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2012-11-30
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It dawned upon me that Great Britain is one rich turf for celebrity chefs. Jaime Oliver, Heston Blumenthal, Gordon Ramsay and now the owner of 22 Ships, Jason Atherton. Here, we have a British chef making Spanish Tapas for us (what?!). I don’t know much about this chef, except that he worked at Maze with Gordon Ramsay and El Bulli, a (now shut down) Spanish restaurant enthroned as the guru to molecular gastronomy. I am not a fan of restaurants with small and pricey dishes, but in the end I succu
Each of 22 Ships’ dish is so rich in flavor that if they were scaled up, you wouldn’t have as much respect and appreciation for gourmet. That is also how they justify the premium. The restaurant does not offer set lunch/dinners, so my friend and I made some strategic decisions for our taste buds and end up with the 4 dishes below:
Peas, broad beans, goat’s curd, Iberico ham and mint dressing
Sorry I’m not a fan of cheese, so I asked them to set the goat’s curd aside – my friend loved it though. The beans were still flavourful with the Iberico ham. I would appreciate it a lot more if they can give us more beans or tomato to balance out the grease. Baked smoked bone marrow, onion jam and sourdough, gentleman’s relish butter
I think this should be named the signature dish (and food for value too at $68!). I always loved sucking bone marrow juice from pork bones that were boiled in soup. Very few guai-los had discovered this treasure. You can barely see the bone marrow in the bunch of cooked stuff there, but you can surely smell it when it’s in your mouth with the relish butter. The onion jam was also great to remove the fatty flavours before you move onto your next dishFoie Gras with Iberico Pork Burger with avocado mayonnaise and pickled cucumber
This was such a great invention, but it turned out to be slightly disappointing. I loved how the great chef combined meat with foie gras to don the burger with a smooth flavour. However, I think they have overcooked the small bits of foie gras. When we bit into the burger, juice and oil squirted out like how you “approach” a xiaolongbao in the wrong way. The smooth texture of foie gras melted and was lost in the form of oil. The avocado mayo was good on its own as a dip, but I wasn’t quite sure where to use it. It tastes good with the bread too but nothing spectacular. Olive oil brioche, chocolate ganache, sea-salt, pistachio
I thought this would be some extra heavy dome-shaped dessert. Instead, it was a small dessert with balls of ganache encircling a piece of olive oil truffle. You will know that the truffle is made with olive oil just from the flavor and smell when it slowly melts in your mouth. While the dessert was light and refreshing, I thought $78 was overpriced (I would pay $50 for this). I wasn’t 100% happy with the dessert because the brioche was broken up into little pieces, which defeats the purpose of putting “brioche” on the menu and hey Mr. Atherton, where’s my pistachio?! This infant related itself to several renowned cooking identities to get media attention. I would very much like to see them diverting branding efforts to naming their dishes with fancier titles rather than just listing the ingredients. Not too disappointing a restaurant, I may revisit the restaurant once more to try their Sangria and some other dishes. However, 22 Ships will not top my list for casual dining and celebrations.
Other Info. :
One of the partners were at the kitchen that day - so the staff were super helpful. The restaurant was perhaps a little overstaffed. Seats are modern but not cosy - just stools without back around the open kitchen bar.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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