Expert, yes. Tasty, yes. Fun, err…
Roux at Parliament Square
RICS, Parliament Square, SW1P 3AD
Tel: 020 7334 3737
Cost per person without wine: £55
THE Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is perhaps not the sexiest-sounding location for a restaurant. Yet the Victorian building in which Roux at Parliament Square sits is handsome, the location is prime and the people behind the place – of whom the most important is Le Gavroche’s ?Michel Roux Jr (now of TV fame) – are first-rate.
To be sure, these things make for a “good” restaurant, in a strict, uptight kind of way. They do not, by any stretch of the imagination, make for a sexy one.
The contrast with Le Gavroche, Roux Jr’s den of upholstered, Michelin-starred luxury in Mayfair, is about as vast as can be, and intentionally so. Roux set out to make a crisper, more modern sort of place, but the result is sterile and boring rather than elegant. Someone somewhere was very silly to think that even schmoozing MPs would feel inclined to, well, schmooze, in such a grey-walled, grey carpeted, hotel-style environment. Paintings, wood, noise, colour – chatter – would all have helped rather than hindered. Even a touch of Gavroche-style upholstery would have warmed the place up.
But what’s done is done, and perhaps there are people who will be grateful to have a top-pedigree eatery decked out inoffensively in the gastronomic black hole that is Westminster, with a wine list that even the most demanding father-in-law would approve of.
In the kitchen is Dan Cox, a Roux protégé, and he’s good. But the a-la-carte menu is hugely expensive – £55 for three courses – when you can get the same number for £16.95 at Arbutus and £27 at the new Gauthier Soho – comparable, Michelin sort of places.
So we figured we’d just go all out and choose the tasting menu: seven courses for £65. It kicked off with correct, crunchy asparagus and morel butter. It is the season for asparagus, if you hadn’t noticed, though I could sure use a break from the stuff. What I would never want a break from was Cox’s silky slab of pale pink organic salmon, served with cucumber cubes, nasturtium and samphire. Roast royal quail with pickled radish, hazelnut and pomegranate was predictably well-executed but I find it impossible to get excited about quail unless it’s charcoal grilled and torn at by hand at a Turkish restaurant off the Kingsland Road.
Poached halibut with razor clams and fennel was a golden, cottony delight, but the evening’s showstopper was the Gloucester Old Spot loin and belly of pork, which was sticky with juice and savour and sloooowww cooking, to the point of being almost caramelised, and served with some brilliant mustard gnocchi. It was the kind of dish that you hoped would never end. We skipped Amadei chocolate mousse with maple syrup, caramel foam and banana sorbet, for it sounded a bit overblown. Wines were exceptional throughout: the sommelier was charming and suggested unusual tipples such as rose-scented Riesling and honeyed Marsanne, which buoyed the meal up considerably.
Go with your stuffy parents-in-law. Go with your boss if you plan to behave and perhaps to go through the accounts. Heck, go with an important chartered surveyor. But don’t go if you’re craving atmosphere and conviviality – in contrast to the food, the place is just too austere to enjoy.