Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley

Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley
Wilton Place
Knightsbridge
London. SW1X 7RL


First of all, for all the non-English people stopping by here, the Berkeley is apparently pronounced the Baaaarkeley, not like Berkeley in California, and not like you would expect from the spelling, obviously, now why would we want it to be simple? I'm just saying this because I spent a week excitedly saying it wrong to everyone around me before being corrected and now you can avoid doing the same.

I am lucky enough to have a dad (the French part of my family) who likes to eat good food, and thinks nothing of spending a sizeable amount of his monthly salary on taking his daughters (that's me and my sister) out for their birthdays. For this particular birthday (my 23rd if you really need to know, and her 22nd), we just happened to all be in London and it was up to me to choose the place. Being a particularly indecisive person I made a shortlist (and have since been to another place on that shortlist - review coming soon), sent it to my sister who blindly selected the most fancy and expensive, in true princess style.

Now, when I told people where we were going, the general consensus was that Wareing makes incredible food, but the place is a bit stuffy. Well, I tend to like it a bit stuffy. I like the whole feeling of occasion it gives, the excited waiters, the conversations of other diners drifting through the vast room. I like the ceremony around the food and the way there are always 3 waiters around to do any one thing. Also, I usually find that if you actually start talking to the wine guy (sorry - the sommelier) with the tetra-pack custard-thick French accent and the upturned moustache in his three-piece suit, you actually find that he's pretty darn amusing. Case in point, on that night, we got to talking about how many of the staff would come out to sing happy birthday with the pudding, and I scored an almost-invitation to lunch the next day (though that might have been due to what I was wearing - I wasn't exactly keeping my cleavage a secret).


The food then - well now, that was truly incredible. My father and I both went for the tasting menu and plate after plate was a wonder, but my absolute favorite was the quail, served with shallots and endives that were mellow and sweet from caramelization, and a light-as-air goat's cheese mouse. Instead of the scallop course (I am allergic), I was brought beautiful stretches of flat pasta strands, with herbs laced into them almost like a piece of art, topped with a generous and pungent shaving of trufle. My sister, who had ordered à la carte, was brought the same, an attention from the kitchen to ensure she did not have to watch us eat for too long. For the main course my father and I both chose the pork - tender suckling pig served whith chorizo and all manner of delicious things, but the real discovery here was my sister's choice of the beef with smoked bone marrow. After the first bite she let out a low moan and practically force fed us a piece each so we could join in, and my oh my we did. I don't think I have ever tasted anything like it and in fact, the true originality of the menu was what made it so enjoyable. That, and the incredible cheese platter, with a surprising German blue cheese whose name I have forgotten, but was as buttery as the waiter promised.


The deserts were good, maybe even very good but I am less often blown away by Michelin-style deserts than savory food because they are usually "too much" in some way - the chocolate is too dark (here, just a few drops of dark chocolate mousse on the side of the plate nearly brought tears to my eyes), the alcohol notes are too strong, the orange is too... you know, orange-y. Anyway, with very full stomachs (we had extra deserts in the spirit of getting older - also a present from the kitchen), we left with little sachets of the home-made truffles, which sadly included all the strange ones I didn't want to try (like fennel and turkish delight and other weird ones). I did have the strength to very inelegantly have one bite of every single truffle offered, and some were delicious - a caramel one I believe? The sachet ended up as a gift though.


So there you are. A taxi ride home with my two fellow diners and an excited conversation about the food we had just engulfed - the sign of a truly wonderful experience, which brought some additions to the list of dishes I will never forget. It comprises a pea and mint tart from Hibiscus in London, a velouté de cèpes from la Vieille Fontaine in Avignon, a squid-ink based tapas with parmesan foam from Hélène Darroze in Paris and a few different things from Pierre Gagnaire, also in Paris, including, incredible, a single piece of cucumber. Not a bad list to be on. And more on all of those later, of course!