Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, London
It was another year of Christmas Eve and another year of a dinner with “daddy”. We walked from British Museum to Hyde Park. The Christmas Eve dinner started at 10pm. It was very busy outside of the restaurant as the entrance for the night is located in the hall of the hotel. We certainly dressed up for the evening, in black tie, but some customers were in much more relaxed clothes, which I was wondering if they even followed the dress code. Those under-dressed customers became our gossip topic for the evening. The menu was very Christmas for sure.
Menu
The first dish “langoustine” was very impressive. The base soup was surprisingly in a cold temperature, which was a very good start as it completely woke me up. The langoustine was cooked through, i.e., not raw, but still juicy. Other seasoning was inspired by Japanese, wakame seaweed and citrus. In fact, the entire dish tasted Japanese, umami and oceanic. The drizzle of caviar added some salty and fresh flavours.
Marinated langoustine, confit citrus, wakame and Kristal caviar
Let’s move to the “sea bass”. It was perfectly cooked and seasoned. The chef actually fried the sea bass to a slightly golden colour for a nice appearance and flavour but remained juicy. The paired watercress and cauliflower balanced the fat from the fish very well. I was surprised on the use of cauliflower, because it has way too strong flavour when in raw and no texture when fully cooked; it needs great control to find the sweet spot.
Line-caught sea bass, watercress, caulitlower and razor clams
The main dish for the night was “Guinea fowl”, a very traditional choice. It was another dish I enjoyed. Starting from the top, truffle, they tasted nice but did not overpower the fowl. Then the fowl were visually cut very nicely and cooked in a very nice brown-pink-brown colour, with all the extra fat rendering out and removed. The meat itself tasted juicy but not too bloody, warm temperature but not too hot. The sauce, which was made from grape condiment, was in a very nice thickness, coating the fowl but not too gluey, and it adds slightly fruity flavour to balance the rich fowl flavour.
Breast of Guinea fowl, roasted salsily and tuber melanosporum
There was an interesting “event”. The waitress sent us a set final sweet bites, but she immediately came back to take them back. I was chatting with daddy that one of the jellies had alcohol and they probably will replace it, because we informed them, we do not drink alcohol tonight. Of course, I was right!
Before and after sweet bites
It was a great evening. I liked it, daddy liked it, and eventually some restaurants in London met my expectations (given the price). The chef used expensive ingredients but for the purpose of completing a dish rather than showing off the price tag, and the chef cooked the most available ingredients to a perfect condition, also for the sake of completing a dish; this is what I expected, especially, from a Michelin 3-star place. Apart from the nice dinner, we are facing a table of six persons, probably three couples, some of whom are in short and jeans. They were certainly a source of our entertaining for the night: daddy and I criticised fiercely on their dressing and constantly going out for cigarette.
🐼 Score: 4/5
