Bar Boulud, Knightsbridge

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have been to Knightsbridge - to Bar Boulud, the second and lesser-known restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, tucked under Heston Blumenthal’s London flagship.

MrV: It looked a bit empty on the way in. People probably couldn’t get here because of all the police causing a jam on Park Lane.
MrO: There was a big Chinese delegation upstairs - perhaps at Heston’s place.
MrV: Why is it that no foreign dignitaries can do anything in London without involving hundreds if not thousands of police? I am convinced that it is a PR stunt by Scotland Yard to counteract the obvious worthlessness of modern policing.
MrO: Er, that is rather a large statement, which has little to do with restaurants.
MrV: Maybe so, but we all pay for this rubbish policing and it’s reflected in the cost of our restaurant bills, our taxis and everything else. The Home Office deliberately obfuscates the cost but it is somewhere north of £20 billion a year, despite the Tories’ half-hearted cost-cutting. It’d be cheaper and more effective to reintroduce the hue and cry, which served us well for thousands of years.
MrO: Anyway, what did we think of Bar Boulud.
MrV: Inevitably, it suffers from having an internationally-stretched celebrity chef at its helm. Daniel Boulud has restaurants all over the United States and if he spent all his time in Knightsbridge I guess his partners elsewhere would want to know why.
MrO: Didn’t you like the food?
MrV: It was mixed. Very little was excellent. The Coward Burger...
MrO: It was called the Frenchie burger...
MrV: ...whatever – was bland, inexcusably under-seasoned. And the grilled prawns had an excellent flavour but had been left too long on the chargrill and were caramelised to the point of leatheriness on one side.
MrO: You raved about the starter.
MrV: I did, and rightly so. The pigs’ ears had been deep-fried at such a temperature that they were halfway between pork crackling and prawn crackers. Quite the most entertaining starter I’ve had for years. The noise of people cracking and crunching them was audible throughout the restaurant, like a minor fireworks display.
MrO: I loved the space. It is big but sort of bitty so that it feels more intimate.
MrV: Which makes it harder to catch the eye of a waiter.
MrO: I also liked my starter – the sausage roll in brioche.
MrV: It was an interesting texture, to be sure, but the brioche drowned the flavour of the sausage meat. I wouldn’t try it again.
MrO: But would you try the restaurant again?
MrV: I would. The atmosphere, air conditioning and quality of the sorbets alone warrant another visit.
MrO: I particularly like the offer of one glass at a time from a very large bottle of fine wine. It means you can drink well but not to excess. Not that that would interest you.
MrV: I agree. That is a fine innovation. But I wish they’d tidy up the food menu and also make it a bit more coherent. Main course prices lurching from £11.50 to £44 just leave one feeling confused and irritable, as if they are inviting you to be either a miser or a fool.
MrO: Wasn’t this the site where Marco Pierre White earned his third Michelin Star?
MrV: You’re right, it was, back in 1994 – and look where it took him. He’s a turkey salesman and Knorr stock promoter now.
MrO: Let’s hope that Daniel Boulud has more success.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar enjoyed between them two glasses of Puligny Montrachet, a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape (at £76), two starters, two main courses and two puddings, followed by two glasses of liqueur and a glass of good claret, plus mineral water and coffee, at a total cost of about £255.

Bar Boulud
Mandarin Oriental Hotel
66 Knightsbridge
London
SW1X 7LA

+44 (0)20 7201 3899

molon-barboulud@mohg.com
http://www.danielnyc.com/barbouludLondon.html