Humo, London
I was on my way to Mainland China to visit parents, hence I took the chance to have a dinner with “daddy” again. The restaurant is located on the edge of Mayfair. It had a nice front door decoration, and ground floor is for a la carte and lower ground is the chef table, therefore our seats for tonight.
Front door
The full menu was revealed by the end but the chef present individually dish and small descriptions during the courses. However, in this post I will give the menu upfront.
Menu
We got small bread, a firm but not too hard; it is like a scone for me. This was a fun organisation to present creamy and warm bread with fairly salty butter as the opening for the night. We indeed got canapés afterwards, but I found the bread appealing and cute.
Opening bread and butter
After an aged bluefin Tuna, we got ‘Langoustine & Chawanmushi’. However, I was questioning the dish. It looked appealing but the problem for me was, the temperature: the langoustine was cold but the chawanmushi was also cold, which traditionally is a warm steamed egg custard. it had (1) nice vegetable and flower touch on top of langoustine, (2) a nice punch the drizzle oil and sauce, and (3) a salty caviar to make it posh. Yet the cold chawanmushi really put me off, and also made the entire dish even stronger fishy taste for some reason. Clearly the customers next to us also did not like it much as we chatted between dishes while watching the chefs to cook.
Langoustine, Chawanmushi, Minori koji, shiso, Nz5 caviar, cedar wood soy, finger lime
After the Langoustine was a very simple salad, exactly those leaves one might find in an office lunch potato salad box. Not sure why it must be an individual dish but put as a side for the Chawanmushi.
Then we got ‘fake’ Foie Gras, which I found disappointing. Actually, Foie Gras is illegal now in the UK due to animal welfare. I recalled there were a few restaurants, I tried, using alternative ingredients and techniques, e.g., fermentation, to mimic the Foie Gras. First of all, I do not think it is necessary for a posh tasting menu to have Foie Gras, but the chef here did not do a very good job neither. The light brown part were supposed to mimic Foie Gras but it was too liquid like a peanut butter spread rather than paste. The light grilled brioche was a bit confused because they were small bites and more importantly they did not absorb the sauces very well. The taste, in general, was unmemorable.
Foie Gras, Brûlée, fermented Opal plum, smoked brioche
Let’s move to something I liked for the night, ‘Scottish Native Lobster, Consommé, New Forest beeswax, sweetcorn, rose’. It was a small set of Broth (Consommé) & Plate (Bee’s wax aged Lobster). The broth, which was made from lobster shell, was really refreshing and opened my palate immediately. The plate was, apparently, bee’s wax aged lobster. I had to say I cannot taste much different than fresh lobster. However it was certainly the most balanced plate so far, because the side baby-corn and, I believed, fried sweet potato slices are crunch and light sweet which paired well with the soft and strong umami lobster.
Scottish Native Lobster, Consommé, New Forest bee’s wax, sweetcorn, rose
I will directly jump to the first small dessert, ‘Magnum’. It was cute. We all picked one from the tray. The dark chocolate and wasabi worked well together and made the dessert fun.
Magnum, Wasabi, girolle, Blackthorne caramel
This was an ok dinner, probably because I was dining with daddy and we managed to chat with the customer next to us; it turned out to be very fun. However, the overall taste menu needed some polishing, in my opinion, although it is only one star the time we visited. Some of the dishes were creative yet they were less fun than I thought. The main dishes were ‘Scottish halibut’ and ‘dry aged duck’ which were nothing really surprising to be honest.
In fact, I was much more curious on the ground floor with the a la carte menu and an amazing open fire cook space that their own website uses in the front page. It gave me a much warmer and welcoming vibe. While the lower ground chef table was more for a business vibe to some degree, looking more organised, elegant and various wines in the walls.
🐼 Score: 3/5
