Roux

We all know the Roux family – you’d have to be living in a culinary vacuum not to have heard of Le Gavroche and the Waterside Inn – but how often do you hear people talking about Roux at Parliament Square? Unlike Le Gavroche, which I find far too twee, in terms of decor, Parliament Square has a clean, modern interior, and the food is a balance of fine French cooking and modern molecular techniques. The Head Chef, Toby Stuart, has worked in some great kitchens, including Cliveden, Orrery, The Square, Richard Neat (in Cannes), and Galvin at Windows. Toby is joined by Steve Groves, the winner of Masterchef: The Professionals in 2009. I’d originally booked a table for two, but at the last minute we were joined by Kristen and Alan who live in New York and are very keen diners themselves.

To begin there’s a celebration of spring: a tomato jelly, with goats cheese mousse and a green tomato vinaigrette. This amuse it both clean, but also has the right mouth-feel to pique your interest.

Tomato jelly, with goats cheese
mousse and a green tomato vinaigrette

Kristen and I discussed the menu – when we think of Roux, we think about the way they handle seasonal ingredients. So, whilst it may seem strange to follow the previous dish with one quite like it, for me it was an obvious choice. So, a minestrone of new season vegetables: a bed of parmesan custard hides at the bottom of the dish, with French beans, broad beans, courgette, asparagus, canellini beans, peas, pea shoots, courgettes, baby Jersey royal potatoes and freshly made pasta. The vegetables are dressed in pesto, topped with two perfectly cooked quail’s eggs and delicate pea tendrils – at the last moment the vegetable consommé is poured at the table. The broth is very refreshing and clean, and the custard kicks in with a richer, fuller intensity. The joy of the quail’s eggs is that you can create your own dressing in the bowl – delightful.

Minestrone of new season vegetables,
with parmesan custard, and a soft poached quails eggs

We follow this with a squid consommé, with mackerel, brown shrimp and toast. The consommé itself immediately hits that umami button, but follows through with a liquorice intensity, with a salty kick from the samphire and sea astor.

Squid consommé, with mackerel,
brown shrimp and toast

For my main I chose the Altlantic brill with a ‘baked potato’ crust, a ragu of chanterelles, white onions, brown shrimp and a shellfish jus gras. Under the fish sits braised lettuce, with roasted salsify, and salsify crisps. The sweetness of the salsify crisps offset the rich crust, as does the lettuce under the fish. The shellfish jus gras was split with shellfish oil and parsley cress. The brill was perfectly cooked, I love it because its such a meaty fish, and here the flavours are gutsy enough to match the dense texture.

Altlantic brill with a baked crust, a ragout of chanterelles,
white onions, brown shrimp and a shellfish jus gras

As I said before, when we think about Roux, Kristen and I think about the way they handle new seasonal produce, so she went for the caramelised onion polenta with spring vegetables and homemade ricotta cheese. That day the dish had a carrot puree, but I understand it varies according to what’s good on the day. Dusted and toasted polenta is plated with seasonal vegetables, the ricotta (made in-house with rennet and cow’s milk – I must see that in action!), and is topped with crispy fried spring onions, edible flowers, and frozen garlic leaf butter, which melts over the dish.

Caramelised onion polenta with spring
vegetables and homemade ricotta cheese

As a pre-dessert there was an amazing coconut panna cotta, with a passionfruit jelly, and a lime granita. So refreshing, such zingy flavours, we all loved it. Kristen and I want to make this ourselves, so we asked Steve about the jelly, and they do set it directly into the glass on top of the panna cotta. It’s a great pre-dessert because as you can see from the photo, the custard to granita ratio is so slight, so it’s completely refreshing.

Coconut panna cotta,
passionfruit jelly, and lime granita

Next, for me the reason I was here – the soufflé – rhubarb and crumble! We all know I’m a soufflé obsessive, but wow, really, goes straight into my top 3, with the MPW raspberry, and Pierre Koffman pistachio soufflés. Perfectly cooked of course, but that’s not it – the flavour was amazing. The Yorkshire rhubarb and blood orange compote provided acidity, the custard ice-cream smooth cold and creamy, and the scattering of oat flakes gave an additional textural dimension. My chum Alan is completely addicted to the Gordon Ramsay tarte-tatin, and always orders a whole one to himself – it’s been his favourite dessert for years. He had this soufflé and immediately declared it his new favourite – he loved it so much that a few days later in a 2 starred restaurant he actually turned to Kristen and asked if they could skip dessert and head over to Parliament Square for a soufflé.

Rhubarb and crumble souffle

If soufflés are not your thing, perhaps chocolate is? On a bed of chocolate soil, we have a chocolate cremosa, sea salt and caramelised peanut parfait, coriander and Kaffir lime. The dish is lightly dressed with a banana espuma. Kristen loved this dish, and it is apparently one of Toby’s signature dishes…. Tempting, but that soufflé is exceptional.

Chocolate cremosa, sea salt and
caramelised peanut parfait, coriander and Kaffir lime

I’ve read some very strange reviews of RPS, but all I can tell you is that I’ll be going regularly. The ingredients shine through, and are treated with respect – this is very grown-up cooking. One chef I spoke to said that he didn’t really understand why people want to eat what he considered boring, un-innovative food… Well. Enormous skill goes into turning out food of this quality night after night – the flavours are clean and make the absolute best of the produce – all the food I ate was delicious, the service was friendly but very professional, and I look forward to my next visit.

Roux at Parliament Square
12 Great George Street
London
SW1P 3AD

For many years I’ve read one particular Roux recipe with a combination of awe and longing*. The recipe involved carving a hollow into a potato, into which you would insert a truffle. The potato would then be put back together again to be cooked – when ready it would be sliced into 1/8 ths, a little like a boiled egg. I looked at the photo – I could smell the truffle, I knew what a fantastic combination it would make, but I certainly didn’t have a truffle big enough lying around to make this dish – I would have to dream about it for a while…

Fast forward several years and I was given a lovely little truffle as a gift. In additional to scenting some risotto rice (which is an essential part of having a truffle – that, and scenting eggs for the best scrambled eggs ever!), I looked again at the Roux recipe. I concluded it just wouldn’t work unless you were able to be incredibly generous with the truffle – it’s really something you’d need to be able to give to someone individually, or at most to share with one other person. Perhaps that’s just being greedy, but as a generous host, I just don’t feel that I could divide it up between many people :0( So. How to achieve the same results on a much more meagre quantity of truffle?

I thought in the first instance I would try it as a Pommes Anna… There are two quite closely related dishes which produce very different results. In my head Pommes Anna was the creamy gratin, in which layers of finely sliced potato are layered in a dish and covered in a creamy sauce. Of course that’s a dauphinoise gratin, from the Dauphiné region of France. Pommes Anna is simply layered potato with butter, which results in a crisp potato gratin. So, approaching the dish with the wrong process in my head, I layered fine slices of (cooked) potato a little le creuset dish with layers of black truffle and a thickened cream. The result was absolutely delicious, especially when you lift the lid and receive a waft of truffle scent – amazing…

This summer I noticed that Mister Truffle had English summer truffles on his web site, and I thought it would be fun to try them, especially as they are a little cheaper than winter truffles. I ordered a fairly large truffle, and the lovely Mr Truffle very generously sent me an enormous one. Now we were talking! I’d ordered it for a celebratory dinner I was cooking for friends and family, and I thought I would scale up the size of my gratin this time. Whilst the flavour of the creamy dish was lovely, I thought the crispy Pommes Anna would suit the nature of a truffle better, and not swamp the truffle with too many other flavours. So, armed with my huge truffle, I began layering fine layers of raw potato and truffle into a dish, dotting each layer with butter.

The final dish looked fabulous – I brushed the top of the gratin with some truffle oil, and the scent as you ate the dish was amazing. I also warmed the truffle trimmings in the butter before lining the dish, and this increased the scent-load.

I still look at the Roux recipe with longing, but I’m not sure in this economic climate that one could really use truffles in this way. With winter Alba truffles running at £2,900 odd per kilo – truffles remain a rare extravagance. Indeed, at a recent dinner in Ducasse they were charging £36 per plate for tiny quantities of Alba truffles. However if you want to try small quantities of truffle, Mister Truffle will sell you from as little as 1g. If you buy an white truffle though – absolutely don’t cook it like this – it should be finely shaved over a dish at the last possible moment.

* Recipe is from: