Bord’eaux - misplaced apostrophe, misfiring food

publication date: Apr 2, 2008

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author/source: Fiona Beckett

Bord’eaux in a nutshell

Food: A ‘greatest hits’ of brasserie staples. But the menu reads better than it eats
Wine: Good representation of lesser known bottles from the south-west of France, a fair number of which are available by the glass
Style/Decor: Disneyesque French brasserie
Service: Efficient but more eastern European than French (not that that’s unusual in London at the moment)
Who to go with: your fellow guests at the Grosvenor House - assuming you’re staying there
Who not to go with: a Parisien
Verdict: Disappointing. Dishes under-delivered given the talent of the chef. A shorter menu might help but not worth a detour at present.
Cost: £££. At least it’s not bad value for money

Being a great lover of brasserie food I was really looking forward to going to the Grosvenor House’s recently opened restaurant Bord’eaux - despite the bizarre name which apparently refers to the coast of chef Olivier Couillaud’s native south-west of France.

Couillaud previously cooked at the Dorchester and the well-regarded La Trompette in Chiswick where I greatly admired his food This is an altogether bigger enterprise though - a 180 seater brasserie which has the misfortune to look like presumably what it is - a job lot of brasserie fixtures and fittings plonked into a large function room. It lacks the one essential ingredient of an authentic brasserie which is buzz.

The menu certainly reads well enough - a tantalising ‘greatest hits’ of French provincial cooking - which made the resulting dishes all the more disappointing. We were hard pushed to choose between such classic French favourites as onion soup and snails, onglet à l’échalotte or steak frites but opted for the more adventurous-sounding dishes. In the meantime some delicious bread arrived with a little pot of delicious rillettes, cornichons and a pat of butter - the one real highlight of the meal.

My warm squid and chorizo salad however was desperately disappointing - It didn't taste freshly cooked, in fact more like it had been made the day before. My friend Sarah’s salt cod brandade had the right fluffy texture but was oddly bland with few of the advertised piquillo peppers and an extraneous ‘saffron beurre blanc’ which overwhelmed what salt cod flavour there was.

Main courses were a bit better, admittedly. Her spit roast lamb could have done with more robust cooking but the accompanying gratin dauphinois was hard to fault. My ham hock and belly with lentils was tasty and generous but a touch over-salty and the accompanying salsa verde seemed to have been blitzed in a food processor rather than hand chopped.

We had more success with the wine. We chose a selection of wines by the glass from the largely south-west dominated wine list - a crisp Gros Manseng Côtes de Gascogne from Alain Brumont, a Pacherenc Sec Vieilles Vignes (good with my squid) and Madiran Tradition from Domaine Berthoumieu and a lovely fresh mulberry flavoured 2005 Vin d;Entraygues et Fel from Domaine Laurent Mousset. which made a good pairing with my ham hock and lentils. Not cheap by the glass but very reasonable by the bottle.

In fact the qualité-prix (the French term for value for money) is generally good here - it's just the execution and the atmosphere which are lacking. The latter is perhaps unsurprising in a large hotel. The former, unexpected.

Bord'eaux is at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London. Tel: +44 20 73998460