Vanilla Black!
Aug. 11th, 2014 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettP & I have been meaning to make it to Vanilla Black for a while (at least since April!), and today we did. Notes on what we had follow; decidedly not vegan & we had three courses each.
Drinks-wise: I was delighted that the water came with a strip of cucumber in it. We shared a bottle of the Luscombe pear & apple juice (the vanilla worked very well: quiet and understated and not detectable as a distinct flavour). We also shared a glass of Austrian (Hopler) Grüner Veltliner, bottled in 2013, which was much tarter than I'm used to and tasted markedly less of lychee than is usual for the grape but was nonetheless delicious. P got a glass of Cosecha Cream (Emilio Lustau) sherry with dessert, on which topic more later.
Starters: before food-we'd-ordered arrived we got served some gorgeous bread: a dark moist rye, which I found hard to judge on its own merits because it didn't contain caraway; and an astonishing seeded sourdough that was excellently aromatic - not exactly as heavy on the poppyseed as suggested, but the black sesame was fab. Arriving shortly afterwards, I had Brie Ice Cream and Poached Blackberries, Quinoa and Pickled Spring Onion; P had Yellow Pea Soup and Marmite Dumplings, Sweet Onion Puree. I stole a tiny bit of the soup - which went beautifully with the seeded sourdough - and it was warm & rich without being intrusively spiced: very very pleasant. Heavier than I felt like; P found the flavours very assertive but also very pleasant.
I had many feelings about my thing! The ice cream was on a small bed of foam, and while the flavour was that of a very mild brie the texture was bang on, in that it started out as a very sort of... structural ice cream, and warmed up on the tongue to something rather more like a very runny (but still very mild!) brie. The accompaniments included a gorgeous glossy blackberry something, that turned out to be gel surrounding what was presumably poached blackberry; there were also whole blackberries, two colours of coulis (purple and green! -- the colours were glorious), deliciously sweet & nutty toasted quinoa, a perplexed biscuit of some description, and the pickled spring onions. I was surprised by how sharp the vegetable matter was, by and large, but equally surprised at how well it worked. Greatly pleased!
Mains: P had Double Baked Ribblesdale Pudding and Smoked Croquette, Pineapple Pickle and Poached Hen Egg; I got Salted and Ash Baked Celeriac and Foraged Sea Asters, Whey Poached Celeriac, Broccoli and Yogurt Curd. P's plate again managed to be rich without being heavy; to my astonishment the poached egg was unmixed egg I actually liked and was willing to eat, which almost never happens (even heavy-on-mixed-egg dishes I'm often dubious about). And, well, the pudding was light and fluffy and amazing and went beautifully with the pineapple pickle - we'd forgotten what it was and couldn't identify it based on flavour, all we could tell was it was amazing - as well as the tiny salad of lambs lettuce and the lightly pickled red onion and the unidentified thick reduction of probably some kind of fruit, of about the glorious golden-red translucency I associate with quince jelly, with more tartness and also less viscosity. It was brilliant and utterly failed to go with the wine.
Which could not be said of my main. The salted and ash-baked celeriac was... amazing. Actually amazing. Glorious, glorious contrast of textures between the grittiness of the coating and the soft interior and the crisp just-barely-steamed sprouting broccoli and the very soft, very crumbly, young-and-fresh-to-the-point-of-lemony goats' cheese. And the yoghurt curd -- I eventually worked out that the lemon-balm-y flavour was actually probably lemongrass, but then got a surprising textural bit that was almost gingery in my last mouthful; P suggests galangal? The sea asters were perplexing - not something I'd ever eaten before! - but again worked really astonishingly well; and, yes, again the textures (much more varied in this plate than P's) were balanced perfectly.
Desserts: P had Smoked Paprika Fudge, Malt Loaf and Builder's Tea Ice Cream, Crispy Pear and Smoky Pear; I had a deconstructed cheesecake of goats' milk, coconut, coconut crumb, passion fruit, mango and saffron. The mango and saffron were provided as a not-quite-crisp,not-quite-gel with the strands of saffron eminently visible; a passionfruit-coconut mix was the visual base, as a stripe across the plate; there was fresh passionfruit in addition; and a sort of sweet foam that provided a lovely contrast to the goats' milk, which was a decidedly sour/salty ice-cream topped off with I think the barest smear of milk chocolate to give the visual impression of coconut. The coconut crumb included desiccated coconut and I didn't hate it! I in fact ate the entire thing!
P's dessert, though. Omf. If I could have just had piles of the smoky pear (provided as a coulis) forever... which is, in fact, being unfair: the fudge was soft and crumbly and delicious, and the malt loaf was texturally amazing and very very rich, and the pear crisp was brilliant and full of pear, and the three of them with the smoked pear reduction was just... yes. Yes yes yes. Had it not been for the caffeinated ice cream I would have strongly regretted not ordering the thing for myself. And in combination with the sherry we... both kind of Had A Moment.
One way or another I seem to have ended up getting tarter things with more textural contrast while P got things that were rich; as is our wont we shared everything and consequently made strategic selections from the menu, but there are still three or four things we wanted to eat as a second priority. Given that VB is rather more convenient than Hiltl I imagine we will be going back, though when exactly isn't entirely certain; I think for our next outing we have set sights on one of the Michelin-starred places in Paris known to do good veg (we are semi-seriously talking about visiting again this winter).
tl;dr it is not exactly like I am a bad or unadventurous cook (& nor is P!) and nonetheless most of the dishes we had contained not just things we didn't know how to make but things we couldn't even identify that were nonetheless delicious. I-- just-- yes. The food was excellent and presented beautifully; the environment lovely, with music quiet enough to be unobtrusive while still masking conversations at nearby tables (I have difficulty with auditory processing, so!); the service was attentive and unobtrusive if perhaps a little slow, but we weren't in a hurry and so didn't mind. The place was very quiet on a Monday lunchtime - we arrived at 1pm and saw two other couples before we left - but this wasn't exactly a bad thing.
... we are plotting to go back to try more of the things.
(And then we went to a Prom and were both surprised by how much we liked Nielsen's 5th, and then we curled up in bed with take-away curry and watched two episodes of Elementary, heh.)
Drinks-wise: I was delighted that the water came with a strip of cucumber in it. We shared a bottle of the Luscombe pear & apple juice (the vanilla worked very well: quiet and understated and not detectable as a distinct flavour). We also shared a glass of Austrian (Hopler) Grüner Veltliner, bottled in 2013, which was much tarter than I'm used to and tasted markedly less of lychee than is usual for the grape but was nonetheless delicious. P got a glass of Cosecha Cream (Emilio Lustau) sherry with dessert, on which topic more later.
Starters: before food-we'd-ordered arrived we got served some gorgeous bread: a dark moist rye, which I found hard to judge on its own merits because it didn't contain caraway; and an astonishing seeded sourdough that was excellently aromatic - not exactly as heavy on the poppyseed as suggested, but the black sesame was fab. Arriving shortly afterwards, I had Brie Ice Cream and Poached Blackberries, Quinoa and Pickled Spring Onion; P had Yellow Pea Soup and Marmite Dumplings, Sweet Onion Puree. I stole a tiny bit of the soup - which went beautifully with the seeded sourdough - and it was warm & rich without being intrusively spiced: very very pleasant. Heavier than I felt like; P found the flavours very assertive but also very pleasant.
I had many feelings about my thing! The ice cream was on a small bed of foam, and while the flavour was that of a very mild brie the texture was bang on, in that it started out as a very sort of... structural ice cream, and warmed up on the tongue to something rather more like a very runny (but still very mild!) brie. The accompaniments included a gorgeous glossy blackberry something, that turned out to be gel surrounding what was presumably poached blackberry; there were also whole blackberries, two colours of coulis (purple and green! -- the colours were glorious), deliciously sweet & nutty toasted quinoa, a perplexed biscuit of some description, and the pickled spring onions. I was surprised by how sharp the vegetable matter was, by and large, but equally surprised at how well it worked. Greatly pleased!
Mains: P had Double Baked Ribblesdale Pudding and Smoked Croquette, Pineapple Pickle and Poached Hen Egg; I got Salted and Ash Baked Celeriac and Foraged Sea Asters, Whey Poached Celeriac, Broccoli and Yogurt Curd. P's plate again managed to be rich without being heavy; to my astonishment the poached egg was unmixed egg I actually liked and was willing to eat, which almost never happens (even heavy-on-mixed-egg dishes I'm often dubious about). And, well, the pudding was light and fluffy and amazing and went beautifully with the pineapple pickle - we'd forgotten what it was and couldn't identify it based on flavour, all we could tell was it was amazing - as well as the tiny salad of lambs lettuce and the lightly pickled red onion and the unidentified thick reduction of probably some kind of fruit, of about the glorious golden-red translucency I associate with quince jelly, with more tartness and also less viscosity. It was brilliant and utterly failed to go with the wine.
Which could not be said of my main. The salted and ash-baked celeriac was... amazing. Actually amazing. Glorious, glorious contrast of textures between the grittiness of the coating and the soft interior and the crisp just-barely-steamed sprouting broccoli and the very soft, very crumbly, young-and-fresh-to-the-point-of-lemony goats' cheese. And the yoghurt curd -- I eventually worked out that the lemon-balm-y flavour was actually probably lemongrass, but then got a surprising textural bit that was almost gingery in my last mouthful; P suggests galangal? The sea asters were perplexing - not something I'd ever eaten before! - but again worked really astonishingly well; and, yes, again the textures (much more varied in this plate than P's) were balanced perfectly.
Desserts: P had Smoked Paprika Fudge, Malt Loaf and Builder's Tea Ice Cream, Crispy Pear and Smoky Pear; I had a deconstructed cheesecake of goats' milk, coconut, coconut crumb, passion fruit, mango and saffron. The mango and saffron were provided as a not-quite-crisp,not-quite-gel with the strands of saffron eminently visible; a passionfruit-coconut mix was the visual base, as a stripe across the plate; there was fresh passionfruit in addition; and a sort of sweet foam that provided a lovely contrast to the goats' milk, which was a decidedly sour/salty ice-cream topped off with I think the barest smear of milk chocolate to give the visual impression of coconut. The coconut crumb included desiccated coconut and I didn't hate it! I in fact ate the entire thing!
P's dessert, though. Omf. If I could have just had piles of the smoky pear (provided as a coulis) forever... which is, in fact, being unfair: the fudge was soft and crumbly and delicious, and the malt loaf was texturally amazing and very very rich, and the pear crisp was brilliant and full of pear, and the three of them with the smoked pear reduction was just... yes. Yes yes yes. Had it not been for the caffeinated ice cream I would have strongly regretted not ordering the thing for myself. And in combination with the sherry we... both kind of Had A Moment.
One way or another I seem to have ended up getting tarter things with more textural contrast while P got things that were rich; as is our wont we shared everything and consequently made strategic selections from the menu, but there are still three or four things we wanted to eat as a second priority. Given that VB is rather more convenient than Hiltl I imagine we will be going back, though when exactly isn't entirely certain; I think for our next outing we have set sights on one of the Michelin-starred places in Paris known to do good veg (we are semi-seriously talking about visiting again this winter).
tl;dr it is not exactly like I am a bad or unadventurous cook (& nor is P!) and nonetheless most of the dishes we had contained not just things we didn't know how to make but things we couldn't even identify that were nonetheless delicious. I-- just-- yes. The food was excellent and presented beautifully; the environment lovely, with music quiet enough to be unobtrusive while still masking conversations at nearby tables (I have difficulty with auditory processing, so!); the service was attentive and unobtrusive if perhaps a little slow, but we weren't in a hurry and so didn't mind. The place was very quiet on a Monday lunchtime - we arrived at 1pm and saw two other couples before we left - but this wasn't exactly a bad thing.
... we are plotting to go back to try more of the things.
(And then we went to a Prom and were both surprised by how much we liked Nielsen's 5th, and then we curled up in bed with take-away curry and watched two episodes of Elementary, heh.)
Re: Belated comment is belated
Date: 2014-09-02 06:33 pm (UTC)I AM SO GLAD YOU ENJOYED :D :D :D
(ALSO THAT YOU ATE THINGS I ATE SO I CAN BASK IN THE SMUG MEMORIES. I mean it would also've been cool if you ate things I *hadn't* so I had more reports to read, but hey. I'll just have to get P to take me back. ;)
Re: Belated comment is belated
Date: 2014-09-02 09:20 pm (UTC)She felt the macaroon was slightly too chewy, though I thought it was optimal consistency.
I admit my choice of the smoked paprika fudge was influenced by your description; it did not disappoint. OMG the builder's tea ice cream was a properly stewed-tasting tea.