Clin d'Oeil
Wednesday, 25th January 2012
Birthdays, anniversaries, fine weather, good slide times or any other excuse to splash out on some fancy fodder and the Clin d'Oeil is always top of the list. It is a compact and bijou joint that serves up creative, stunningly beautiful plates, often comprising of lots of small tasty bundles of joy.
On this occassion, it was a return request from a previously impressed visitor and it certainly didn't take much arm twisting to get us there. In retrospect we probably should have checked the menu first. Whilst the food is amazing, there is a limited choice of dishes (3 mains and 3 starters to choose from) and the dishes can be a little out there. Our party consisted of a vegetarian (yours truely), a pescatarian (fish eating veggie), a recently converted vegetarian, a fussy eater and one standard foodie lover. So we were a bit of a demanding lot.
I've eaten there many times before and they always manage to create a veg option but this time I opted for a starter and a main that didn't really seem worth it, as there wasn't much difference between the two courses. The main for the fish eaters was octopus (slow cooked for 6 hours) that was probably very delicious through some eyes but as it came whole, it was a bit intimidating. Kangaroo and lamb were the other options for the mains. Skippy didn't go down too well either as it was, as is often reported, a bit tough.
The menu changes over the season but with the current menu, it was agreed the snails (flaming in pernod) for the starter and the lamb (served with a mint pea soup and other goodies) for the main were clearly the winners of the evening. Personally, I found the complimentory pumpkin soup with a pumpkin foam and (optional) fois gras was the best bit of the meal along with the blueberry wine aperetif. If you like sloe gin, you should definitely try the blueberry wine as it has a similar, slightly mellower flavour.
A big thanks to Ness for treating us ... and sorry you couldn't eat the octopus!