On a warm Sunday evening in search of good restaurant in Covent Garden, I decided to visit Robouchon. Having visited the Paris Restaurant on a couple of occasions and had pretty good experiences and with its 2 Michelin star rating, it should be a pretty safe bet.
I opted for the small tasting dishes menu starting with Confit aubergine with cumin, mozerella and fresh tomatoes. This is an exemplary summer dish with a perfectly textured aubergine with a good balance of cumin, fresh tomatoes and sun dried tomatoes. It works very well as an appetizer and expectation is raised accordingly. The second course is Artichoke heart and crabmeat served with baby vegetable. This is very disappointing. There is a lack of seasoning on this whole dish to begin with and the bland crabmeat, artichoke and veg are screaming out for a little sprinkle of salt. Worse still, the artichoke has none of the bitter sweetness one would expect, as if it has been boiled to death and has no flavour left in it. What is left is a vaguely mushy and fishy mouthful with a hint of crunch from the accompanying vegetable.
The fish course of line caught sea bass served with clams and red pepper is a beautifully cooked piece of thick meaty sea bass. The clams comes with a foam which is unfortunately quite indiscernible. It is fairly average dish and to charge £24 for it is a bit steep considering it being a small dish. The meat course is the Caramelised pork with endives, creamy polenta. The pork is some sliver of pork which is fine in itself but I’m not sure how it is caramelised. The polenta is a watery pool has no recognisable texture. The bowl of mash which is compliment from the chef arrived when I am already half way through my dish and is over smooth and over buttered with no potato flavour. Eaten with the polenta, one can hardly tell which is which. Again, for £24 for the dish, this is very poor value for money.
It was decided that I should cut my losses and asked for the bill instead of risking further disappointment with desert. This is a very average meal which will barely scrape through a 1 star rating and maybe priced around £50. The final bill of £85 without drinks represent extremely poor value for money and such a disappointment. There is probably a reason why I have avoided going since it opened and I should have trusted my instinct in the first place.
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