Gauthier Soho

Whilst I was off work at the beginning of the year, I decided to take advantage of some lunch offers that expensive restaurants do. Pick from a set menu and get all the quality of their à la carte at a fraction of the price.

First on my list was Gauthier Soho. The French restaurant owned by Alex Gauthier is lauded as one of the best restaurants in Soho, no mean feat what with the incredible number of restaurants in soho. The formerly Michelin starred restaurant is clearly doing everything it possibly can to get it's star back.

The entrance is beautiful, especially on a sunny Christmas day.

You have to ring the bell to enter and are greeted by French waiters, decked out in classic white bibs, and a lot of "sir" and"madamming" goes on.

We started with an amuse of squash panzerotti with lashings of black truffle.

Then we had delicious pan fried foie gras, roasted apples and a crispy caramel verjus reduction.

So elegant and clever. That transparent caramel shard was a joy to crunch with the soft foie gras

Then on to roasted scallops, pickled root veg and a crustacean jus, which I don't have a picture of. But it was good.

On to main course, and I had brown butter cooked wild sea bass, braised chicory and a red chicory salad with a lemon aromatic jus.

Along with roasted guinea fowl, gnocchi, parsnip puree, and a spinach madeira jus.

Perfection! Just beautiful. Really hearty and rich. More exciting than the seabass.

Then came a lovely unexpected pre-dessert of the lightest île flottante in the world, and an incredible vanilla sauce. They should make this in large size. It was so good, and better than other choices on offer.

For the real thing we had, tart of grand cru virunga chocolate with banoffee ice cream.

Unfortunately the ice cream was overwhelmingly banana instead of a sweet mix of banana and toffee. But the tart was gorgeously thick and rich. Just how I like it!

We then went off menu as nothing else really caught our eye for another dessert. So we got a chocolate and praline tart with the shiniest ganache I've ever seen.

This didn't really live up to its description, as inside the chocolate was not rich enough, nor did the praline have much flavour, so the end result was a bit lacklustre.

I will have to go back to Gauthier for dinner sometime and choose from their entire menu. I think what lets them down most is the lack of choice on their set menu. With only two or three dishes on offer per course, they were not necessarily the dishes I would have chosen had I had their whole menu. An excellent meal, but didn't give me the wow factor.

The other overwhelming memory I have from the restaurant is the very sterile, quiet and almost tense atmosphere I experienced whilst sat down. Perhaps it was that we were just in a quiet part of the restaurant at lunch, but I felt like I couldn't talk very loudly, or really even talk at all. While I love attentive service, for some reason theirs felt almost clinical to me and I'm left feeling uncomfortable. Some people may love being waited on hand and foot, but I love a more relaxed atmosphere, even in the best restaurants. It can be done, as can be seen in Medlar in Chelsea, a Michelin starred restaurant.

I think the place was unfortunately lacking in atmosphere and therefore my overall memory of the place is not wonderful. But the food definitely spoke for itself.