Rather disappointingly I wasn’t allowed to take any photos at our dining experience tonight at Apsleys. But this was the only part of tonight’s meal that I didn’t enjoy at this newly crowned Michelin starred restaurant.
Apsleys is Heinz Beck’s new restaurant in London. Heinz Beck is known best for his restaurant in Rome which is rated one of the best in the world apparently: A German cooking Italian in London? Well, technically I guess I don’t think he is actually in the kitchen – the restaurant just has his name and style.
The room, once you enter, is opulent and rich. Three huge giant massive chandeliers sit over head but for some reason tonight they chose to light the room very darkly. It actually seemed to dim even more as we continued our meal throughout the night! We arrived for 7pm but the restaurant was still rather empty. I was happy to see, however, that as diners came in they placed us all in separate parts of the restaurants which was rather welcome. There’s nothing more that I hate than a restaurant cramming everyone into one part of the restaurant when there is clearly space to spread everyone out.
As is the case these days Sandra and I were dining off the set menu – three courses and a glass of prosecco (we substituted this for fresh orange juice) for £35. We were quite pleased with the offerings on the menu which were pretty decent if limited (three choices for starters, mains and desserts.) For once Sandra and I had complete different meals. She had a warm seafood salad followed by salmon crepinette followed by orange parfait with bianco mangiare and mandarin sorbet whereas I went a more meaty route with the reginette with onion fondue, artichoke and rabbit followed by suckling pig and a millefuelle of raspberry and chantilly cream with hazelnut ice cream.
But before all of this occurred we were offered hot (not just warmed) bread of all sorts of variety: bread sticks, brown bread, a weird flaky type of pastry, a “bacon” bread, white bread and an olive bread served served with some very nice virgin olive oil. Though I would have appreciated some balsamic to go with the olive oil at least it prevented me from going overboard with the bread eating!
Our amuse bouche was an aubergine bell with fennel puree and aubergine and pepper terrine. Really really good and great to get an amuse bouche for once which was not a foam!
Starters were good and Sandra’s warm seafood salad in particularly contained quite a few bits of seafood in it which was quite impressive, although it perhaps suffered a bit from having lots of competing ingredients to challenge the palette. I think my main of Suckling Pig was a little more impressive than Sandra’s salmon crepinette though both were equally satisfying. My main ended up actually being suckling pig prepared in four ways. In order of preference my plate had on it pork cheeks (cooked or stewed in a sort of tomato like sauce), pork terrine, loin and shoulder. Again it almost felt like too much was going on on the plate but eaten separately I could appreciate each style. We were both definitely enjoying the fact that the plates were quite substantial for once – which we don’t normally get when on a set menu at fine dining restaurants.
We both enjoyed a pre dessert of strawberry sorbet, lemon crème Brulee, and biscuit (this reminded me a little of the lemon crème brulee with lemon sorbet at the bottom that I’d had at Mesopotamia)! Interestingly another pre-dessert was brought out to me only it seemed as it only came with one spoon – a Gratin of strawberry with ricotta impressions and almond. Perhaps the waiter had seen me writing in my book and was trying to impress a “critic”? If only!
Desserts were good. I think Sandra won this round with her interesting plate of different sorts of orange bits and pieces.
There is another lesson we have learned about dining in posh restaurants and that is – always get tea or coffee because that’s when you get the petit fours! Ha! You may indirectly be paying for these treats (what other reason do restaurants have for charging over £5 for tea/coffee!) but they are still a pleasure to receive. At Apsley’s they are especially cool seven little different treats set out on a long plate: Almond meringue, Coffee Bean liquior, Lemon Candy, Chocolate ganache with POPPING CANDY!, Hazelnut branch, French tart with raspberry, and Chocolate Truffle! We loved it especially the popping candy.
The service tonight was excellent. We got the perfect amount of attention and it never felt intrusive. We had two main waiters, rather than a revolving door of waiters, which was great as we kind of got to know them. Each and every dish was explained (though not necessarily understood at times because of the accent!) Water was constantly topped out without us needing to remind them and they even topped up our tea!
Its pricey Italian food but I think cooked with enough interesting twists and turns to justify the price. Great value on the set meal.