It's a reverse Thanksgiving as I shop, then eat. Without turkey.

Restaurant Review:  L'Ortolan (Reading)

There's much debate stateside this year about shops being open on Thanksgiving.  A travesty, clearly.
 But it's not a holiday in England, though I always take the day off.  With no cooking to do, but a day to indulge, shopping made perfect sense on this side of the pond.

Off to the Winchester Christmas market, where two questions dominated.
1)  While sitting in traffic waiting to get into town, even though it was mid-morning on a Thursday:  Why didn't I take the train?
2)  Once parked up and wandering the streets:  Why don't a shop here more?

Winchester is just half an hour south of us.  It has a venerable history, from capital of Anglo-Saxon England to gracious Georgian market town.  The architecture reflects that, offering up a town centre with a good mix of Medieval through Georgian, with one over-exuberant Victorian Gothic town hall and only a few modern incursions.  There's an exquisite cathedral that houses the bones of those ancient Anglo-Saxon kings and, more significant for some, Jane Austen.  In the cathedral close you'll find one of the best German-style Christmas markets in the south of England.

There are traditional wooden toys (my godson is getting a fabulous sword, shield and crossbow combo), holiday wreaths and potpourri, woollens and lots of jewellery.  Local artisans turn out with stained and blown glass, pottery, paintings and photography.  A handful of stands sell imported culinary delicacies, others garden knick knacks and home decor.  All from classic wooden chalet huts around an ice skating rink.  In the corners, of course, are stands offering mulled wine, and at the far end you'll find a food court with sausages, meat pies, crepes and other goodies.

But Winchester's shopping appeal spreads beyond the official market.  There are market traders in other main streets of town, and the regular shops are worth a look.  All the main chains are here, but they're joined by a larger-than-average collection of eclectic independent boutiques.

Several Christmas objectives accomplished, I headed home to dress for dinner.  My Thanksgiving cooking was still to come (of that, see the next entry); for the night itself we'd be in the hands of Alan Murchison.  Back to L'Ortolan, Reading's only Michelin-starred restaurant and just a dangerous 11 miles from our house.  It's become our default special occasion restaurant and we tend to get here once or twice a year.  We usually opt for the tasting menu with the wine flight; we're never disappointed.

So what was for a Michelin-starred Thanksgiving dinner?  Venison.  With a beetroot and blackberry puree, with chocolate sauce.  Preceded by two fish courses and one meat:  a magnificent light and bright starter of Devon crab with papaya, lemon grass jelly and tempura soft shell crab; classic duck liver parfait with gingerbread and less classic pineapple chutney; stone bass with smoked pomme puree and ceps.  On the dessert side, an unremarkable but effective palate cleanser of citrus mousse, setting the taste buds up for salted chocolate mousse and coconut sorbet.  Who needs turkey and pumpkin pie?  

Equally exciting was our brush with celebrity.  Masterchef: The Professionals is on the BBC now and one of the favourites is a sous chef at L'Ortolan.  Barcelona-born David Balastegui Gonzalez has made it to the semi-finals with confidence, creativity and some striking dishes.  Though the competition has ended, we don't know the results.  We must wait for the plot to unfurl on TV.  But we do know that David is still in the kitchen at L'Ortolan.  On Thanksgiving night, working the pastry section and clearly visible through the glass wall that offers diners a peek into the kitchen.  So not only was that chocolate delicious, it was served up by a television star.  Or, at least, by someone enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.

A quirky addition to a long list of things for which to be thankful this year.

Tapas goes modern, trendy and foie gras-based in our top Barcelona dining spots

Restaurant Review:  Five to try in Barcelona

A second long weekend eating in Barcelona only confirmed my initial impressions of last year:  This is the best culinary city in Europe.

Piers and I started the eating and drinking part of our visit as all tourists must:  at the Boqueria market.  As I suspected, we walked around in a state of delightful speculation.  What would you do with this?
I've never seen that!  Imagine the dinner party we could have centred around those…  Oh, for a kitchen.  Without one, we had to put ourselves in the hands of local chefs.  We didn't have a bad meal, though some were more noteworthy than others.  In order of our favourite on down:

Estel de Gracia - Tucked in the warren of small streets called the Gracia, this place is far off the beaten tourist track in spirit, if not in walking time.  On a Saturday night, we were the only foreigners I overheard and there were no menus in English.  There were large groups of happy locals clearly having a great time.  The vibe is modern, chic, pared back without being austere.  The staff doesn't have much English but is clearly happy to give it a try; probably because their star ("estel" in Catalan) is rising fast on Trip Advisor.  The little place is currently ranked 99th out of 4621 in Barcelona.  We appreciated their modern, gourmet take on tapas.  Foie gras croquetas?  Trust me, that's a novelty that deserves repetition.  The creativity extended to the mains, when I had a whisper-thin pizza topped with burrata (a fresh Italian soft cheese), red onions and seafood.  Lovely house wines at a reasonable price and a manager who, seeing we were serious about our food, ended our evening with free glasses of some unusual Spanish desert wines and wrote down details of what we drank that evening.  Unusually for us, one of our cheapest meals was also our favourite.

Celler de la Ribera - We were hoping to get in to the neighbouring Cal Pep but that famous spot was heaving and we hadn't booked.  We were cold and wet, this menu looked interesting and there was a warm indoor spot to sit down.  Sold.  Like the restaurant above, this place was playing with new trends and fusion with other cultures.  Cal Pep is unabashedly traditional; in the Celler our tapas included pan fried foie gras over strips of gingerbread and a trio of meatballs served in a specially-designed three-part dish.  A bright, modern feel to the place and quick preparation and service once we got a server's attention.  (That bit took a while.)  At least 20% pricier than Estel de Gracia, but we recognised we were paying a premium for being on the main tourist flight path between the harbour and the gothic quarter.  With advance planning, I'd still book at Cal Pep.  But as an alternative in the area, it was good.

Monvinic - Last year I raved about this upscale, wine-focused restaurant, and it was top of my list of things I wanted to share with Piers while in Barcelona.  Excellent food, beautifully designed space, huge wine list filled with interesting Spanish choices.  Our server's English was excellent and, as I did with our waiter last year, we put ourselves in her hands, allowing her to pick aperitifs and then the right glass to accompany each of our three courses.  Dining here is a high-end wine tasting with food.  The food is seasonal and gourmet.  We both indulged in the seasonal wild mushrooms we saw at the market; him on toast topped with a fried egg, me with a simple fricassee.   But it all adds up.  7-12 euro a glass for wine, 18-30 euro per course … you do the maths.  The mushrooms were tasty, but worth 20 euro for a small bowl?  We loved it, but we had such wonderful food at less expensive restaurants that we questioned whether the wine experience was worth the premium.

El Cochinillo Loco - This small tavern is in the arcade enclosing the Boqueria market, has outdoor tables with heaters and, most critically, had a free table during a busy Friday lunch time.  Traditional tapas, served in too-large portions.  Tapas is supposed to be little plates for grazing, after all.  My attempt to get Piers to try octopus saw me having to polish off a mound of the little guys.  Chewy and laden with garlic, they were OK but I've had better.  Tuna croquetas, a platter of jamon, decent but not-hot-enough squid, excellent grilled fresh chorizo, a bottle of Rueda.  All average, but with a premium price because of location.  I suspect we mis-ordered; looking at our fellow diners and checking TripAdvisor afterwards, their speciality appears to be seafood platters.  If tired and in need of a place to slump near the market, I'd give them another try.

Before Piers arrived, I added a couple others to the list with colleagues after work.  Both fit in the mid-rank above.

7 Portes - I was underwhelmed, and surprised to be so.  This is one of Barcelona's great establishments and had been tipped by a Spanish colleague as the best spot in town.  My perception:  It's an attractive (late-19th c bistro style) tourist warehouse dishing out paella to the masses.  Good paella, undoubtably.  Rice perfectly al dente, rich umami flavours, seafood and meat added at the right time to keep them tender.  But equal to what I'd expect in any good coastal Spanish place.  And a surprisingly spare wine list for someplace that clearly gets plenty of expense account traffic.  (It was laden with fellow IT execs when we were there.)  Good for business group meals, but it didn't occur to me to return once my holiday time started.

Roca de la Vila - I might have returned here had I been able to find it!  Recommended by our hotel, a taxi whisked us there and back and I didn't have the name of the place until a colleague sent me a copy of the receipt for my expense report once we were home.  A cozy spot with the feel of a taverna in a fishing village, had there been straw-wrapped chianti bottles on the table I would have thought I was in Italy.  The streets around were quiet and had an almost industrial feel, however … not a picturesque neighbourhood.  An excellent array of tapas followed by some superior salt cod showed a sure hand with the classics.

Gaudi's Palau Guell is the unsung hero of Barcelona's heritage sights

Sure as you'll eat a lot of tapas, when in Barcelona you'll see long queues tailing back from the doors of Gaudi's La Segrada Familia, La Pedrera and Casa Batllo.  Puzzlingly, you won't find them at Palau Guell, another Gaudi-designed building that, to my taste, is the best of all his domestic architecture.

The Guell Palace is just off the Rambla, a short walk from the Boqueria Market.  If anything, it's closer to the main tourist flight path, and therefore more convenient, than the the more famous buildings.  There are other reasons it should be higher on the tourist hit list.

It was his first significant, complete house design, created in his mid-30s.  You can see both the young genius, and the roots of the style that would stretch through his whole career.  It's the grandest and most complete of his domestic buildings open to the public. La Pedrera is an apartment building with only one middle-class dwelling restored and open (described in my entry last year), and Batllo is a house that had apartments on upper floors (not part of your tour).  Guell is an urban palace, all of its floors and rooms devoted to the life of one family, and all recently restored and laid open for you to wander about.

It's wonderful from the very beginning, when you're greeted by sinuous ironwork on the doors and come into a a ground floor that's essentially a big, integrated port cochere.  Carriages came in one side, and out the other.  Between them an impressive dark marble staircase ascending to the formal door.  (Pictured above.)  Behind that, a turning space and a circular ramp descending to basement stables, beautiful in their own right for their unusual brick columns.

The tour, which comes with an excellent audio guide, takes you from bottom to top.  First, the

processional entry that brought guests to the exquisite entertainment rooms.  Gaudi's naturalistic, modernist style is evident in tendrils of ironwork wrapping around light standards, early appearances of his catenary arches and the strange curves of wood and stone.  But there's more traditional Arts and Crafts style here in glazed tiles, faux Medieval carving, stained glass and impressive Arabic-style ceilings.  The most impressive room here is the central hall, at least three times higher than it was wide, creeping heavenward with those distinctive arches.  Gaudi punched holes in the dome to let light through, used a lot of gold, built in an organ and inset a gold-encrusted chapel on one side behind folding doors.  Party space, concert hall and heaven-looking church, all in one.

Then you get to clamber up to the family rooms, where the vine-and-leaf inspired decor around the arches of the master suite turns the rooms into an outdoor bower.  Though the house is mostly empty of furniture, the recent restoration places photos in many rooms showing what they were like when occupied.  Revealing an interesting truth about Gaudi.  Stripped down to the bare architecture, his rooms are exquisite.  Filled with late Victorian furniture, rugs, pot plants and ephemera, they're just too much.  I doubt any other architect has been done such a big favour by having his work emptied of its original furnishings.

Any good Gaudi building leads you to the roof.  The man was obsessed with bizarre chimney pots, after all, and the Guell Palace offers a riot of colour on a Disney scale.  More than anything else in the house, the roof points towards the dramatic departure from the norm that the rest of his work would take.  The finials of La Segrada Familia, still under construction today, are here at Palau Guell … finished 140 years ago.

I returned to that wonderful church, this time introducing it to Piers.  Interesting to see that things had changed just since my visit last year, with scaffolding removed from the main entry wall.  Last year, we visited on a gloomy, grey day.  This year, sun was pouring through the windows and the whole place showed off Gaudi's passion for using light as a design element.  We booked an hour long guided tour, which was well worth the extra money.

We also got to Casa Batllo, completing my triple crown of Gaudi domestic architecture.  In last year's coverage of my visit to La Pedrera, I speculated that the interiors down the street at Batllo might be more impressive.  And they were.

It's the colour scheme that blows you away here.  Gaudi wanted the whole place to feel like you were

living under water, so everything is done in shades of blue, white and green, and those trademark sinuous lines are now seaweed and waves.  The main sitting room with its undulating window frame overlooking the busy boulevard below is remarkable.  The roof is another blockbuster; along with crazy chimney pots you get a tiled roofline designed to look like a dragon.

The more I see of Gaudi, the more I love him.  I'm not sure I could live in his buildings full time, but if I get to choose my architect in heaven, he's designing my beach house.

From Desigual psychedelia to gracious art nouveau, I'm surrounded by Spanish style

If you only get to take one business trip a year, then four days working in Barcelona, rolling into a long weekend of fun, is hard to beat.  

I'm just returned from the annual outing to Gartner Symposium.  Once, it provided delightful blog entries from the south of France.  Then the closure of the Cannes convention centre moved activities to Spain.  And though I enjoyed those French trips, I have much more exploration left to do in Spain before I miss the cote d'azur.

The work part of the week saw me back at the Barcelona Princess.  Last year I found the place striking but hard to love.  My room was cold, both in temperature and decor.  Though on the seaward side of the building, I wasn't high enough to see much more than the sprawling convention centre.  This year by some fluke of luck I got upgraded to the Desigual Loft.  This Spanish design company is known for its vivid colours and starburst designs.  Think Moorish meets '60s psychedelia.  They've  taken over two floors of the hotel, which converge on a two-story lounge and a rooftop pool, and lavished their designs all over.  It's quirky, festive and totally un-corporate.  It brought the otherwise austere and angular rooms to life.  Add to that the fact that my room looked over the city, the mountains and had a clear view of La Segrada Familia, and it was warm enough to take a couple of quick dips in that pool between work commitments, and I became a very happy customer.

Work complete, I moved up the street for some fun.  Literally. The Diagonal is the very long avenue that cuts across Barcelona from sea to mountains.  On Thursday afternoon I moved 2 kilometres up the road, saving 100 euro a night and dropping a century back in time.

We were exploiting another of our club's reciprocal memberships, this time at the Circulo Ecuestre.  This club, originally founded by keen horsemen, occupies a gracious Modernist (Spanish Art Nouveau) mansion in the heart of the fashionable Eixample district, formerly the home of a wealthy family.  The old house holds lounges, restaurants and function rooms; hotel rooms are in a more modern building next door.

While not as shocking as Gaudi, the building had the audacious curves and naturalistic forms typical of the city's most famous son, and all the furnishings and art were in keeping with the time period.  In a city so defined by its architecture, I was delighted to be staying somewhere so evocative.  It was a bit odd, however.

This is a club, after all, not a hotel.  And, according to the girl at the front desk, the Circulo Ecuestre is heavily a business club that gets little usage in the evenings or on weekends.  Thus Thursday night found me entirely on my own on the palatial ground floor, choosing from five empty lounges radiating off the spectacular great hall as I considered where to nurse my Campari and soda. I finally chose the room at the front and centre and sank into a wingback to watch traffic flow up and down the Diagonal through the big oval window.  When I wandered to the restaurant I was at one of three occupied tables.  On Friday night, Piers and I again had the ground floor to ourselves, and on Saturday they'd closed it off completely.  But were having a private party in the conservatory that also served as a breakfast room.

There weren't many staff around.  On both nights we had to hunt for someone to get us a drink, and the front desk was only manned at peak hours.  Though a doorman was there 24/7 to let residential guests through.  Not many guests, either.  I'd guess there were perhaps 12 rooms; we never saw more than six other people at breakfast.  After the mob at the trade show, I found the slightly strange isolation soothing. 

It was Piers' first visit to Barcelona, and only my second, so we did the standard tourist itinerary.  Gaudi buildings (of which more next), the city bus tour (hop-on, hop-off, excellent value), the Boqueria market (where I resisted a repeat of the poor numerical skills that found me buying £120 worth of morels), a meander through the Gothic quarter, a bit of shopping (Vincon is the coolest home store ever).  And food.  Lots of food.  Of that, more to come.

A pleasant wander through Australia and a new restaurant with issues: Our Friday night out at the Royal Academy

Restaurant Review:  The Keeper's House (London)Art Exhibit:  Australia (The Royal Academy)

The Royal Academy has taken the unprecedented step (at least in my memory) of doing a retrospective show on the art of an entire country.  Given the number of Australians in London, they must have known there was a built-in audience.  I'd guess 75% of the viewers were from Down Under.  Including our friend Guy, who suggested the outing.

For an old traditionalist like me, it's a show of two halves.  The first is both interesting and lovely, and

there's a good story to tell.  Europeans coming to a strange land.  Overcome by its grandeur, but too bound by their European traditions of green fields and blue skies to really paint what they saw.  Then along come the Australian impressionists, living to the same ideals as their colleagues in Paris and painting reality.  The result is the best room in the show, with dramatic canvases showing you the beauty, danger and loneliness combined in those big landscapes.  Running alongside, but not influencing, is the abstract Aboriginal tradition, highly naturalistic and seeming to grow out of the land itself.

And then we get the modern stuff.  Handfuls of it are palatable.  The Aboriginal stuff here is by far the best.  The rest?  Far too much odd concept stuff.  It certainly makes you think.  Piles of abstract forms made of white wool.  A giant neon cartoon of a suburban house.  Beautifully executed little silver sculptures of plants and trees which are, for some reason I didn't quite grasp, growing out of silver sardine tins whose lids had been rolled down to reveal vivid relief sculptures of various acts of sexual stimulation.  Hmmmm.  Methinks there was a good reason the rooms in the second part had far fewer people, Australian or otherwise, than in the first.

They must have been rushing for dinner.

The Keeper's House is a new restaurant in the corner of the Royal Academy complex, carved from the basement of this Georgian building.  They've been going less than a month and, frankly, it shows.  Good food was belittled by disorganised service and a quirky dining room.

First, the rooms.  Georgian cellars, hung with green baize walls, adorned with Victorian plaster casts of classical and Renaissance relief sculpture.  Modern white tables and chairs.  Pleasant enough, if not particularly inviting.  Two issues.  First, the acoustics are dreadful.  We started dinner at 9, the room was already half empty, and there was still an almighty din.  Certainly not a spot for a quiet, romantic dinner.  And then there's the temperature.  Evidently the Royal Academy dictates it, in order to preserve the casts.  It's freezing.  I was sitting in a steady draft hitting the back of my neck and only survived by fashioning a scarf out of a large linen napkin.  At London fine dining prices, you shouldn't be endangering your health in a drafty old basement.  Ditch the casts and turn up the heat, folks.

The jolly but confused service signalled trouble from arrival, when our table for three had been recorded as one for two so they had to regroup.  Once seated, it took far too long to get most things.  The bread didn't arrive until three minutes before our starters, our second bottle of wine took so long to appear that we had empty glasses through most of the main course and they comped us in apology.

The food is good but not worth putting up with this level of incompetence.  Especially as, like most museum venues, you're paying for the privilege of dining in such close proximity to the art.  You'll spend £40 on your three courses before you touch a drink, and the servings aren't generous.  Although they are very pretty.  It's all very arty and high concept … perhaps to mirror the goings-on upstairs.

I started with scallops in squid juice with lemon charcoal, served on a plate designed to mimic a sea shell.  Interesting flavours, attractive presentation, but the scallops were small, slightly overcooked and creeping toward cold.  (Maybe it was just the chill in the room.)  Please, don't start getting arty until you get the basics right.  My main of roasted rabbit loin also seemed just slightly overcooked. The accompanying pink fir potatoes, trompette mushrooms and sour onion were tasty, but that last vegetable had been stewed down to a stringy dark mass that, while it tasted great, didn't look particularly nice.  The best thing was undoubtably the dessert.  Bitter chocolate, caramel and ovaltine (malt).  For top distinction it just narrowly beat out our server's magnificent moustache, waxed up in curls above his beard to give him the distinct air of a pre-Raphaelite artist.  He might not have been quick, but he was charming and matched the venue.

The irony of all this is that the place is run by Oliver Payton, a man who … when not commanding his growing restaurant empire … is one of the harshest judges on the TV cookery programme Great British Menu.  He sits there in judgement of some of the UK's finest chefs, who are trying to win the right to cook a course at a national banquet.  He was there last night, looking stressed.  And so he should have.  Peyton's own restaurant has so far to go his stint on the show seems hypocritical.

At the moment, the Keeper's House proves a great truth:  It is far easier to criticise than to do it yourself.

Mi scusi, Signore Verdi … but you can be boring, too

Global, live broadcasts are transforming opera.  The give hundreds of thousands a chance to see what only a few thousand can see live.  That's good for the bottom line, and for high culture in general.  For the audience, it allows experimentation.

I'm happy to drive 15 minutes to my local Odeon, spend £16 and sit by myself to see an opera on which I'd never consider making the effort to find a viewing companion, travel to London and shell out £70 at the Royal Opera House.  Which is how I ended up snoozing through large portions of Les Vepres Siciliennes last night.

When marketing material contains the words "rare opportunity" and "seldom performed"… when London's Royal Opera house has never staged it before … there's probably a reason.  In this case, it's a long and convoluted plot with no memorable music.  The Royal Opera House made a magnificent attempt.  I certainly got my money's worth out of stage sets and interesting interpretations.  But I won't make any effort to see this one again.

The plot, in a nutshell:  It's the Middle Ages, and heartless French invaders are oppressing the noble Sicilian people.  (I liked that part.)  There's a Sicilian countess whose brother was executed by the French in a rebellion.  She carries his rotting head around in a bag while working for vengeance, pulling it out occasionally for dramatic effect to rally the cause.  (Very  Sicilian.)  She's in love with a bastard peasant, able to stomach the social difference because he's vowed to kill their mutual enemy, the despicable French governor.  Who, it turns out, raped our hero's mother 20 years before and is thus his father.  (The duet where this is revealed is one of the better parts of the opera.  One wonders if George Lucas an earlier rare performance.  "Luke, I am your father.")  Our hero is then deeply conflicted, there's an aborted revolution, the countess gets thrown in prison, things look grim, there's forgiveness and a wedding, but the celebrations end up triggering a massacre as the Sicilians finally take back their island.  It all ends in blood.

It's a plot with potential.  But abundant side stories and the meandering pace make long sections feel tedious, and the music is dull.  I can sit through Wagner operas for 4+ hours because the boring bits are interspersed with some of the most stirring and exquisite music ever written.  Verdi has written plenty of magnificent stuff, but you'll find none of it in this opera.

Director Stefan Herheim has made the brilliant move of transporting the story to the time in which it was written, the mid-19th century.  It's a more familiar age, and heaving with revolution, so the transposition works.  The sets extend the stalls of the theatre onto the stage, where a white-tie-and-tailcoat crowd watches the scenes unfurl below.  It's a stunning spectacle.  Herheim also takes the ballet that would have been a major, but stand-alone, part of the action and weaves it through the whole plot.  In the prologue we see our hero's violent conception … his mother is a ballet dancer … and the ballerinas literally dance through the whole story, getting more menacing as the action progresses.

Fascinating, beautiful to watch and enlivened by explanation, this was a perfect opera to take in on the big screen.  If you see it coming to a stage near you, however, you might want to think twice.

It's not just food. It's art, magic and civilisation. The Ledbury lives up to its reputation.

Even people who don't follow the ins and outs of the world's great restaurants may know The Ledbury.  At the height of the London riots in August 2011, a band of hoodie-clad, bat-wielding teenagers smashed into this, one of the world's most famous ... and accordingly expensive ... restaurants.  They demanded wallets and jewellery off the diners.  The kitchen staff famously defended their customers with rolling pins and carving knives, getting everyone into the wine cellars to wait in safety while things calmed down.

Already a gastronomic hot spot, The Ledbury's reputation has only grown since that crazy night, as the food crafted by those heroic chefs not only earns two Michelin stars, but the accolade of 13th best restaurant in the world.  Only Heston Blumenthal's Dinner flies the flag any higher for Britain on the list.  (And only one other British restaurant, Blumenthal's Fat Duck, makes the top 50.)  So The Ledbury is very special indeed.

It's hard to put your finger on what differentiates one restaurant from another when you get into the Michelin two and three star category.  You can count on inventive interpretations of classic dishes, exquisitely prepared, served with flare.  Indeed, each bite was a wonder, and each course stood memorably on its own, even though there were nine of them.  Yes, nine.  With the matching wine flight.  Indulgence on a profligate level.  Perfectly acceptable, we thought, to celebrate the visit of our friend Lisa's mother to London this past week.  Eileen Traeger radiates the vibrant energy and cheerful dynamism of a woman a third of her age, and if any of that could rub off on us, it would be a magical evening indeed.

We could only survive nine courses, of course, because each one was tiny.  Perhaps four bites.  This, more than most tasting menus I've had, lived up to the name.  An exploration of a broad variety of seasonal wonder, doled out in little tastes.  Variety without overwhelming.  And it's a menu that deserves full description.

We started with marinated langoustine with creme fraiche, frozen citrus and herbs.  It was the frozen element that surprised here, elevating a classic pairing into something really interesting.  Washed down with champagne, of course.  Next came one of the most memorable courses, beetroot baked in clay with smoked eel and dried olives.  The clay baking had retained all the moisture and the flavour of the vegetable.   The eel, present as both a strip of smoked meat and flavouring in the milky sauce, was an unexpected pairing success.  Equally unexpected was a delicious Tuscan rosé to drink with it.  I am usually not a fan, feeling that too many of these pink wines are unexceptional bi-products churned out to grab the summer party market; neither a good white or a memorable light red.  This 2012 rosato from Rocca di Montegrossi, however, was a worthy stand out.

Next came flame grilled mackerel with pickled cucumber, celtic mustard and shiso.  I had to look up the last ingredient when we got home.  It's a type of Asian mint, and I can't say I picked up either its flavour, or the mustard, nor any idea what made the mustard celtic.  I can tell you, however, that the mackerel was surprisingly delicate, avoiding the oily, fishy kick it sometimes delivers, and the tiny cylinder of mackerel pate wrapped in pickled cucumber was both delicious, and a testament to the dexterity of the chef who produced the miniature wonder.  A bright and citrusy gruner veltliner complemented this one.  On to what the table agreed was the disappointment of the meal when it came to the menu description vs. the reality.  Poached cepes with 2-year-old comté, crispy kale and a broth of grilled onions.  Delicious, but no matter how special those mushrooms or their preparation, the poaching had them tasting a lot like the ones that come out of a tin.  The kale was the star of the course; or maybe the South African chenin blanc.

Another fish course had us thankful that we all (a) like seafood and (b) like the white wines that inevitably pair with them.  Cornish turbot.  Ancient Roman writers tell us turbot was amongst the most prized delicacies in that gourmet culture.  I'd had some perfectly good turbot but had never grasped the magic 'til this meal.  This was some of the best fish I've ever had.  Firm, moist, delicate yet full of flavour.  Served with truffle puree and cockles alongside a grilled leek.  Stunning.  With a New Zealand chardonnay to add to the magic.

On to the best dish of the meal.  The dish that I may remember for the rest of my life.  The dish that makes me weep for 14 million jews and 1.6 billion muslims who will never be able to taste perfection.  Jowl of pork with carrots, walnuts and chanterelles.  If you like pork, think back to the best bit of it you've ever had.  Now concentrate the flavours by 10.  Then imagine the meat is so tender it dissolves in your mouth like spun sugar.  Add the accompaniments to bring sweetness, earthiness and crunch, extending and rounding the essence of that noble pig.  It was a dish so beautiful it left us all speechless.  Chewing thoughtfully, gazing at each other in wide-eyed shock.    I can hardly remember the characteristics of the wine (2009 Lagren, Berger Gei, Ignaz Niedrist, Alto Adige, Italy) except to tell you that it was a beautiful match.  Given that it stood beside the best pork dish I've ever eaten, it must have been deeply worthy.

Australian chef Brett Graham works magic at The Ledbury

The roast breast of pigeon with quince, red vegetables and leaves that followed was good, but I was still thinking about the pig. The bird was good, but similar to others I'd had elsewhere.  The standout in this course was the wine.  2010 Les Terrasses, Velles Vinyes, Alvaro Palacios, Priorat, Spain.  The kind of big, bold, fruity, knock-you-upside-the-head-with-flavour red my husband calls an "Ellen wine".

Fact is, even with the tiny plates we were getting very full by this point.  And while the food was coming in tastes, the wines were pouring in  full-glass gluggs.  We were reaching our limits.  

The pre-desert was a necessary citric palate cleanser with a bit of creaminess ... I'm afraid it's not described on the take home menu and that's all I can remember.  It set us up for the climax, one calculated to please the mostly female table:  Banana and chocolate malt tartlet.  Delicate tart crust with that malty undertone, filled with the darkest of dark chocolates, which might have been too much if not balanced by the caramel sweetness of the bananas.  And the raisin sweetness of the Australian Pedro Ximenez in the dessert wine glass.

A magnificent and hugely memorable meal, with multiple stand-out courses.  Extract the beets, turbot, pork and chocolate tart and you'd have pretty much the perfect meal.  The rest was just layering nuance on top of perfection.

Add to all of this one of the most beautiful dining rooms I can remember.  All done in variations of black and white, with sumptuous black velvet curtains draping massive arched windows, and different black-and-white patterned fabrics making each upholstered seat back different.  The china is all clearly designed for the decor, with unusually shaped, obviously hand-made plates in black, grey or white, with interesting glazes and speckles.  It all added to the visual impact of food as art.

I like to think, had I been confronted by criminals storming the place, I would have been brave enough to fight back.  Inspired by the fact that The Ledbury represents food as an apogee of Western Culture, worth fighting to preserve.  By about course seven, however, I fear I'd slipped into such soporific ecstasy I doubt I would have been capable of much movement if confronted by a revolutionary.