The Capital

Brilliant opportunity to visit 3 restaurants all of which were Michelin star restaurants over the past week: The Capital Restaurant = Brilliant, Hibiscus Restaurant = good, Auberge du Lac = OK. The following report is based on "The Capital Restaurant". If you can imagine entering heaven and having the best meal ever then you would have to go to The Capital Restaurant. The tasting menu is an artistic master piece combined with the highest quality ingredients that I have ever experiences so far. All dishes were amazing, but I would like to point out some of these. The Foie gras / fig combination was perfect - the Foie gras was rich and creamy and the cranberry sticks were so tasty overall making a magical combination. The fillet of lamb - what can I say, it was like eating butter - I am not a lamb fan and actually do not eat it, but I made an exception and I am glad that I did the lamb was brilliantly cooked and tasted excellent. Ok, skipping a few dishes as I do not want to spoil your surprise we come on to the desert - WOW - AMAZING - apple froth, lemon grass .... plus a few others [secret :P] produced an imaginative and intelligent combination of ingredients producing an explosion of flavours – wonderful, words cannot describe just how yummy this dish was - a brilliant end to the meal. Overall the quantity, flavour & richness were a perfect combination - we cannot wait to see how well the Fat Duck does against The Capital Restaurant but you will have to wait 3 months as we could not get a sitting :(
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Mark Day
10 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Monday, October 26, 2009

Loved it - great menu and wonderful food. Service was really friendly and attentive. Lots of extras too - and an absolute bargain. Want to go back soon. If I had one critisism is that the restaurant itself is a liitle small so loses something in terms of atmosphere but that is me being a little harsh
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TF
8 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 10
Saturday, October 10, 2009

My husband took me to the Capital last night for my birthday to try something new. The two of us love good food and have been to a number of michelin star restaurants in the UK and France.

The service is fine, a bit slow, but they have this remarkably desperate need to get rid of their bread. They must have asked us 3 times per waiter (4 of them) whether we would like more bread. We said no each time. The bread and butter tasted like they've been stored somewhere for some time and have acquired the flavour of the storage cabinet.

We had the degustation menu for both food and wine. The food was definitely not Michelin star quality. We were utterly disappointed. I was very surprised by the pre-starter, which is a little Thai crab cake (they called it something a bit different, can't remember) with thick coconut soup (?) that clashed with the crab cake. The foie gras with cranberry sauce was odd as well. Foie gras was fine (not outstanding), but the cranberry sauce was so sour my face twisted into that of a 90 year old. Scallop was good. The John Dory for main course was horrible. There were so many flavours on the plate yet they all managed to clash. The fish was overcooked as well. They didn't pick a good cut of lamb, which was somewhat chewy and challenging to my not very aged teeth (I am mid 30s). My husband liked the dessert, I didn't.

We are not big wine people (in terms of knowledge, not volume), so not much we can say. Of the 5 wines we had, only one can be rated highly from our perspective.

For £150 per head, I'm definitely not coming back. If it's £40, maybe.
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CC
5 Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 1
Sunday, July 19, 2009