This was elevated to
three stars in March 2002, and it should be noted
that it is a slightly tricky place to get to. It is
about 70km north-west of Strasbourg 4km from a tiny
village called Baiersbronn. The restaurant had no
rooms when I came here, but has added some rooms
since. Alternatively you can stay in a simple 2 star
place called the hotel Kirchbourg in the village,
which at least avoids a lengthy drive.In 2000 I
wrote on this web site: “The kitchen here is cooking
at very high two Michelin star level, and would be a
good bet for the UK’s next 3rd Michelin star
restaurant” and this indeed transpired in 2001. It
is in the premises of the old Tante Claire but was
refurbished in 2006. Service is of a very high
standard, and the main problem is getting in. They
operate a completely surreal booking system, with
attitude to spare: “Try calling back in about three
week’s time between 09:00 and 09:05 a.m”, for a
table in exactly a month’s time is a typical
experience. If you get past this without screaming
and don’t just give up entirely then the dining
experience itself is lovely.
Below are notes from a meal in March 2008, my first
with new head chef Clare Smyth.
The dining room has just over a dozen tables and is
simply decorated, with wooden panels painted white
alternated with mirror panels, and a central pillar
in the dining room also mirrored. There are no
paintings on the walls, and no music to distract
from the food. Lighting is nicely done with directed
ceiling spots, though a dimming of the lights during
the evening was unsubtle to say the least; it felt
as if someone was about to call “last orders”. Other
than that service was superb throughout, with
waiters attentive without being intrusive, and what
came across as a genuine interest in the customer.
The wine list is 37 pages in length and full of top
growers, but is fully priced. There is a solitary
wine at £21, but Ata Rangi pinot noir 2006 is £82
(retail price around £23), Clot St Hune 2000 £185
(retail maybe £70) and Unico 1995 an unforgiving
£440 (retail around £120). Even the basic Kistler
Sonoma Coast, the least interesting wine of a great
producer, is £130 for a wine that retails at about
£30 (if you can find it). For nibbles there are
crisps of mozzarella and potato cream and a cone of
avocado and lobster salad. These were both fine
though I recall previous incarnations of the crisps
being more delicate (7/10). An amuse bouche of a
little ravioli with potato foam on a tiny bed of
root vegetables and a jacket potato consommé had a
pleasing smokiness (8/10).
My langoustine, lobster and salmon ravioli was
poached in a light bisque with a lemongrass and
chervil velouté. This is a slight update on an old
Ramsay classic but I found the pasta just a fraction
harder than ideal, and a filling that could have
been a little more moist (7/10). Better was a
starter of pan-fried Scottish scallops with a
millefeuille of potato, parmesan veloute and truffle
“smarties”, the star for me being the excellent
potato, but here the scallops were timed just about
perfectly (9/10). This is more than can be said for
pan-fried John Dory, which was distinctly on the
crispy side of cooked, served with Crab, caviar,
crushed new potatoes and a basil vinaigrette; the
fish itself was on the borderline of being suitable
to be sent back for another go, though the other
elements of the dish were fine (5/10 at best). I
fared better with excellent Barbary duck, cooked
pink and with lovely flavour, served with creamed
savoy cabbage, chestnuts, beetroot, turnips, black
trumpet mushrooms and nicely judged Madeira jus
(9/10).
The cheese is now from Cave au Fromage in South
Kensington, a mostly French board with a few British
offerings such as Stinking Bishop and Stilton. These
were in good condition but I am still in search of a
cheese board in England to rival those you find in
France (8/10). Pineapple and coconut soup with
chilli syrup as a pre-dessert had its flavours in
control and was fairly refreshing (7/10). A tarte
tatin was well made though for me was caramelised
just a little too long (8/10) though the taste was
good, the pastry fine and the vanilla ice cream with
it excellent. A Granny Smith parfait with honeycomb,
bitter chocolate and champagne foam was very
prettily presented and had nice texture, though the
flavours seemed a little subdued (8/10). The white
chocolate spheres with strawberry ice cream served
in a dish with liquid nitrogen would perhaps be
better with less theatre, being served so cold that
the palate is numbed. Coffee is excellent. Overall
this was a very enjoyable meal: the menu is
appealing, full of dishes that you actually want to
eat but not stuck in a time warp. Service was
genuinely excellent. For me though the flavours are
not truly exciting as one might hope for in a 3 star
place, and the odd slip as with the John Dory timing
tonight should not occur at this level. I don’t
think the bill is particularly excessive: three
courses cost £90, and there are plenty of freebies
thrown in for that. For photos of this meal see the
gallery.
Here are notes from a meal in 2007. The new room
retains the same 14 tables but the décor is less
yellow and more cream/beige, and rather simpler. It
is very restrained and does not distract from the
food. There is no music, and there is carpet rather
than the wooden floors that seem ubiquitous these
days (and are very noisy). The service is very
slick, led by Jean-Claude Breton, and this evening
the front of house team did not put a foot wrong:
dishes were delivered in a timely fashion, water,
wine and bread were topped up carefully and there
was no trouble getting attention. Even the cheese
waiter really knew his stuff, a rarity in the UK.
The wine list is substantial and features high
quality growers from across the world e.g. from
Germany there is JJ Prum and also Willi Haag as well
as the more common Dr Loosen. There is the odd wine
under £20 and some choice in the £25-£40 range, and
certainly mark-ups are not the fiercest in London by
any means. Trimbach Cuvee Frederich Emile was £69
for a wine that retails at £19.50 for example.
To begin with was a spoon containing a sphere of
deep fried Parmesan rissole resting in a little
rocket pesto (8/10) and a cornet containing sour
cream courgette and aubergine topped with caviar.
This sounds odd yet in fact the vegetable puree was
very good indeed, and the saltiness of the caviar
balanced the sour cream well, the aubergine puree at
the bottom an interesting surprise (9/10). The first
amuse bouche was a “breakfast” of a soft boiled egg
served in its shell with “baked beans” in tomato
sauce, serviced with spoonful of cold wild mushroom
duxelle and a potato and bacon crisp. This sounds
rather gimmicky but was well made. The second amuse
bouche was a central tortellini filled with crushed
amaretto biscuits, over which was poured a pumpkin
velouté; the soup had very good flavour indeed, with
a clean yet intense taste, and was accompanied by a
parmesan bread stick (9/10). My first “proper”
course was ballottine of foie gras in a ring, in the
centre of which was a jelly of camomile, alongside a
row of baby pickled vegetables (cauliflower, carrot,
turnip, broccoli). The foie gras itself was of high
quality, the ballottine having smooth texture,
though I‘m not sure that camomile is the ideal
partner for this flavour. The rosemary foccacia
accompanying this dish was excellent, better than
the regular breads (8/10). Next was a pair of
scallops that were topped with a thin layer of
Parmesan, then pan fried. These were served with a
parmesan velouté and octopus carpaccio. All very
pleasant, though I wonder what the Parmesan crust on
the scallops really offered, and whether they would
have been cooked even better without this
distraction (8/10). Fillet of line-caught halibut
was of very high quality, fresh and timed
beautifully, the fish having excellent texture. This
was resting on two rolls of papardelle pasta, one
flavoured with coriander and green in colour, the
other with ginger and red in colour. A sauce of
passion fruit butter was poured around the fish. On
top of the fish were some unannounced but very
tender baby French beans. I worried about whether
the passion fruit would work, yet there was a
pleasing freshness that carried the dish through,
and the passion fruit butter avoided any sense of
cloying. I would score this 9/10 except for one
technical problem: the pasta roll of ginger was
rather hard, while the other one was fine.
Next was three slices of Northumberland beef, cooked
medium rare and surrounded by a ring of kohlrabi and
assorted root vegetables, resting in an infusion of
root vegetables that was also served on the side in
a small cup to be drunk. Also served was a copper
pot of mashed potato creamed with horseradish that I
thought worked very well, the distinct flavour of
the horseradish nicely keeping the richness of the
mashed potato in check. All this was very well
executed (9/10).
I should say that as I was steadily munching through
this tasting menu Stella was eating an entirely
vegetarian tasting menu alongside me (a fairly new
feature here). The first dish was tiny red peppers
stuffed with ratatouille, crisp dice of courgettes,
aubergines, peppers and tomatoes, served with a rich
tomato coulis, made sour by the addition of vinegar.
This was served with the same pickled baby
vegetables as the foie gras, on top of a basil
puree, and accompanied by a slice of brioche with
black truffles, much better than the regular bread
(8/10). The second course was a coriander papardelle,
on top of an aubergine gratin, topped with wild
mushrooms and a cep veloute. The pasta was a little
hard, but otherwise the tastes and textures were
good (6/10). The third course was a “paté” of slices
of potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and black truffle,
with an artichoke sauce containing a few tiny broad
beans; this was the best dish in terms of
originality and taste (9/10). The last dish was a
fricassee of white beans with salsify, cauliflower,
broccoli, and green beans, surrounded by a ring of
baby spinach leaves and served with a white bean
veloute, all delicate and tasting of the individual
fresh vegetables (8/10).
Cheese was served on a crowded trolley, and is
mostly French with a few British choices. Camembert
was in fair condition, while Langres (from
Champagne) was in better shape. Comte (from Jura)
was pleasant but lacked the lovely taste that really
top Comte possesses. Colston Basset Stilton was very
good. They use Premiere Cheese as a supplier, which
is OK but by keeping such a large board (there were
maybe 30 cheeses) it was inevitable that not all
were in peak condition: better to serve a half a
dozen cheeses in truly perfect nick. For me this was
only a 7/10 cheese board. A pre dessert of pineapple
and champagne soup topped with fromage frais and
chilli was drunk through a straw and was pleasant,
livened up by the inclusion of “space dust” (6/10).
Dessert was Granny Smith granite, on top of Granny
Smith parfait enclosed by rings of dark chocolate.
At the base was a white chocolate mousse on a disc
of rich chocolate sponge, and on top was a disc of
spun sugar and a fine chocolate stick (8/10).
Bread is slices of either white, brown or tomato
bread. The bread is well made and very pleasant, but
not especially interesting (5/10). The bread is
actually bought in from Marcus Miller in Battersea.
While I don’t have a problem with restaurants buying
in bread when they cannot make it better themselves,
you have to ask yourself a question. This is a 3
star Michelin restaurant, one of the three in the
UK. If anywhere is going to try and make bread,
surely this should be the place? The bread at
Roussillon, for example (who make their own), is
better than here. At the end there is no tray of
petit fours but a pretty metal display of a tree of
wires and on the end of each “branch” is impaled a
very good spherical chocolate (9/10). Balls of
strawberry icecream covered in white chocolate are
served in a silver dish with liquid nitrogen
spilling out. Coffee itself was better as espresso
than filter, which seemed to me a little weak (7/10
on average). As I look back at the meal I can admire
the generally fault-free technical execution
combined with pleasant flavour combinations and good
ingredients. However somehow for me the cooking
lacks real excitement – there was no dish with the
“wow” factor. For all its virtues this seems to me
to lag somewhere below the halfway point of three
star Michelin restaurants.
Here are notes from a meal in 2006.
Amuse guele of pumpkin soup, flavoured with truffle
oil (10/10). My starter was pork belly flavoured
with spices, remarkably tender after slow braising,
surrounded by a somewhat superfluous ring of baby
sautéed langoustines, which were adequately rather
than perfectly timed, and whose delicate flavour was
rather overwhelmed by the pork, spices, and by the
horseradish flavoured blanc à la crème that was
poured over them. The dish would have been better
without the langoustines, though the pork was
remarkably tender (8/10, higher without the
langoustines). For main course I had a breast of
Bresse chicken, poached then grilled, served on a
bed of vegetables including asparagus, confit
shallots and wild mushrooms, themselves atop a layer
of Savoy cabbage seasoned with marjoram, resting on
a bed of delicate borlotti beans (10/10). The
chicken was perfectly cooked, full of the flavour
that comes only from Bresse chicken, while the
vegetables were faultless.
For dessert I had tarte tatin, which was very good
but was less good than the rest of the meal. The
pastry was flaky, the tart suitably caramelised, but
somehow this lacked the flavour of the very best
tarte tatin (for which try the Waterside Inn). This
was served with some perfect vanilla ice cream
(overall 7/10 for the tarte, 10/10 for the ice
cream). Coffee was served with a little box of
macaroons and also some home made chocolates.
Service was effortless.
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