Last weekend I went to an excellent food writing course "Eating Your Words with Matthew Fort" great quality inputs from Matthew, Tim Hayward, Tomasina Miers and Bob Granleese. Good company from fellow food enthusiasts as well. This has inspired me to start my own food blog.
After a morning spent talking about food and food writing we visited The Fellow a gastro pub just a few minutes walk from Kings Cross station. Part of the course was to write a restaurant review, here is mine
The Fellow
Soft melting pork belly with crunchy crackling and caramelized apple puree was the highlight of Saturday lunch at The Fellow.
The restaurant was almost empty when our party of twelve arrived at 12.30pm. The Fellow looks like a very ordinary London pub from the outside, once in first impressions are good. It is light and airy with nicely laid scrubbed wooden tables.
We had chosen in advance from the £27 set menu. This has three dishes for each course. My starter of crispy goats cheese, beetroot and swiss chard salad did not disappoint in terms of presentation. There were three triangles of deep fried goats cheese, thinly sliced beetroot with celery and pine nuts and a mountain of salad leaves. (although no swiss chard). The goats cheese was crunchy on the outside but sadly solid in the middle. It was disappointing that with the exception of the strong goats cheese the dish lacked any depth of flavor. It needed a decent sharp dressing to bring it all together.
Other starters included a wild garlic and potato soup and potted kippers with pickled cucumber and toast. On the kippers my dining friends conversation suggested that the dish was too cold. As a result it was solid and lacked taste and flavor. The toast ran out with half the pate still to eat.
The first main course to arrive at the table was grilled asparagus on puy lentils with poached egg. It looked very pretty if a little on the small side. Then came the pork belly, which was the choice for most of us. Thick slices of pork served on apple puree and accompanied with a ramekin of “black eyed peas and boudin noir casserole”. Well the pork was delicious once salt and pepper had been added, a double portion of the puree would have been perfect. The casserole though, was a brown mass of beans with no flavor.
By the time of the arrival of the third main course choice of beer battered haddock, mushy peas, tartare and triple cooked chips the rest of us had finished eating.
For dessert my choice was an almond and orange cake, crème fraiche and blood orange sorbet. The large portion of cake was soft with a good almond flavor but lacking the orange kick. It needed more crème fraiche or better still some creamy vanilla ice cream. The sorbet was orange in colour but just tasted of ice.
The staff are friendly and welcoming and the atmosphere is good. The checking of orders and timing of food arrival needs a bit of improvement. With this and better seasoning of the dishes it would not take very much for The Fellow to rise from an average meal to pretty good.
21 April 2012
The Fellow
24 York Way
London
N1 9AA
020 7833 4395
Congrats on your first food review, Annie.... I'll be checking back here from time to time :) K
ReplyDelete