Match of the week

Lobster loaded fries and champagne

Lobster loaded fries and champagne

You may have noticed there was a slight hiatus last month when match of the week went missing. (May is peak wine tasting season and always crazy busy)

So I forgot to flag up this rather brilliant pairing with a splendidly indulgent dish I had at Burger and Lobster - their lobster loaded fries which consists of a couple of lobsters, a mountain of fries, melted cheese and - oooofff - a lemon and garlic butter sauce. 

Craftily they put it on the radar of ‘influencers’ before they actually put it on the menu so that we (I say ‘we’ but don’t really regard myself as an influencer) all got madly excited about it but it is on the menu now.

At £75 it’s not cheap but as you can see it’s definitely designed more as a main than a side and a sharing one at that. Even with two of us we couldn’t finish it!

What do you drink with it? Well normally I go for a rich chardonnay with lobster but with the fries it struck me that a glass of champagne would be a better bet - and so it proved.

In fact if you’re going for an extra I’d go for a glass of champagne rather than caviar which gets rather lost amidst all the fries and gooey cheese. (Their house champagne is Taittinger.)

Maybe it’s a bit over the top in these straitened times but it would make a great dish for a date night.

For other pairings with lobster see Wine with Lobster: six of the best pairings

I ate at Burger & Lobster as a guest of the restaurant.

Sake and truffle fries

Sake and truffle fries

As I discovered when I visited Akashi Tai in Japan last autumn* sake is coming out of its shell, no longer a niche product to drink in Japanese restaurants but a versatile beverage to pair with food.

Last week I had it with several umami-rich dishes at a fancy restaurant called Dalloway Terrace in Bloomsbury - a preview of their forthcoming sake menu which included a mushroom soup and a dish of chicken breast with mushroom and truffle sauce.

I went full truffle by also ordering their Twineham Grange and truffle fries which actually proved an even better match with the full-flavoured Heavensake Junmai 12 sake I was drinking and a combination you could easily replicate at home (less expensively than at Dalloway Terrace where the chips are £8 though that isn’t out of the way for London these days.) Twineham Grange is a vegetarian parmesan-style cheese which is made in Sussex.

You can buy the sake, which is made in collaboration with Regis Camus, the cellarmaster at Piper Heidsieck champagne for £29.99 from simplywinesdirect  or from Laithwaites for £33

* See also 8 foods you might be surprised to find pair brilliantly with sake

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Heavensake

 

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