Petrus - a review

When you name a restaurant after one of the most famous - and expensive - wines of the moment, you have to live up to the name somehow.

Château Pétrus is located on the 'right bank' in Bordeaux; the classic wines of Medoc and the like typically come from the left bank.  This marks Pétrus out as rebellious in some eyes.  The wine, like others from Pomerol but unlike clarets as a whole, is near as dammit 100% merlot rather than the classic blend of Bordeaux grapes.

So what does this tell us about the restaurant named after the wine, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing's Pétrus?  Well, we know it's going to be expensive (the wine retails for anything over £450 a bottle for recent vintages).  We know it will be opulent, classy and of the utmost quality.  But also, it should take a single star ingredient in every plate and make it shine.  Where the wine puts the merlot grape centre stage, so the restaurant should do the same with the food.

And the food is certainly not a let-down.  In every course on the tasting menu, there is a single ingredient - a scallop, a piece of meat or fish for example - that is a star made to shine brighter by expertly judged complimentary flavours and textures.

So to the menu.  An amuse bouche arrives - tall, slim shot glasses filled with a dreamy white onion velouté topped with a funky black truffle froth.  What a perfect scent to start the meal.  Next was foie gras with rhubarb and hazlenuts - exactly what you'd expect of foie in a joint like this: crispy on the outside and melting in the middle, disappearing to nothing.  The sharpness of the rhubarb was a nice counterpoint but it was the hazlenuts that worked so well - their crunch and nuttiness bringing out the velvet smoothness of the liver.  A couple more hazlenuts wouldn't have gone amiss.

One of the most beautiful plates of the evening was a single scallop on a bed of dainty chopped spinach with a carrot and orange velouté and a blood orange froth (oh, how Gordon loves his velouté - but I hadn't anticipated two Heston-style froths in three courses).  I felt the few sesame seeds sprinkled over to be a little redundant and would personally have preferred the scallop to have spent just a few seconds less in the pan - but then I'd happily eat it straight from the shell. 

Next up was quail - tasty, tender and slightly gamey - with a tiny dice of watermelon, onion fondue, fresh almonds and a 'quail vinaigrette' (the pan juices, vinegar and oil, I assume).  While the quail was delicious, I felt the watermelon a little underpowered, though a great idea - perhaps a slightly larger dice?  The fresh almonds worked very well with the meat, however.

For me, the next dish was the star of the piece: pan fried halibut with pea puree, olive oil and black olives.  Flawless. Faultless.  Just heaven on a plate as far as I'm concerned.  The piscine meatiness of the fish balanced by the sweetness of the peas was all set-off by the fruity pepperiness of the olives and oil.  The fish was decorated with almost transparently thin slices of jerusalem artichoke (I think).  All in all, a most balanced plate of food - decorated with a tiny peashoot.  I had to convince a few fellow diners to eat the peashoot - it was just the essence of pea.

The 'mains' provided the only choice of the evening.  Unusually for me, I went for the veal over the lamb - cooked pink with crushed Jersey Royals, white asparagus, morels and a veal vinaigrette.  It was the morels that made me choose it and love it - providing an earthiness that went well with the tender creaminess of the veal. 

Sadly, I only had time for some cheese (which was fantastic, of course) and didn't get to the pre-dessert and dessert courses.  My colleagues tell me they weren't a disapointment either - a tiny chocolate gateau with a coffee ice-cream and the dessert was vanilla cream, strawberry sorbet, pear and pistachio.

A quick survey in the office this morning, the votes for the best dish on the menu were very close - with the quail pipping the halibut by the slimest margin of just one vote.

And so, finally to the wine list.  The first thing you'll notice is that it's big.  It's forty pages long.  It ranges from around £30 a bottle to an eye-watering, mortgage-requiring £11,600 for the 1928 Pétrus.  We drank  the Chapel Down 2002 fizz to start, a nice Chablis (though not to everyone's taste), a Sancerre (I didn't try it) and a very nice Burgundy.  The wines here are not cheap - but they are, of course, extremely good quality.

So does the restaurant live-up to the name?  I've never had/been able to afford the wine (if a kind reader wanted to send me a bottle, I'd be most grateful...) but by reputation it "exhibits extraordinary richness, sweet tannins and opulent amounts of caramelised, black fruits and toasty oak that are lifted by a delightful floral note. The sheer quality of the wine is borne out by a seemingly unending finish."*  The wine takes a single grape (almost) and turns it into something quite complex but allows the fruit to shine through.  Marcus Wareing's cooking here at the restaurant does something similar - it's not groundbreaking stuff, it's not meant to be, it's classic cooking done exceedingly well.  Thank you to our hosts.

*Wine review from www.bbr.com 
Photos from Petrus website and Edina.

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