Poached turbot with champagne

Of all the wine matches I enjoyed last week - and it was an unusually good week for food and drink pairings - I’m going for this dish of poached turbot with champagne - not because it was startlingly original but simply so brilliantly executed.

The dish, which was served at a Champagne Leclerc Briant lunch at London's quo vadis, was more than just turbot (although that would have been good enough).

It was cooked with fabulously plump mussels and clams and an absolutely classic white wine (or maybe champagne) sauce with butter and cream and sea-vegetables which provided an attractively saline counterpoint. Oh and some unctuous olive oil mash.

It was served - extravagantly - with three different cuvées, the Clos des Trois Clochers, blanc de blancs brut 2017 and two 2016s, the Les Basses Priéres 1er Cru, brut zéro which is 80% pinot noir and the Blanc de Meuniers 1er Cru brut zéro which as the name suggests is 100% pinot meunier.

Frankly any one of them would have been perfect but I personally preferred the 2017 blanc de blancs with the sauce. (All Leclerc Briant’s champagnes, which you can buy from Berry Bros & Rudd if you’re feeling particularly flush, are vintage)

Anyway it’s hard to think of a better champagne dish - or a better champagne to go with it tbh.

I attended the lunch as a guest of Berry Bros & Rudd.

Roast chicken and champagne

There are so many good things to drink with chicken you might wonder why champagne needs to be among them, particularly if you regard it as a wine you drink with canapés rather than with a meal

But I was reminded this week at Bob Bob Ricard’s new offshoot Bébé Bob just how good it can be.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it BBR is a fabulously bling Soho restaurant which serves caviar, beef Wellington and other old school dishes with extravagant wines such as champagne*

Bébé majors on rotisserie chicken and chips though you can still precede it with caviar if you want.

We drank Bollinger which was obviously wildly indulgent but actually if you were fine tuning the experience you might want to go for an all-chardonnay blanc de blancs which would suit the wonderfully buttery chicken gravy better. But almost certainly be more expensive.

Why does it work? Because chicken skin is one of those foods that are rich in umami and so is champagne, particularly vintage champagne which would also be a good call if you can run to it. Waitrose does a good one under its own label on which you can currently get 25% off if you buy any 6 bottles which makes it £26.99 rather than £35.99. (Used to be cheaper but they seem to have upgraded it to the no 1 range and bumped up the price.)

Or you could drink cava which would have much the same effect.

*although, to be fair, their margins are reasonable.

See also 8 great wine (and other) matches for roast chicken

I ate at Bébé Bob as a guest of the restaurant

Photograph © Miredi at fotolia.com

Waffles, bacon and champagne

Champagne for breakfast always seems particularly decadent but it works brilliantly especially with waffles as I discovered at a pop-up in London last week to celebrate Veuve Clicquot’s 250th anniversary.

They took over some premises in Soho’s Greek Street for the week to run what they called the Sunny Side Up Café serving all day breakfast. We hit it at about 5.30pm before going out to dinner so didn’t really do the menu justice but shared a plate of chef Andi Oliver’s breakfast waffles which were served with spiced maple syrup, bacon, egg and ‘confit’ (roast, I think) cherry tomatoes

I was wondering how the champagne, (the Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label), would handle the maple syrup but because the big name champagnes tend to be slightly sweeter than grower champagnes it worked a treat. The syrup was offset by the waffle, bacon and slight sharpness and sweetness of the tomato.

Definitely one to try at home!

I visited the cafe as a guest of Veuve Clicquot

Shrimp and soft shell crab burger with vintage champagne

One of the (many) charms of champagne is how well it goes with comfort food like a shrimp burger as I discovered at London’s famous seafood restaurant J Sheekey last week

The occasion was a dinner to launch their new champagne and oyster bar and terrace which they’ve set up in partnership with Moët et Chandon. We also had oysters - obviously - dressed crab and langoustines with a dollop of gloriously glossy mayonnaise but it was the burgers which were paired with the 2013 vintage of Moët which were the standout pairing

The thing is if you have champagne this mature it can take practically anything in its stride including the slightly pokey spiced Korean mayo which was served alongside and into which I gaily dunked my chips. (This was fortunately before I went down with COVID a couple of days later when I wouldn’t have been able to taste a thing)

The burger is actually a comparatively reasonable - for the West End - £22.50 though chips would add another fiver onto that and a glass of vintage Moët no doubt another £20, assuming you could stop at one. But if you had an indulgent elderly relative who wanted to treat you - or wanted to treat your beloved to a romantic night out (it is still a wonderfully romantic restaurant) If would be perfect.

I ate at J Sheekey as a guest of the restaurant.