Choosing a restaurant in our house always begins in the most random way: Richard Corrigan has been on the telly quite a lot lately, what with Great British Menu and Saturday Kitchen, and the Hubby wondered why we’d never been to his restaurant. He was adamant that he’d never seen Corrigan’s Mayfair on Upper Grosvenor Street, or heard anyone mention it.
To be honest, even though I knew it was there, I’d never actually seen it, and my ‘usual’ black cab chappie gave a me a breakdown of every building in the street but declared he’d never seen a restaurant there… So Corrigan’s is a bit like that building in Harry Potter – invisible to the uninitiated… This makes entering the building even more of a surprise, because the interior is actually enormous, and must span the whole of the block.
There’s a very good bar area, restaurant seating, and a private room off the main restaurant. The room feels very like a ‘posh’ Cecconi’s, except with a great deal less bustle. It was only about 25-30% full during our meal, although there was a function being held in the private room. With a room like this, less bustle almost constitutes less atmosphere. Given that we were asked twice to ensure that we were finished by 9.15, one had to wonder what they were worried about. Did people suddenly hot-foot it all the way over to Upper Grosvenor Street at 10pm?
Thank goodness we were only offered one amuse – hurrah! This was a little ball of mozarella in a sort of doughnutty/brioche in crispy parmesan breadcrumbs, smelled fabulous and pretty tasty.
To start I had a very lovely crispy duck egg, with English asparagus, mustard hollandaise and pea shoots. It was very yummy and the runny yolk obviously worked very well with the asparagus. The Hubby had the terrine of foie gras, which was constructed using layers of foie gras and thin slices of brioche. The Hubby felt this dampened down the flavour of the foie gras somewhat.
As a main course I had the pan-fried john dory with a raw artichoke and apple salad. This was very clean, and the acidity in the apple worked very well with the rest of the dish.
