109-113 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5LR | website
Chef Russell Ford at Aubrey seasons well and I think cooks better than many chefs in more landmark locations. Aubrey is a hotel restaurant by the way and that is, in New Labour language a ‘challenge’, which is to say an uphill struggle. Hotel guests have varying, but invariably catholic tastes, and you need a menu that covers all the bases, right down to catering to those who can’t use cutlery. Looking out of his kitchen at some of the people who eat in his hotel restaurant must make many a hotel chef with a bit of talent want to go and put his head in his oven.
Well Russell has talent and he has a menu that meets requirements but exceeds in execution. My warm salad of black pudding with wild mushrooms, potato, crispy bacon and a soft poached egg was perfectly done and the black pudding particularly well sourced. Not as crumbly as a French boudin yet not as solid as a full on Brit, it had speckles of fat and a chewy texture that released floods of flavour. A forkful of that with the egg yolk gluing mushrooms and potato onto it was pretty near perfect lunch food, it was also something I could eat for breakfast quite cheerfully. It looked very stylish too, something not always easy to achieve with black pudding, cutting it into logs and standing them on end was a good idea.
You might well ask what my dining companion had, well ask away I was too busy actually enjoying my lunch and nursing a hangover to make any useful notes. She enjoyed it though and it looked good. Will that do?
Aubrey has a nice atmosphere for a hotel restaurant, cosy, intimate, leathery and old time. American tourists must love it. It seems a shame that it may only attract hotel guests because the food while not aiming to be an artistic statement is certainly what I like to eat on a regular basis.