Arbutus

I love all sorts of weird things when it comes to food: olive-anchovy sushi with salty chocolate, sweet venison puffs, parmesan cones with horseradish ice cream. If someone offered me a gherkin dipped in chocolate, I would go for it. Having said that, my two favourite restaurants serve food which can best be described as back to basics. We are talking St John in London and Steirereck am Pogusch in Austria here. Both don't experiment with strange flavours, but both still have the odd surprise for their customers: namely tribe, trotters, heads and hearts. St John is famous for the "nose to tail" approach when it comes to meat, and the chef at the Steirereck gets his inspirations from traditional Austrian farmer's food, which also implies using every single part of the slaughtered animal.
When I was a kid, my mother used to cook chicken heart stew for lunch. Ok, so it did taste slightly different from e.g. a beef stew, but neither my sister nor I questioned flavour or texture of the “meat” for years. I can however remember the day I finally did ask my mother more details about this particular stew. I must have been around 15 at that time. And no 15 year old girl would like to hear the word chicken hearts in combination with lunch. So I guess this was the last chicken heart stew my mother ever cooked.
Nowadays I am a sucker for St John's ox heart. So I was all excited to come across another restaurant of the nose to tail kind: Arbutus. A foodie heaven and a favourite among critics. Arbutus' philosophy is to use cheap cuts of meat and make them taste expensive. Take my braised pig's head with potato puree and caramelised onions for example: it surely tasted like a million dollar. The meat, with all its robust flavours, was incredibly tender. It literally dissolved in your mouth.
The ravioli with heritage potatoes, lime, pecorino and sorrel leaves a friend ordered was a pretty little dish and although one would think of potatoes and pasta as a rather stodgy meal, it was full of freshness and lightness. I have to mention the wine as well. Whenever there is an Austrian wine on the list, I have to order it. It is not easy to get hold of Austrian wine in the UK. It still suffers from its bad reputation back in the 80ies when some wine makers were stretching their produce with anti-freeze.
Slowly but surely though Austrian wine is back on the menus. I have already ordered Austrian wine in Fifteen, Gilgamesh, Bacchus and now Arbutus where we had a 2005 Blauer Zweigelt from Anton Bauer. I discovered a gem there. It was a simply beautiful drink and must be the best fruity red they've got on their menu. And it was the perfect choice for our main courses: the two cuts of Welsh black beef with mushrooms were a meat dish made in heaven. The fillet was tender and juicy, the shin melted on your tongue. A perfectly cooked little piece of meat. But after the "melting" pork not the best choice for me though. I like when my food has some bite to it and two times super-tender is one time too many. So I would have preferred the duck breast with golden beetroot: the golden variety doesn't have quite such an earthy flavour to it as red beetroot and was therefore a perfect addition to the succulent duck breast.
Our whole table was full of praise for all the main dishes and simply has to put the dessert menu to the test as well. What I liked most about Arbutus' dessert menu is the lack of ice cream. I am not a big fan of ice cream. As much as I enjoyed Artisan, I really wasn't impressed by the fact that every single dessert contained ice cream. Thumbs up for Arbutus. The cheesecake came with fresh raspberries on the side - no ice cream in sight. Strawberries with rice pudding mousse was possibly one of the nicest desserts and any other restaurant would have turned the mousse into a rice pudding ice cream. But Arbutus didn’t and so it was one of the most delicious desserts I have ever tasted and shows that the simplest ingredients can make the best dish if prepared right. The floating island with crushed pink praline was equally exquisite and proved to me once more that total satisfaction can be achieved without opting for the chocolate option on the dessert menu. PS: I still don't know what the strange indent on our dessert spoons was for, but I simply love them!