The Waterside Inn is the culinary cousin, quite literally, of Le Gavroche, reviewed here earlier this year. The famous Roux brothers both founded restaurants, both of which were taken over by their sons. The food and the feeling is similar in both, but the Waterside Inn has a setting to die for: in a rambling, half-timbered house, at the end of a country lane, sitting directly on the Thames with its own private mooring, overlooking an uninhabited stretch of water meadows, oak and willow with a lush tree line in the distance. According to the Wold Press Organisation, the Waterside Inn beats its urban cousin in the rankings of the world's best restaurants, coming in at 19 to Le Gavroche's 47, and claiming three Michelin stars to its cousin's two.The mood here is marginally more casual, primarily because of the fantastic natural setting. The relatively small, amphitheatre-shaped dining room faces a glass wall that turns the river view into a stage. On summer days ... of which Sunday was an exquisite example ... the doors are thrown open and diners have their cocktails and canapes on the terraces leading down to the water. This is the restaurant's strongest feature. The six of us started in the mellow sunshine, drinking kir royale, nibbling on slivers of duck wrapped around bread sticks and drinking a summer soup of melon and crab meat served in shot glasses.
It was such a beautiful night, it was a disappointment to move indoors, though we did have the benefit of a table just beside the windows. The food, decor and service were up to expectations but, I have to say, not above. Expectations for the 19th best restaurant in the world were pretty high, of course. The menu was balanced and classically French. The presentation exquisite. The flavours delicate. The service perfect, including a table visit by chef/owner Alain Roux.
I started with a ellipse-shaped form of rice and crab with mango sauce and mango salsa; the
Caribbean inspiration seemed to go with the good weather. Excellent, though I did think the boys ... who all went for the pan fried fois gras with fig chutney ... all made a better selection. On to a petite plate of lobster (one claw and a bit of tail meat). Then fruit sorbet before the mains. I opted for the duck: medium rare, sliced wafer thin, accompanied by a duck-shaped choux pastry brimming with a creamy sauce. Others at the table had lamb with a timbale of eggplant. (I had a taste, also good.) For dessert, I had the "assiette" ... I can never resist the option to have three small, separate sweets rather than making my mind up for one. The best thing on my plate was the pistachio creme brulee, but again I found myself wondering if I had chosen badly. The cheese cart was extremely impressive and the raspberry souffle looked great. We adjourned back to the garden for coffee and tea, consumed in a cozy tea house with a tent-like interior overlooking the now inky blackness of the river.So, an exquisite meal, prepared perfectly, served without a hitch. But my final verdict always comes down to value for money; something felt more acutely here since this was a personal dinner, coming out of my own pocket rather than a savings account. At Le Gavroche I never saw the menu with prices. Here, I grabbed one from one of the boys to find that starters and desserts were in the £20s, mains in the £40s. We all opted for the four course chef's menu, which comes out pretty much the same as ordering three courses a la carte. So if you're very conservative, you can probably get out of here for £120 a person. If you're enjoying your drinks, that number is going skyward.
For that kind of money, I want transformational. I want something in the top five meals I've ever had in my life. And while this was good, it wasn't there. Recent meals at Le Gavroche and Maze were both better. The failure of the value for money test became clear to me as I spent so much of yesterday doing mental gymnastics to validate the expense in my own brain. Had I offered to cook for the six of us, I would have thought nothing of spending the same amount on groceries, but would have been in the kitchen half the night. Or ... I'm out at really fine restaurants on someone else's money all the time, so if you amortise this spend across all the places I've been this summer, I'm still way ahead. Or ... we were paying for the view as much as the food; consider part of the fee to be short term rental of riverside property. But mostly ... you had a wonderful, intimate evening with your best friends. How can you put a price on that?
And that, I suppose, is why this evening will go down in memory as worth the expenditure. Not because of the meal, but because of the company. I looked around that circle of five dear faces as we sat in our fantasy tent at evening's end; everyone relaxed, mellow, suffused with contentment. These are amongst the very few people who know me best, who are there in good times and in bad, who celebrate the victories, support you in disasters and know you well enough to point out and help correct your shortcomings when you're heading down the wrong path. This is actually what life is all about. To me, the biggest victory of my life will not be counting up what's in my bank account as I near death, but toting up the relationships I've had at this level. Having dear friends is the finest reason to celebrate in the world. And while you can usually do that in the local pub, I suppose sometimes it's worth breaking the bank to do it in a place that's as special as the relationships you're commemorating.
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