Chocolate for every course? It's not as good as you'd think

Restaurant Review:  Rabot 1745, Borough Market

Chocolate is a great gimmick, but Rabot 1745 is going to have to stretch beyond that if it's to become anyone's regular haunt.

This new restaurant perched in the middle of Southwark's Borough Market is from the team behind the Hotel Chocolat chain, and the idea is to extend the range of their already-beloved cocoa into savoury courses as well as sweet.  It does so while embracing a decidedly Caribbean vibe, inspired by the owners' cocoa plantation and existing restaurant in St. Lucia.  To quote the web site, they're going for "the polished elegance of a Saint Lucian plantation house stylishly transported to the heart of London, featuring authentic touches like hurricane-felled Ironwood, brought home from our own 250-year-old cocoa estate."

It is a beautiful place, helped by the dining room's first floor location and glass walls looking over the market below.  The smell of roasting cocoa embraces you from the moment you enter and a striking, dark-skinned beauty with tiny braids piled atop her head welcomes you with the accent of the islands.  Your waiter explains the concept and demonstrates how to shell the beans waiting there for you, and then sample the nibs inside.  It's a fabulous start.

Next comes one of those really interesting menus that makes you work hard, because there are at least three choices you want to try for each course.  I could have happily eaten off the set lunch menu, a deal at £22.  Cacao spiced eggplant (aubergine), braised beef hot pot (with cocoa and balsamic), and chocolate and coffee mousse was tempting.  But even more so was red mullet and olive gnocchi followed by creole monkfish, finished with a chocolate fondant.

And here's where things start to fall down.  Starter: average to poor.  Main:  fabulous.  Pudding: like many others.

The mullet was on its own, not incorporated into gnocchi, overcooked and lacking enough interesting sauce to enliven it.  The so-called gnocchi were small balls of tapenade in a crispy crust, deep fried to the look and consistency of small marbles.  I applaud the experiment, but it shouldn't have made it out of the kitchen.  My colleague's beetroot carpaccio was pretty but tasted, she said, only average.

The monkfish, however, was good enough to tempt me back.  Pictured above.  Succulent and rich with Caribbean spices, this lived up to the early promise.  Though cocoa featured in both dishes, in neither was there enough differentiation in taste for you to pick it up.  Not like, for example, a Mexican mole sauce, which is wonderfully savoury yet unmistakably chocolatey at the same time.  Maybe they should get it on the menu.  We did have a side of white chocolate mashed potato which fell into that mole magic category.  Hard to put your finger on the exact taste, but the potatoes were noticeably different, richer and better than normal.

Pudding wasn't bad, but it was just … a chocolate fondant.  Like fondants I've had at many other restaurants.  No twist, nothing special, no better.  Which is not what you want when you get to the dessert course at a place run by one of the country's leading gourmet chocolate brands.  I shouldn't have let myself get talked out of the trio of chocolate mousses, made with escalating percentages of cocoa solids.  Confessing myself to be a milk chocolate lover, the waiter worried I wouldn't like that.  Perhaps not, but I do think it would have showed off the restaurant's strengths more.

For the concept, Rabot 1745 is worth a try.  And I may try it again.  But unless they get their dishes up to more memorable standard, it's hard to justify spending the money to eat here when a world of exotic food carts offers budget sampling in the market below.