Restaurant review: The Almeida, N1

Bar at the Almeida (Image: Archant)

Hot on the heels of its theatrical neighbour’s thrilling Greek season, the summer menu at the Almeida Restaurant also offers some captivating twists and turns of its own to help you marry fine dining with the warmer weather. The stylish eatery has launched its summer taster menu made up of six acts and littered with star performances, written and directed by head chef Tommy Boland.

Each dish is coupled with an expertly selected wine which will help the flavours woo your pallet.

The curtain raiser was a concise “English Heritage” tomato salad which had more of an Italian feel due its overall pesto-like tones, with creamy stacciatella cheese and crumbly, focaccia bread on the side. The sweet tomato shone through and married perfectly with the salty slice of Italian cake.

The second course centred around a sealed lump of seared foie gras which was rich, fatty and salty but was off-set brilliantly with a bitter cherry puree, sweet nectarine and pistachios.

I did end up eating two of these, as my other half was still scarred from a trip to a foie gras farm as a child, but I enjoyed it both times.

The cod coupled with parsley and lemon was perfectly cooked and flaked at the touch of a fork, a nostalgic summer classic.

My star of the show however, was the roasted new season’s lamb, done to perfection, tender, and served with delicious bitter artichokes and semi dried tomatoes; singing with garlic and balsamic vinegar.

Dessert then came in two vastly different but equally intriguing forms. First was a cold vanilla rice pudding with its savoury texture and flavours sweetened delicately with peach and raspberry. This was then trumped by an apricot souffle with lemon verbena ice cream, which brought back childhood memories of lemon meringue pie.

This show-closer showed off the best of summer fruits and rounded off a splendid seasonal feast.