish. So next up was “Caviar “– crab, radish, Hass avocado. This was the most exquisite dish served that evening and the flavours were fresh, clean but still super intense, it was like having a private garden on your plate!

This was followed by “Foie Gras” - wild strawberry, rhubarb, and lemon verbena. The creamiest foie gras, with a crystal clear rhubarb jelly and wild strawberries, another fantastic dish.

The “Coco Bean” – eel, shimeji – this was yet another great dish with a coco bean emulsion, well eel and shimeji mushrooms.

Next up was the fish course - “Lobster” - asparagus, bottarga, and seaweed.

The meat course – “Sweetbread” - asparagus, morel, and vin jaune was also one of my favourites. I love sweetbreads, it is such a delicacy and deliciously creamy when well cooked, like the one pictured.

I love the concept of pre-desserts and Hélène’s Baba “Armagnac” - with strawberry and banana, doused in her own family’s Darroze Armagnac was the lightest and most wonderful baba I have ever tried.

Dessert was a torte of “Chocolate” – ginger and Bourbon vanilla, which was followed by a tier of mini choux buns filled with cream and macarons.

This was a splendid dinner and one I will remember for years to come. For a special occasion or if you would like to enjoy some of the best French cooking and wines that London can offer, there are very places I can think of rather than The Sommelier’s Table at Hélène Darroze. I highly recommend it.

For reservations, email: helenedarroze@the-connaught.co.uk or call:  +44 (0) 20 3147 7200. 

For more information about The Sommelier Table at The Connaught Hotel, visit their website:
http://www.the-connaught.co.uk/mayfair-restaurants/sommeliers-table/

Fera at Claridge's & Simon Rogan's Epic Tasting Menu

Words & Photography by Greg Klerkx and Luiz Hara

Most days of the week, lunch can be satisfied with a decent set menu and a nice glass of wine…perhaps a bottle, if it’s been that sort of week. Then there are other days: when you’ve landed a big project, when a long-lost friend is in town, when the sun is shining just so. On those days, when you’ll want something special, Fera at Claridge’s makes a very strong case.

Fera, under executive chef Simon Rogan, takes over the space formerly ruled by Gordon Ramsey at Claridge’s: the dining room, though extensively renovated, retains many of that once-lauded restaurant’s grand Art Deco fittings. Yet Fera is somewhat softer, more inviting: less intent on slapping you about with greatness, real or perceived. The food reflects the environs: understated yet complex, elegant yet playful…though less rugby scrum than a summery game of boules.

We opted for the full tasting menu (£105 + £95 wine flight) though Fera also offers a more modest three-course lunch for £35, sans wine, and an a la carte menu with starters ranging from £16-23 and mains from £24-38 (as of late August…the menu changes frequently depending on season and produce.) Whichever menu you choose benefits from Fera’s micro-universe of growers and suppliers, including a 12-acre smallholding owned and managed by Rogan. The result is a consistent note of freshness and care at Fera: despite the regal surroundings, one gets the sense of dining in someone’s very grand personal home, with all of the personal touches one might expect.

The full tasting menu we had consisted of six snacks and eight courses. Our menu was accompanied by a traditional yet well-judged wine flight, mostly Old World, all gentle and elegant in keeping with the tasting menu. A la carte, Fera’s wine ranges from about £8-26 per glass; prices start at £29 per bottle but average around £50, quickly going up into the three and four figures from there.

Our meal opened with a lovely glass of Bugey Montagnieu (Franck Peillot, Savoie), a sparkling wine with no added sugar, giving it a dry, almost tangy minerality. This was a fine accompaniment to our first snack, Puffed barley, smoked eel, ox-eye daisy, which looked very like something you’d pick up off the forest floor – woody and gnarled-looking, but light, crispy and smokily delicious.

Stewed rabbit with lovage cream was an earthy delight, the rabbit encased in tiny balls of lightly fried tapioca, the effect being the crispiest and gentlest of rabbit croquettes. Squid, alexander and ling roe featured tender, slightly macerated pieces of squid sandwiched between feather-light crisps of ling roe: a quick, fresh explosion of the sea.

By this point we had moved, wine-wise, to a delicately honeyed Muscadet ‘Fief du Breil’ (La Louvetrie, Loire Valley, 2011) that paced the increasing depth and complexity of the menu.

The squid snack was followed by perfectly judged Scallops and peas in buttermilk served in the shell, then the arguable star of the snack flight: a mousse of savoury Winslade cheese and potato in which sat a tiny, flavourful morsel of duck heart, deliciously rich.

The final snack – Crab, rhubarb, verbena and pork fat – was a lovely bridge between the sturm und drang of the duck heart and the first of the main tasting courses, Aynsome soup, mustard cream, soft herbs and flowers.

Cornish lobster, pickled golden beetroot, dittander and sea herbs was well paired with an unusual wine – Etna ‘Vinujancu’ (Vigneri, Sicily 2011): grown from black soil vines at the foot of Mount Etna, the smoky, almost charcoal notes of this unfiltered delight came alive against the meaty richness of the generous chunks of lobster in this course.

Surprisingly savoury was a grilled salad course: salad crisped over embers with sunflower seeds and a truffle custard, served in a beautiful, hand-carved wooden bowl and tossed to taste via a small spade and fork, also hand-carved. We shifted to reds here, beginning with Valtellina ‘Carteria’ (Sandro Fay, Lombardy 2010), made from 100% Nebbiolo, which was a firm, licoricy accompaniment.

A highlight was Hake in caramelised cabbage, potatoes in chicken fat with nasturtium: beautifully presented, the title of the dish neglects the absolutely delicious crisped chicken skin that added crunch to the firm, moist hake.

The mains concluded with Dry-aged Herdwick hogget, beetroots and watercress, the hogget aged for 21 days and served with a sundried beetroot jus that was absolutely wonderful. A marvellously thick, brambly Maule Valley Carmenere (Clos Ouvert, Chile 2011) was a perfect wine pairing and brought out the depth of the meat.

A trio of desserts finished our meal. Pineapple weed ice cream with butterscotch and celery retained strong notes of all three signature ingredients and made for a surprisingly delicate, and delicious, combination.

Less successful was Hereford strawberries with meadowsweet and linseeds: not a miss, just not a stand-out, the whole being so subtle as to practically disappear in the mouth. Sheep’s yoghurt, milk flakes, black cherries, Douglas fir – was held together solely by the last ingredient, which lifted what otherwise might have been another slightly underwhelming dessert.

The desserts were matched with two lovely wines – indeed, head sommelier Riccardo Marcon didn’t hit an off note with any pairing. The Arbois ‘Fleur de Savagnin’ (Domaine de la Tournelle, France 2011), was golden, light and florally lovely; the Jurancon ‘Marie Kattalin’ (Domain de Souch, France 2011) was buttery and ever so slightly savoury, which worked surprisingly well with the black cherry dessert.

As mentioned earlier, Fera’s menu changes with seasons and produce so your menu will almost certainly be different than ours. But given the quality of ingredients and the exceptional skill in their preparation (and the understated yet consistently attentive service) you can be assured that your special lunch, or dinner, will be well worth it.