Having heard almighty things about Pierre Koffmann, we paid a visit to his restaurant as a pre-valentine's day celebration. It certainly did not disappoint us, we had a lovely dinner in a very cosy setting with good food, wine and service. Oh la la, C'est la vie!
Awwww it's the little piggy, the tag we got for our coats at the cloakroom.
To start off with, the amuse bouche was a cod croquette. I am no big fan of fish pie or mixing any fish with potato, as I do enjoy the fishy taste and fishy texture. Yet as I was not there for the finest dining, it did kick off our dinner with a very comforting very homey feeling to our tummies. Hm ... :)
A selection of homemade bread. I love seeing homemade bread on my table although I cannot have much carbs along with my dinner as I try not to be a big eater. But I do go wild when there's something very attractive, and in this case I would say the brioche. Buttery (although slightly greasy) and flaky, how can it not be nice. The others, I had a tiny bite of it and the crusts were generally crunchy and soft on the inner although I am not so sure about the flavour.
My starter was on the today's special list - Tuna Tartare and Oyster Tempura. There tuna did go well with the avocado at the bottom and the oyster tempura was nicely done, yet I would still prefer to have tuna sashimi rather than tuna tartare even if the tuna tartare did give an interesting texture, I guess it's just a personal preference. Also as for this dish I think they had put slightly too much sesame oil in it, which to me had ruined the dish a little.
He had one of the signature dishes as his starter - hand dived scallops with ink sauce and brocoli puree. For a scallops dish, freshness do contribute a lot and these four little pieces failed to score the top marks although I will say they were above average. However I guess this minor imperfection was made up by the way it was cooked and the sauce.
My main, again was on the today's special list - venison. I loved it, and I love seeing my meat cook pink as well. So tender and juicy. Yum.
He had the Pierre Koffmann's signature - pig's trotter with sweetbreads and morels. He does not read around what to eat like I do, and I recommended him (well, slightly forced him) to order this. I did worry a little that he might not like it before it arrived on the table, but to my surprise he claimed it as the best pig's feet he had ever eaten. The veal sweetbread with the morels AH NOM and the slightly jelly-like texture of the pig trotter - ACE!
Complimentary french fries, ho ho ho I like freshly fried stuffs although this turned out a tad too salty.
I guess our dinner would not be complete with the signature dessert, The pistachio souffle. So light and fluffy and loved the pistachio flavour. C'etait perfecto. My only very very tiny complain was that the glace melted too quickly as I enjoy hot and cold contrast a lot. But the melted ice cream acted as something creamy inside the fluffy egg white which was interesting enough already.
We picked another dessert from the menu - Rum baba with cameralised pineapple. This was the worst pick out of the whole meal, we went for this only because we did not have it when we went to Paris or else I would definitely opt for the floating island. Very starchy, and quite dry apart from the outer which was coated in Rum, so it was a bit hard to gulp down after a very full meal. But it should receive some credit that the baba was flavoured perfectly in terms of the Rum, not too strong and slightly sweet.
To finish off with, some orange madeleines. The madeleines were nice, yet I would not praise it highly because I do not appreciate food that has an orange flavour.
Finally as we were paying the bill, we got told that there were candies that we could take home with us. Awww it was incredibly sweet. I like this place. And all the sweeties were freshly made on that day by the chef. I did take some caramelised pop-corn and mango marshmallow away with me, as on the other day while I was at the cinema I resisted to order any popcorn just 'cause I was full and that I love marshmallow. That moment, I felt like a child again and it made me smiled whole-heartedly on the rest of the journey home.
I get distracted a lot when I write stuff, and I had found an entertaining video of Marco Pierre White preparing the pig trotter on Youtube while typing up this blog, so voila.
P.S Thank you very much to him. I had a lovely pre-valentine's celebration at London.
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