Roux at The Landau

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - Unless you've got a business deal to shout about to your three besuited chums or are a group of ladies of a certain age who lunch, you'll need a very good reason to blow big bucks in this grand hotel dining room...The menu du jour goes some way to ameliorate these shortcomings. A top-drawer starter features slow-cooked pig's head and trotters formed into a crisply coated brick and served with a salad of finely sliced celery, sweet prune puree and marinated Agen prunes. A large rabbit leg has been both confited and grilled, rendering the meat a little dry, but a gloriously smooth, bright orange butternut squash puree and delicious Moscatel wine sauce adds the required lubrication.

Thursday, January 20, 2011 - Citrus-cured organic salmon with creme fraiche, beetroot and Aquitaine caviar featured perky, vividly hued lozenges of fish with the root vegetable rendered crisp for textural contrast. Having myself bagged the chicken assembly, it turned out to be unappealing greasy, both in the crumb coating of the egg, the sauteed 'oysters' and the triangles of fried skin...Everything about Roux at The Landau is carefully considered - they could have stopped before the truly weird decision of black napkins for the ladies, white for the men - but despite input from Silvano Giraldin on the wine list it is not, obviously, Le Gavroche.