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A very rich meal...at £1,000 a head
Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Affairs Editor29 Jan 2008
It was a gastronomic tour de force all right. Thank goodness it wasn't lunch.
After seven courses of almost - but not quite - the finest food and drink money can buy, I was staggering like a punch drunk boxer.
My wife Sonia and I became the first diners to wade through London's most expensive set menu, a £1,000-a-head seven-course extravaganza packed full of bonus-engorged City bankers' favourite treats. But at least we could sleep it off. A return to the dealing room floor would have risked a "Jérôme Kerviel moment" with trembling fingers adding rows of noughts to any transaction.
The menu was designed by Farringdon Street wine bar Vivat Bacchus after customers asked for a special tasting menu to celebrate the bonus season. Co-owner Neleen Strauss said: "Some of our regular customers are always up for fun. I asked them how much their bonus was and how much they were prepared to pay. They said 'make it a nice round number'."
She and head chef Robert Staegemann filled the menu with all their "non-vegetarian fantasies" and matched each course with one of the world's great wines.
We started with a glass of Billecart Salmon Rosé, one of the finest pink champagnes. Then came course one, a bowl of Royal Sevruga caviar served with buckwheat blinis rated "light as air" by Sonia. The accompaniment was a more than generous slug of 2003 vintage Kauffman vodka.
Delicious, but I felt bad about the five tiny fish eggs I left. At an average of £142.85 a course, that was about £15 worth of caviar going to waste, Sonia pointed out. The caviar was Sevruga, not the even more rarefied Beluga because "the menu would have to go up £400-500," said Ms Strauss.
Next was a superb Bahama rock lobster linguini - perhaps my favourite course - flavoured with 40-year-old Armagnac. The wine, another very full glass, was a superb South African 1996 Forrester Meinert Chenin.
I was getting into my stride now. A plate of paper-thin slices of Spanish Joselito Gran Reserve ham from pigs living on a diet of acorns followed, ushering in the centre piece of the meal. This was a heart specialist's worst nightmare: a slab of grilled Wagyu fillet steak from cows so pampered they get massages, topped with foie gras. But also our first - and only - sight of vegetables, a small portion of green beans. The wine reached its pinnacle of extravagance, a glass from a £700 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.
We were in the home straight now. A board of 15 cheeses ranged from a truff le-infused Brillat Savarin to a knock-your-head off blue called Fourme au Maury. The wine? Port of course. A dreamy 1963 Taylors.
Then the pudding, a chocolate soufflé with another of the bankers' favourites, a Chateau D'Yquem, a wine so rarefied that each bunch of grapes in it is tasted individually. Coffee followed and by now I was dimly aware of a large glass of Martell Cordon Bleu cognac. The bill for two? £2,250 including a 12.5 per cent service charge.
According to Ms Strauss, London is probably the only city in the world that could support such a menu. "Because we are so close to Europe if I run out of any of these wines tonight I can get it again in the morning."
Bookings for the £1,000 menu are coming in with a party of six due on Thursday.
Reader views (2)
A recession will see off these vulgar people.
- Jilly, London, UK, 29/01/2008 13:51
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Bizzare. It takes a very special kind of person to eat that kind of a meal.
- Nu, London, 29/01/2008 13:18
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