A review of Boisdale’s at Canary Wharf.
http://www.boisdale.co.uk
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The menu at Boisdale’s said that the haggis in its starter form would be a mini haggis. It was not. My starter was an enormous portion of magnificent haggis (with neeps and tatties) wafting calories into the air. There’s nothing like haggis to exude energy. If it hadn’t been that you have to put the energy into it in the dirt place, by feeding a sheep for some years and then boiling it’s innards for a further year, I’d suggest it as an alternative to nuclear power. It’s like a red hot coal fire in a plate. The traditionally served dish hit the mark- a little more fulsomely than intended. Even better was the accompanying 15year Glenfiddich. I really hadn’t expected the ‘accompaniment whiskey’ to be so complicated with such strong smokiness and honey notes. We were far from alone in choosing this dish, many Haggai came through the door in the course of the evening in the hands of the waitresses with short tartan skirts.
Fortunately the pie that was delivered by the rather stereotypically Scottish man (can this have featured. in the recruitment ad? ) arrived later was no bigger. This was wiLd veniSon, cLaret & BLack waLnut pie. I was a bit disappointed not to find any walnuts, but alongside the flavours of the accompanying braised red cabbage, pickled wild damsons, cinnamon this made a great balance of savoury and sweet.
At this point the band took a break. Oh yes, I should have mentioned the live band. Because actually if you eat in the Boisdale’s restaurant, you have to pay for a ticket to the band too. And we had paid for good seats. On a Tuesday night this turned out to mean that we were right under then noses of the band, and there were no other customers to be seen within about 50m of us.
Which sounds great if you like live music, even better if you know and love the TJ Johnson Band which has a very good rep. The fact was, it was really embarrassing. I winced every time that they caught my eye as I stuffed food in my mouth. I felt that my propensity to eat rather quickly was under scrutiny. And even worse. They didn’t clap when I finished a course.
No hang on, that’s the wrong way around. Even thought they watched us intently, we were supposed to clap them. But it felt kind of artificial when no one else was around and we just sort of cringed when we should have clapped.
They were so comfortable on the stage that we kind of assumed that they would take this in their stride, but actually after a whole, they took longer and longer breaks, and at the end of one song, one stood up, put his hand to his eyes and peered around as if to say ‘is there anyone out there?’
We aren’t corporate customers who didn’t come for the music, bemoaned my husband. We paid for this table… Perhaps we should have said, ‘get that man more of what he’s drinking’ but do people say that in real life?
The dessert worried me as it landed in front of me. The visual proportions were wrong for a dish that was well thought through.
The description of lemon and bourbon with cranachan promied richness and tartness whipped up together. Well, there was creaminess, to be fair the cranachan was delicious, and there was one tart raspberry. But ultimately there was no real kick for what should have been dramatic combinations. A waste of calories.
I wish had gone straight for the petit fours, which came in portions of eight (way forwards…) and were made up of some particularly nice mini citrus tarts and jellies.
And then the whiskey menu. All 50 odd pages of it. Fortunately I had forwarded this list to my husband as date night pre-reading a couple of days earlier. (Who says marriage spoils the romance?) and he had got his head around the scotch pages. I personally had contemplated the Japanese whiskeys but it felt like a cop out in a Scottish restaurant. We chose Ballechin Oloroso Sherry Cask Matured. Now would we have really known if they had swapped the content… We….ell, they were as described in the menu, and my husband recognised the flavour of mine from a visit to the distillery.
As we Politely left our seats at the end of the night, the band acknowledged us sadly. Dear TJ Johnson band if you are reading this, I am so sorry. I applaud you inside.
