Following on from my previous review of the newly accredited Michelin Starred Caractère, I decided to continue trying restaurants that were newly awarded stars this year.
Next up for me was Cornus, the sister restaurant of long standing Medlar. A new venture led by Executive Chef Gary Foulkes who has worked previously at The Square and Angler. I heard a lot of good things about this place after it first opened and a lot of people were anticipating its star this year. Upon looking at the menu it was clear that it was heavily french based with hints of east asian (mainly Japanese) influence. The interior has a sleek modern look with a simplicity which I particularly enjoyed (my partner thought it was quite boring looking though).
We decided to go for the 7 course tasting menu which was £165 where two of us (we were 5 people btw) had the wine pairing (6 wines) for £100 and two other people had the tea pairing (3 teas) for £20.
This was quite a while ago and I’ve forgotten a few of the dishes exactly, I’ll try and do my best for the explanation
Canapes:
Some sort of Choux filled with what I remember was comte cheese
Roasted Pork with black garlic
Cod roe taramasalata on squid ink crackers (the best out of the three)
Bread service also came with two types of bread: Sourdough and baguette which were both decent
1) Seabass tartare with oyster cream, green apple and purple shiso
Very nice freshness with the apple and shiso which complemented the seabass. The oyster taste from the cream was present but not too overwhelming which was nice.
2) Devon Crab, avocado, wasabi & finger lime puree
To be honest I don’t really remember the flavours all
that much from this dish. I don’t remember it being particularly bad but nothing stood out for me. Also almost all of us found shards of shell in the dish. It gave one of our friends flashbacks from when he also had to pick crab for a similar dish to this.
3) Red Mullet with bouillabaisse sauce (french fish sauce) & olive oil
I mean the fish was really good, very well cooked and great sauce with it as well. As you can see from the plate it was just that. No garnish, just the fish and its sauce. I have heard that the Chef is well known for putting flavour over presentation, but I feel like there should be some sort of garnish to go with this.
4)Scottish Cod with gerolt onion, squid, crispy potatoes & bacon
Fish again was cooked perfectly, nice sear on the outside and still soft with the flakeyness that you want. The garnish was also great, the contrast of the crispy potatoes and squid was amazing.
5)Guinea Fowl, Jerusalem artichoke puree, morels with wild garlic & hazelnuts
This was probably one of the best cooked guinea
fowls I’ve had. The meat remained super juicy and was able to maintain a lot of flavour. I don’t know why morels were put on two different dishes. It made more sense on this one, I’m just not sure why it was needed on the cod dish.
6)Rhubarb with greek yoghurt & ginger beer
Fantastic palette cleanser, ginger and rhubarb work great with each other and cuts through the yoghurt really well.
7)There was actually a choice between two desserts. One was the strawberry and matcha mille feuille and the other was a chocolate Marquise with milk ice cream (and the same olive oil used in the red mullet???)
So as you may have noticed, I had a few issues with the food. Nothing was particularly bad, just some ingredient choices were unnecessarily repeated. However, and I want to preface this with the fact that I consider myself to be a moderate eater, I was not full by the end of the meal. It’s very difficult for a tasting menu to leave me unsatisfied like this but a lot of the time I was looking at my current course and wondering if I was going to be full by the end, by the time I reached the guinea fowl and saw that it wasn’t that big I knew I was going to eat something when I got home. I was considering ordering some cheese but it was already quite late (we started late so not really their fault).
Service wise, the staff were attentive but somewhat distant. They did everything correctly and were nice and approachable. I don’t know, maybe since the evening was very cookie cutter for us there wasn’t a chance for them to do anything out of the ordinary or above and beyond.
In retrospect, I think the tasting menu wasn’t really for me and looking at the a la carte, it seemed like there were a lot of other choices which I probably would have enjoyed a lot more than the tasting menu. I can’t say the experience for me was overly amazing and although there were some good dishes, I don’t think it’s enough for me to come back again anytime soon. By this I mean that there are so many great restaurants I want to try that a second visit to Cornus can wait.
by ojamamask