Matching food and wine at Le Gavroche

If I told you we’d kicked off a tasting menu with a dish of barely seared, pepper-crusted tuna, with a punchy sesame and ginger dressing paired with a chilled cherry beer you’d probably think we’d dined at one of London’s cutting edge Asian restaurants rather than one of its most venerable institutions, the two Michelin-starred Le Gavroche. But its chef-patron Michel Roux Jr is quite prepared to challenge his well-heeled Mayfair clientele. In fact I suspect that if he felt he could get away with it his whole menu would be packed with similarly bold combinations.

Not everyone is convinced, apparently. “We do get mixed reactions, particularly about the beer” says his sommelier Francois Bertrand, resignedly. “People don’t expect to be poured beer in a restaurant like this” (They also apparently complain if their whites are not served cold enough leading to an overchilled 1999 Puligny Montrachet ‘La Truffiere’ later being served with a dish of wild salmon, initially taking the edge off its opulent flavours.)

Still, Roux, Bertrand and the Gavroche’s legendary Maitre ‘D Silvano Giraldin who has been at the restaurant for 37 years and takes part in all the pairing sessions know what they’re doing. Here’s what we ate and drank and what I thought of the pairings rated on the following basis:

*** Great match, one of the best of the tasting
** A good match
* An OK match but one which slightly diminished the food or the wine
No stars: A misfiring match

Rare peppered tuna with spicy ginger and sesame dressing with Liefman’s Kriek cherry beer ***
The sweet/sour cherry flavours of the beer provided a fruity lift that supplied the final gracenote to the dish. Brilliant.

Asparagus tips with parmesan, pata negra ham and truffle vinaigrette with Don Jose Oloroso sherry from Sanchez Romate*
Another bold and unconventional pairing but one which didn’t quite come off. The intensely dry oloroso was a wonderful match for the umami-rich ham, truffles and crisp parmesan wafers but overpowered the asparagus. Possibly a dry madeira such as sercial would have been better. Or vintage fizz if it had been a champagne dinner

Wild salmon with crispy skin and French-style peas with bacon and lettuce and a Puligny Montracher 1er cru ‘La Truffiere’ 1999 from Domaine Bernard Morey **
Wines of this maturity are one of the reasons for going to Le Gavroche but this was initially over-chilled (see above). Once it opened up in the glass it was a lovely foil for the just-cooked salmon with its skin served as a crisp alongside. The peas and onions were cooked slightly less than is traditional for petits pois à la francaise, providing a refreshing note of freshness and crunch. A classic match but a good one.

Warm foie gras with a crispy pancake of duck flavoured with cinnamon with a Tokay Pinot Gris ‘Selection de Grains Nobles’ 1997 from Leon Beyer *
With its pastilla-like accompaniment this was a very clever spin on duck and pancakes but one which slightly overpowered the lovely Tokay SGN (which would have been a great partner for a slightly lighter foie gras preparation). Again, an oloroso sherry might have been good here - possibly one that was slightly sweeter than the Sanchez Romate, or, as Silvano admitted, a Banyuls but as he pointed out “How would you follow that with red wine?” (Possibly by serving the dish earlier in the menu, before the salmon)

Rack of lamb with a shallot and tarragon jus, with a potato basket of vegetables and broccoli with Chateau de Villegeorge 1999 Haut-Medoc ***
Astonishing how good this modest claret tasted with this simply cooked dish of rare lamb and seasonal vegetables (including baby turnips which really picked out the flavours of the wine) but it is one of the all time great matches. The saucing - a very light, tarragon-flavoured jus, was particularly skilful. Not sure about the potato basket though. A relic of the old, more elaborate Gavroche.

A selection of cheeses with Le Soula 2002 Vin de Pays des Coteaux des Fenouilledes **
Betrand advised us to have at least one hard cheese with this rich spicy red from one of the Roussillon’s up and coming wine regions. I chose Comté together with a Devon Blue and Ticklemore Goat. The cheeses were served with an onion relish which I think helped the match. Given the problems you can have with red wine and cheese this worked well.

Bitter chocolate and coffee layered sponge cake with chocolate sorbet with a Maury Solera 1928 from Les Vignerons de Maury**
A classic rendition of a famous french chocolate cake called an Opera with one of the most reliable wine pairings for chocolate, an old vin doux naturel from the south of France from the excellent Maury co-op. I bet it would have gone brilliantly with the foie gras dish too.

Oeufs à la Neige, vanilla cream and poached strawberries with a 2001 Vin de Constance from Klein Constantia ***

We were almost too full to appreciate this utterly delicious dessert of billowing little clouds of soft meringue floating in vanilla custard. I was surprised that it was not overwhelmed by the equally sensational dessert wine but its piercing acidity kept the match in perfect balance. (Rosé champagne would have been good too, I suspect)

Just a couple of warnings if you’re thinking of booking this experience for yourself: 1) Don’t eat lunch 2) Don’t forget your credit card. Dinner at the Gavroche is not an inexpensive affair. The menu exceptionnel I’ve described costs £95 or £150 with wine included. Eating a la carte will set you back around £130 without wine. By comparison lunch is a bargain at £48 a head including half a bottle of (very decent) wine, coffee and mineral water.

What to eat with old Côte Rôtie

An irresistible dinner invitation came my way a few weeks ago, to attend a game dinner and tasting of René Rostaing’s Côte Rôties at Emanuel College, Cambridge. Cambridge colleges are famous for their wine cellars but these wines came from the personal wine cellar of its ‘wine steward’ Dr Jonathan Aldred, the fortunate fellow (in both senses of the word) who buys all the wine for the college.

Rostaing is regarded as a modernist in Côte Rôtie but most of these wines dated from the 1990’s before he was using such cutting edge equipment as rotary fermenters. The tasting was based on the outstanding ‘91’s with younger or, in the case of the La Landonnes, an older vintage for comparison. The outstanding wines in my view were his 1991 Côte Rôtie and the 1990 La Landonne which marginally shaded it over the ‘91. The Côte Blondes were a slight disappointment, the first ‘91 being slightly dirty. (The second was much better but not in the class of the La Landonnes)

Dinner was served in the ante-room to the gallery, a splendid crimson-painted room overlooking the courtayard of this 400+ year old college (founded in 1584) It was not a meal for the faint-hearted. It started conventionally enough with a large slab of rich game pat (very good with the ‘91 Côte Rôtie) then went on to an innocuous sounding venison ‘duo’, an exotically dark dish of venison liver and what tasted like braised haunch but which the chef later revealed had been heart. I didn’t have a chance to quiz the chef but I think the sauce was almost certainly made with blood lièvre à la royale style. The Blondes survived intact.

The main course was woodcook, served the traditional way with its entrails, another intensely gamey note that really set off the La Landonnes to perfection. They also matched well with the cheese - sensibly limited by Dr Aldred to three plain hard cheeses, a Beaufort, a Comté and a Gruyère.

The dessert wine was Austrian rather than French: a really lovely Beerenauslese, the 2003 Samling 88 from Helmut Lang, which Aldred had picked to go with a dessert of crêpes suzette (fortunately neither too orangey nor too syrupy otherwise it might well have overwhelmed the wine).

Dinner certainly highlighted even mature Côte Rôtie’s power in being able to stand up to such strong-flavoured game dishes - and also its longevity. The colour on all the wines had remained amazingly intense.

Dinner was jointly organised by Cambridge Wine Merchants who have three shops in the city and organise regular events and tastings.

Image by BlueBreezeWiki - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

A match for pan-fried steak in a creamy mustard sauce

Could you make a suggestion for a pan-fried flank steak with a mustard/cream sauce consisting of shallots, white wine, chicken stock, cream, and Dijon mustard?

You’ve got two things to consider here - the steak which suggests a red wine and the sauce which is creamy and also contains mustard which needs a wine with some matching acidity.

Given that it’s a classic Burgundian sauce I’d go for a fairly youthful, fruity red burgundy though other light to medium weight pinot noirs from New Zealand or California, for example, would match well too. Basically you're looking for a third dimension here - some bright, berry flavours which will complement the lightly caramelised flavours of the steak and contrast with the richness of the cream.

Image credit: cottonbro studio

La Fromagerie: a return visit to cheese heaven

Marylebone High Street in central London has become a mecca for foodies in the last few years but the jewel in the crown is undoubtedly Patricia Michelson’s La Fromagerie, a glorious jumble of a shop that sells everything from cheese (obviously) to chocolate, via honeys and herbal infusions.

The cheese room itself is on the right, full of great golden wheels of gruyere, cheddar and parmesan, oozing Vacherin Mont d’Or, grey-green moulded goats cheeses (matured for longer than most other cheesemongers dare), glorious globes of milky-white mozzarella . . . it’s sheer cheese heaven.

There’s a traiteur side selling salads, cold meats and wonderful cakes, some great breads, an eclectic selection of vegetables including hard-to-find cavolo nero) and an interesting and highly individual selection of wines, mainly from Italy and France. All this produce is also available in the ‘cafe’, which, if truth be told is a couple of trestle tables and 3 small ones all crammed into the back of the shop. You just pray there’ll be space when you turn up.

The other day I had a lunchtime salad of lentils with chicken, chestnuts, cooked cavolo nero and some fabulously crispy bits of fried speck (bacon) which Patricia insisted (rightly) I try with a glass of Corbieres - a Chateau Prieur de Bubas The Garrigue - a wonderfully earthy combination.

She has just relaunched her website www.lafromagerie.co.uk (on which mooing cows and cow bells greet you as you log on). Although you can’t buy cheese from the site you can check out the ‘virtual cheese room’ which lists the cheeses they stock and, in a few cases, the wines that pair best with them. (There are, apparently, more pairings in the pipeline) Patricia also holds regular food and wine events, many in conjunction with Slow Food.