I have not been out looking at grape mould, I have however visited the first restaurant opened by Dan Kneeling and Mark Andrew in Lambs Conduit Street, the wine bar and restaurant came off the back of the magazine of the same name and now followed by another restaurant in Soho and now Shrine to the Vine wine shop across the road in Lambs Conduit, another place to add to the list of places to visit next time I am in the area.
That is enough backstory, as this surely has to be about wine and food the reason you even step foot in the small frontage restaurant. Being a table of six men I am sure we may have taken over in our slightly pre-cocktailed state, but thankfully we left our asshole selves at the door and were jovial in what I hope was a nice way and I am sure a delight to serve. There is always hope, but even if we were a little annoying to have to serve as we argued about how many Beignet we wanted, you would not have known it from our amazing waitress who is pictured talking to me about wine. After jumping straight in with a Bordeaux just to continue my current obsession with wines from the area, I thought it would be good to pick something to follow in anticipation and the fact I think our waitress at some point wanted the iPad of wine back.
The wine we picked secondly was a perfect follow on and this was all down to the amazing service we had and the knowledge of the list. And as we all have quite rick palettes I tried to keep it in the realms of going with the food we had ordered, even with the fish, no matter what people say if your fish dish is rich, lobster bisque anyone, then red is a good match.
I personally had crispy calf brains to start, which were just out of this world, the melting richness of the flavours with the battered coating was mouth watering and four lumps was sufficient as not to just induce gout in the spot. I followed this delight up with Roast Challons Guinea Fowl. Ending in style with a Lemon Verbena Panna Cotta and the recommended dessert wine I was in glutinous heaven.
All I can say after this experience of food and wine, is I will be back, probably more than once or twice, it is certainly on the list of regular visits. And if you are wondering about the Beignet, now known only as Beignet Gate, we went with twelve in the end.
Thanks to my friends for the pictures for this article.
