The Ledbury - London
The grand dining room gets a bit crowded for the two-tops near the walls
Rating: 18/20
Where: London, UK
When: Dinner for 2 on 9 March 2024
Cost: Tasting menu £210, Wine pairing £135
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Delicious dishes based on (mostly) British ingredients; mushrooms grown in-house
“The Ledbury” is a restaurant in London's Notting Hill neighborhood, and it just became the second one with three Michelin stars in this part of the city (Core is only a short walk away). For a time, the odds of this ever happening looked slim. The Ledbury had shut down during the Covid pandemic, and initially had no plans to ever reopen. Luckily for everyone involved, the owners had a change of heart.
The restaurant's dining room faces Ledbury Road, which can be seen through large glass windows. The interior design uses lots of wood, and the tables are covered with white table cloths. High ceilings suggest lots of space, but this is undercut by the very closely spaced two-tops. Had we been nosy, we would have had no problems listening in to the conversations on either side of us. Supposedly, the restaurant has fewer seats now than before the pandemic, so it's a bit scary to imagine how close the tables must have been back then.
We were running about 15 minutes late for our 6pm reservation, and in hindsight that might have been a blessing in disguise. The restaurant apparently serves “one seating plus one table” every night, which means that one of the 6pm tables will be resat at 9:15pm. I asked the staff what would happen if everybody ate slowly, and they said with a wink that they had ways and means to avoid that from happening. Luckily, our service proceeded at a leisurely pace, and we didn't have to engage in any speed-eating as we had to in similar situations in the past.
The Ledbury serves a single tasting menu, and on our visit, there was an option to add shaved black truffles to two dishes for an additional £30 - a pretty reasonable price, and definitely recommended. Dietary restrictions were taken into account, and we were handed not just an updated printed menu but also a correspondingly adapted wine pairing - a nice touch. Speaking of the wine pairing - it didn't have any particularly amazing wines, but they all went really well with the food. That much became obvious when my wife ordered a couple of wines by the glass - the wines themselves were better, but they clashed badly with the dishes.
We barely had time to order an aperitif before we were served several appetizers. This rapid-fire sequence of dishes came with rapid-fire descriptions, so I might be missing some ingredients here and there in the following. Between taking notes and photos, I didn't even get to try the first appetizer before all four had found their way to our table.
First, a thin “sandwich” made from chestnuts, quince and walnuts. Presumably it also had a non-vegetarian ingredient, since we received a pescatarian alternative as well. The light sauce in the middle of the sandwich stack was quite nice, and the underlying cracker had a good crunch. A bit more flavor would have been even better, though 17. Flavor is what the pescatarian alternative had in spades: a potato puff topped with cheese and truffles. The crunchy, airy cracker was light, the cheese salty, and the truffles a nice addition 18.
A scallop tempura was pretty good as well. The scallop was juicy, but its fried outside was unusual - this wasn't tempura batter, but felt more like fried tapioca with the consistency of sticky shrimp chips. There were two accompanying sauces, one of them made with kosho and mustard seaweed, and both were very light in taste 17.
Some chacuterie came next: two slices of salami and a piece of cured pig loin. The salami was surprisingly light in flavor - not too exciting. The pig loin was saltier and more flavorful 16. The pescatarian alternative was two pieces of cold-smoked salmon. These were fine, but didn't seem noticeably different from what one might find in the local supermarket 14.
The final appetizer was a small pancake topped with pancetta and sliced truffles. Lovely! The pancetta was of good quality and somewhat salty. There was also a tasty cream on top of the pancake that made the dish more flavorful and less dry than it would otherwise have been 18.
This brought us to the main part of the tasting menu, and the beginning of the wine pairing. Trout tartare sat on top of a ginger cream, and was topped by an apple marigold sorbet, trout roe, yuzu zest, and small pieces of frozen citrus fruit (blood oranges and pickled pomelo). This was a great dish. There were several different textures, different temperatures, and popping sensations from the roe and citrus meat. Anchored by the great trout tartare, it was a light, acidic dish 18+.
Cured black seabream came with bottarga, sliced grapes, some small cauliflower florets, nasturtium leaves, cauliflower cream, truffle dashi, an Earl Grey truffle vinaigrette and a single peppercorn. The fish was good, maybe a bit smoky, but the rest of the dish was a tad too sweet for my taste, thanks to (among others) the sweet grapes. The Earl Grey flavor, though subtle, was also a bit distracting 17.
Two kinds of breads were served hot and with a cube of goat milk butter that was covered in molasses. First, a swirly brioche filled with roasted onions, truffles and honey. The dominating flavor here were the sweet onions. Flaky and full of flavor - yummy 18. A rye-based sourdough had much less flavor, but a thick, crunchy crust 16.
Veal sweetbreads were served with vinegar, peas, cucumber pearls, an aged beef ponzu and a sauerkraut veloute. What do many of these ingredients have in common? They are all quite sour. But that was actually a good thing: the well-balanced acidity made this dish seem quite light. Add to that an amazing veloute and the meaty texture of the fried sweetbreads, and we had a winner. To be fair, one almost couldn't tell that the main ingredient was sweetbreads. But I didn't mind, since I'm generally not a big fan of the ingredient. With dishes like this one, though, I might have to reconsider 19.
Naturally, there was a pescatarian alternative for the sweetbread dish. A 62-degree poached and then pan-fried egg came with celeriac, mushrooms, and kombu ketchup. The egg yolk was still liquid when punctured, the dish nicely salted, and the mushrooms lightly crunchy. The creaminess of the sauce and the egg yolk combined beautifully 18.
Next we received... a piece of lobster, served with morels, watercress, caramelized ice cream, lobster kosho sauce and some red currants. The bouillabaisse-inspired sauce was very aromatic and quite lovely. But my lobster had a bit of an odd aftertaste, and my wife's lobster reportedly had a mealy texture. Not the best ingredient quality, maybe? 17
The preceding dish would have rated higher if not for the lobster. Which, oddly enough, wasn’t even on my printed tasting menu (see below). When we inquired what had happened to the turbot that was supposed to have been served here, the manager explained that the printed menu was in error - adapting my wife's menu to be pescatarian should also have changed my standard menu to match hers. Seeing our disappointment (more due to the presence of the lackluster lobster than to the absence of the turbot), we were offered a redo of the dish with turbot, which we accepted with some trepidation - adding more courses to an already substantial tasting menu is a risky proposition. In any case, the additional course had to wait a little since the kitchen was already hard at work on our next scheduled dish.
This might be a good place to mention that the restaurant owned a mushroom farm. Said farm was located downstairs, on the way to the bathrooms, and its existence explains why the chefs were so fond of adding mushrooms to their dishes, such as to the following: a ravioli filled with ceps and truffles, and served with a vegetable sauce, shiitake and oyster mushrooms. This was one of the two dishes that came with an optional shaving of truffles, and boy did that make a huge difference. Without truffles, this dish tasted mostly of the vegetable sauce. A nice pasta dish, but the top-billed mushrooms were only minor players - maybe a 16. The truffles, however, added tons of mushroom flavor. Maybe they did this by themselves, or maybe they mostly enhanced the flavors of the mushrooms already present. Regardless, a far more interesting and much tastier dish 18.
Which brought us back to the missing turbot, and the additional course for our tasting menu. I had expected the kitchen to simply serve the earlier dish again, with the lobster replaced by turbot. But instead, I received an entirely different dish based on turbot. Turbot was served with caviar, razor clams, white asparagus and an Iberian ham infusion. This was an excellent dish with a great buttery sauce, a perfectly cooked, meaty fish, and a hint of sweetness. The fish confirmed my suspicion that the lobster dish would have been better with turbot, although maybe still not as good as this new course 19.
As a nice gesture, the kitchen sent my wife a different dish to pair with my turbot. Curry squash was served with an hollandaise, yuzu, endives (some of them roasted), candied nuts and truffles. The sauces and endives were quite nice, but I wasn't a big fan of the squash. A decent, but not great, vegetarian dish in my mind 16. My wife however thought that this dish was amazing with great flavors and worth a 19. It looks like the kitchen made both diners extremely happy with this extra course.
Speaking of extra courses: at this point, one of our seat neighbors discovered a live worm in her salad - given the number of photos she took, it might already be a star on Instagram. However, as far as we could tell, she “only” received the same course again without the surprise protein.
The final savory course was pigeon. Its breast was served on a plate with beets and rhubarb. On the side were a confit leg as well as a “kebab” of pigeon wing and heart, both draped over a bed of pine twigs. The twigs were kept warm, probably in order to add a bit of smokiness to the dish. Curiously, over the next few minutes, our pine needles started to smoke more and more, and finally seemed on the point of catching fire. Thankfully, we had a glass of water on the table - problem solved!
The pigeon, admittedly not one of my favorite ingredients, was a tad gamy. More flavor dimensions were added by the acidic rhubarb and sweet beets. The wing and heart were served somewhere between cold and lukewarm. They were decent, but warmer would probably have been better - maybe we should have waited for the pines to catch fire after all... The best part of the dish was the confit leg - nicely cooked, salty, meaty and very flavorful. Overall 17, maybe 18 if you're a bigger fan of pigeons than me.
The pescatarian replacement of the pigeon was essentially the extra turbot dish that I had received earlier, minus the Iberian ham. I didn't try it, but would assume that the rating would be similar.
A palate cleanser contained a Madagascan pepper meringue, a yogurt semifreddo, honey ice cream, Meyer lemon confit, bee pollen and lemon granita. Creamy, sticky, lemony and crunchy from the meringue. Not bad, but also much heavier than expected from a “mere” palate cleanser 16.
The main dessert came in two parts. On a larger plate was a “millefeuille” with strawberries and basil. This dish was somewhat rustic, especially when compared to a regular millefeuille. The caramelized sheets were quite crunchy, and the strawberries were nice enough, but tasted a bit too much of (cooked) jam. I felt that a touch more acidity could have brightened this dish up a bit. Next to the plate was a bowl filled with a fromage blanc ice cream, a strawberry sorbet and some white chocolate. The fromage “mousse” was pretty light, resembling a light marshmallow albeit with much less sugar. Either way, it was a nice creamy addition to the strawberry sorbet - strawberries and cream, if you will 17.
There was one final dessert. Its ingredients: toasted cep mushrooms, toasted vanilla, caramelized white chocolate, buckwheat cookies, miso mushroom oil and sea salt. This dish had a roasted flavor with a crunch similar to soft nuts (but actually due to the white chocolate). The optional shaved black truffles made this (again) a significantly better dish: they added more nuttiness to it 18.
At this point, we were unceremoniously handed the check - without having asked for it. A few minutes later, a box with three petit fours appeared, ready to be taken home: a sea buckthorn pate de fruit, a canelle and a choux pastry. (I only tried them the day after, so won't rate them here, but the pate de fruit was still excellent and refreshingly sour for this kind of candy.) Strangely enough, while we were getting up, we saw that our seat neighbors received the same three petit fours and a couple more treats, and they were served elaborately at the table, without any boxes or checks in sight. Walking out, we were a bit puzzled: why the hurry to get rid of us? And with only a partial set of petit fours to boot? Maybe the staff was still mad at us for the extra turbot course?
Only on the subway ride back to the hotel did it dawn on us - this was simply a mixup. A few courses earlier, our seat neighbor had mentioned to his server that they were quite jet lagged, and wanted to call a cab and end their dinner quickly. Somehow wires had gotten crossed and it was us who ended up being ushered out, while our jetlagged neighbors had to sit through the entirety of their meal. And this also explained the annoyed look of the cab driver waiting outside the restaurant when he saw us turning into the direction of the nearest underground station.
Overall: An excellent dinner showcasing British ingredients in contemporary French-influenced cuisine. Most courses were very, very good. The frequent use of acidity kept the dinner feel lighter than it probably was. And nobody can complain about black truffles appearing in almost every course. The service was very good as well, always friendly and doing their best to recover from any mishaps that happened during our dinner. Still, at this level of restaurant it was surprising to see such a number of unrelated errors: a worm in a salad, an unannounced change to a dish that actually made it worse, a near-fire at the table and finally ushering the wrong party from the dining room. We felt more bemused than annoyed, though - at least it wasn’t boring - and will happily remember the excellent food 18.
