ADVERTISEMENT

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

Lunch for two last week came to £171.50 ($214), including an £8 delivery charge but no wine from the restaurant

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery
A food delivery sits on a doorstep to ensure zero-contact food is delivered in London, U.K. (Photographer: Olivia Harris/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) --

Every restaurant in London is closed, your birthday or wedding anniversary is coming up and you want a special meal.

What to do?

Some gourmet restaurants have begun offering a home-delivery service since the coronavirus shutdown. They include the Michelin-starred Hide, a Russian-owned establishment so posh that there is an elevator for your limousine, with the doors opening onto the private dining room. (Mere mortals ascend via a laminated oak staircase that is a design statement in itself.)

Hide oozes glamour and wealth before you get anywhere near the food by Ollie Dabbous, a chef celebrated for his creativity. But can you really package what Hide represents into a few boxes that you deliver on a bike to someone’s home?

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

The prices say you can. Lunch for two last week came to £171.50 ($214), including an £8 delivery charge but no wine. (There is now also a weekend set menu priced at £48/£64 per person for two or three courses.)

“We are trying to provide a bit of a treat for people, a window of luxury, a taste of escapism,” Dabbous says.

But is it any good?

We put Hide and Dabbous to the test by inviting culinary maestro Pierre Koffmann to review Hide at Home. French-born Koffmann is one of the toughest chefs in the business. When Koffmann ran the three-Michelin-star La Tante Claire in London, he was known as “the Bear,” and not because he was cuddly. His chefs included Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay.

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

“I like the menu,” Koffmann says when looking online, and he isn’t disappointed when the food arrives. It is bang on time, beautifully packaged and delivered by the restaurant’s sommelier. It’s a good start and only gets better when he tries the bread that accompanies it. “It is brilliant bread,” says Koffmann, who used to make the best bread in London, according to Marco Pierre White.

Koffmann has ordered two snacks: Soft-shell crab tempura with Thai basil & green peppercorns; and a selection of charcuterie: Goose with sage & fenugreek; Saddleback pork with oregano & fennel seed; and  Cornish salt-marsh lamb with lesser calamint. He enjoys them all, and applauds Dabbous for making his own charcuterie, though he reckons traditional French, Spanish and Italian ones are generally better. The crab is well-prepared and well-seasoned but the batter has lost texture in transit. 

Starters of beetroot tartare with cherry vinegar, beetroot leaves & toasted pistachios; and salad of burrata, dressed spring vegetables & fennel pollen both win approval. “I have eaten at Hide and he is a very good chef,” Koffmann says.

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

The first main of roast Huntsham farm suckling pig with mustard fruit, turnip & black pudding (£37) gets a mixed reception. 

“The salads were generous but the portion of pork is ridiculous, it’s too small and it’s on the fatty side,” he says.  “I enjoyed the fat because it is a piglet and the fat is soft. The meat is minimal but the garnish was nice.

He enjoys the other main of pithivier of quail with hispi cabbage, confit new potatoes & red wine jus (£36), with a side of crispy potato cake: “The pithivier was larger. It was good. No problem. On the side, the cabbage was brilliant. It was properly cooked. New potatoes were good. The potato cake deep fried was very good. All the vegetables were very good.”

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

The only slight disappointment is a dessert of seven-year Havana Club rum baba with Tahitian vanilla Chantilly. “I can’t taste the rum,” Koffmann says. “The baba itself is all right but I am a Frenchman and I want more rum. The chef must have drunk the rum.”  A second dessert of  Canelés cooked in beeswax is better, though he says they should be larger, with stronger flavors.

So what is his verdict on the meal?

Top Chef Gives His Verdict on Michelin-Star Restaurant’s Home Delivery

“I really enjoyed it,” Koffmann says. “Everything was very tasty except the pudding, and nicely presented. If I’d been served it in a restaurant, I would have been happy. He is a good chef. Of course, it’s not quite the same as at a restaurant, but I wasn’t disappointed. The only thing is the price. I wouldn’t pay that. But there are plenty of guys who can afford it, and good luck to them.”

Richard Vines is chief food critic at Bloomberg. Follow him on Twitter @richardvines and Instagram @richard.vines.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.