Greasy, this is the first word that springs to mind when I think about the food at Strakers. For a moment I thought I was in St John, the same approach was adapted here: Let’s place the langoustine swimming in a pool of butter and call it a delicious dish… Does the chef think this will make it better? Throwing copious amounts of fat onto a plate of food and thinking this will do is not cooking wisely and it isn’t to everyone’s taste. There might be guests who love this and wish to block their arteries without a care in the world, but I am thinking about balance when eating out, and not just for health reasons, for the integrity of the dish and what it is representing. I am not sure there is any thought to that here.
On arrival, I was unimpressed firstly with the service, I found it to be unhelpful and the host not being very accommodating, but things changed when I sat down luckily. Upon browsing at the menu, I saw the famous flatbread with goat cheese, winter tomato and thyme. “Ok will have to try that” I thought. Let’s see how good it really is in the flesh… It arrived piping hot, with a huge burnt air bubble on the side, it was acrid. I love a good char, but this was inedible. Ok, you may say… Just scrape it off, stop moaning it’s only on a small part of the bread. There is a technique to stop this from happening for your information, but I won’t go into explaining how to make flat bread right now… We can sit here and discuss char vs burnt until the cows come home. Moving on… The flat bread had been over filled with a lot of ‘wet’ topping and this resulted in a soggy bottom which I found unpleasant to eat. The crust that wasn’t burned had good chew and flavour but the whole thing felt stodgy, too oily and dare I say fatty!
The special on the menu today was langoustine, one of my favourites, this was a no brainer, it was ordered. But the poor langoustines were drowning in far too much butter, a dish that could’ve been great just resembled fat and grease. I wanted to stop right there, but I tried to not waste such a product and ate around the ‘butter soup.’ Why the need to make this dish so heavy?
Next came the asparagus, I felt the shivers when I saw the sauce alongside, it looked like a cardboard cutout of the one in St John and this is the one I really don’ t like, especially with the egg chopped in it. Eugh… Just leave it out for God’s sake and do us all a favour… I took a few bites of the asparagus and left it. To be honest this was my fault as I completely missed it on the menu, so I can’t blame the restaurant that much. But for the sake of the argument, this is not a nice sauce.
I have no idea why I ordered dessert after this, probably because I saw the word ‘doughnuts’ and they are my ultimate weakness. You can get me to do anything for a plate of these in return. It was all looking very promising when they arrived, the doughnuts themselves were good, the dough was well proved. They were tasting fresh but the jam alongside had an underlying strong bitter note. I am unsure if this was the intention here but for me it was not enjoyable.
Well, what can I say! Errors and dissatisfaction… I didn’t enjoy a lot here, with the food being far too heavy for my preferences and not enough attention to detail in the execution. No need for me to step foot back in here, as I care too much about my health too. A block of butter a day doesn’t keep the doctor away.
