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For those that don't do LJ: Amaryllis, One Devonshire Gardens, Glasgow. It was a beautiful sunny midwinter Sunday afternoon: the perfect day to enjoy a fine lunch in Glasgow's West End. Hopes for Amaryllis were high: Gordon Ramsey is the most decorated chef in the UK, with a passionate eye for detail and perfection in every nuance of the dining experience. Amaryllis was also the home restaurant of the late David Dempsey, who won a Michelin star there before moving to London to die a bizarre tabloid death. With this mixture of rock 'n' roll and haute cuisine, hopes were high. After a small delay while R recovered from the previous night's viccisitudes, he and A and I settled into the bay window of the cosy, spacious dining room of the Edwardian end-terrace that is One Devonshire Gardens. Menus and bottles of water and the like were passed around and we all opted for the 6-course menu prestige, which seemed to be the best way of trying a variety of the delights that Mr. Ramsey's team would have in store for us. In order: the 6 courses: * Pumpkin veloute with chanterelles and black truffle. A highlight of the meal: rich, sweet and creamy in flavour, yet light in texture. Strangely un-pumpkiny, but the sweetness bore the earthy mushroom and truffle tones well. A small amount of grated black truffle, but a strong flavour indicates a healthy slosh of truffle oil. Not the sort of dish that I would usually order, but utterly fantastic, and worth returning for. * Terrine of foie gras and confit duck with spinach, green beans and cauliflower. Perfectly smooth terrine de foie gras, layered with paper-thin confit of duck and wilted spinach. Excellent texture, but the flavour was somewhat mute, given the strength of the component ingredients. I suspect that this is down to it having been somewhat more exuberantly chilled than was strictly necessary, although it wasn't noticably cold per se, I'd have expected it to have been at a warm room temperature than the cellar temperature at which it was served. Lovely sweet green beans and cauliflower provided an excellent contrast of texture, as did a slice of oiled and toasted ciabatta. * Pan-fried fillet of sea bream with capers and beurre noisette. Seared scallop with spinach. Another highlight. The skin on the fish was expertly and evenly scored and crisped, but the flesh remained moist and delicated. Perfection. The absolute mound of capers was a real treat, and a pleasant surprise. Sweet and sharp, and no nasty vinegariness from your common-or-garden from-a-jar variety. Beurre noisette was rich and sumptuous, with plenty of sweet shallots. However, it was more like a beurre blanc: the butter wasn't browned enough, leaving the sauce insufficiently sweet, which meant that it came out a bit heavy and fatty for the delicate fish. The garnish of a seared king scallop on a bed of buttered spinach was divine: very rich and flavoursome. * Roast saddle of lamb with crushed potatoes, caramelised shallots, spinach and a thyme jus. Bit of a disappointment, given the strength of the previous courses. Despite having been ordered rare, the lamb was definitely tending towards the medium end of not-pink-enough. However, it was still decently moist, so not a huge loss, even for one with as passionate a distaste for overdone meat as I. The jus was thin and bland, however. A more intense reduction would be called for, as the thyme flavour was barely noticable. The potatoes were nice and buttery, but otherwise inexciting. Shallots were excellent - sweet and soft and a beautiful golden brown. At this point, the fact that spinach was being served with everything started to give me the fear. I'm rather fond of spinach, but the thought of finding it delicatly sprinkled over my pudding was enough to induce a cold sweat. * Platter of cheeses: Chaumes, dolcelatte, camembert, cheddar, ashed goats cheese. Despite taking an age to arrive, during which we were wondering if the cheese was merely being sliced, or if some poor sod out the back was pulling curds out of whey in a cloth, the cheese course was another disappointment. Each of the cheeses was a perfectly adequate example of their genre, but none were outstandingly excellent - suggesting that their sourcing had been conducted in a fairly lacklustre way. The accompanying oatcakes were jolly good, though - nice and crisp and flaky. Although the purist in me would insist that cheese served before pudding should be with a salad, and cheese after should be with biscuits. A glass of top-notch LBV port was a saving grace, although punitively dear. * Saffron rice pudding with prunes. Another disappointment: although the pudding tasted excellent, with the delicate spiciness and cream of the rich pudding complimenting nicely the rich sweetness of the excellent prunes; plating was on a par with that of a school canteen, and well below the excellent standard thus far set. While goopy stuff isn't the most inspiring or easy thing to arrange on a plate, the presentation smacked of the chef wanting to knock off as soon as humanly possible. * Coffee and petits fours. Were jolly nice, although not earth-shatteringly good. Small bitter-chocolate truffles were nice and smooth and complimented the very dark coffee excellently. * Service. Was pretty mediocre, unfortunately. Although the table staff were all cheery and efficient, there were some unexplained over-long pauses between courses - something of which I'm usually very forgiving, since it usually means that chaos is going on in the kitchen, but in this case there seemed to be plenty of slack time, and the dining room was nowhere near capacity. The fact that there are two separate dining rooms means that table staff were frequently nowhere to be found, which was a bit of an annoyance. Overall, the experience was good, but uninspiring. The absolute culinary perfection that Gordon Ramsey espouses and enforces was absent, although the results were decent. Strangely, the 6-course 'Menu Prestige' seemed to be a lot weaker than the normal 3-course table d'hote, which is a bit of an anomaly in a world where the tasting menu is normally carte blanche for the chef to show off some exciting skills and really push the quality of the food. At Amaryllis, it seemed that it had been bolted on as an afterthought, with insufficiently imaginative and beautiful dishes to justify it. Final damage per head, with a couple of glasses of perfectly decent Fleurie was around the 70UKP mark. Which was pretty reasonable for 6 courses, but at the level of cuisine at which Amaryllis is operating, I'd expect 6 excellent courses, rather than 3 excellent, and 3 mediocre. Furthermore, it would be nice to see a little creativity slipped into the menu, maybe with the odd amuse-bouche here or there - as it is Amaryllis is slipping back to the bare minimum required to provide fine dining, and only just getting away with it. -- Tom Sulston +44 77 99 89 80 44 http://www.sulston.net
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