Review: Hedone, Chiswick

Other restaurants have no trouble putting up a sample menu on their website, even if it almost certainly won’t be what you eat on the night. It just gives you an idea of the kind of thing you might find. The clue is in the word “sample”. That’s too forthcoming for Hedone. They don’t even give you a menu at your table because – this is neat – you may not actually be served what the table next door is served, if a particular ingredient were to run out for example. This is either pure spin (in which case, well spun Hedone!) or it’s a practice that other fine dining places should pick up, as it must be avoiding a lot of waste. I couldn’t tell, I didn’t pay much attention to what the other tables were served.

We were served a pretty brilliant 8 course tasting menu. The dining room is modern, warm wood and cool taupe, with artwork from the my-five-year-old-son’s school. The service was great, the wine list long on French and high on price; nothing came in under £50 that I could see. We had a good bottle of Chablis – although in my book an £80 Chablis ought to be more than “good”! Anyway, let’s clear that to one side and eat.

There is some really wonderful cooking going on at Hedone. Amuse bouches were good, including a spendid bite of ham and foie gras with peppy pimento jelly on top. The first little starter was a fish-chip, a single baton of very firm monkfish wrapped in a singularly crispy potato wafer. Somehow it managed to include that unique chip-shop flavour. I was bowled over by the second starter, a bowl of parmesan custard topped with a very umami broth with toasted chia seeds suspended in it. When you’ve eaten a hundred-and-one variations on the classics, unexpected (and bloody delicious!) combinations are hard to find.

Jaded, moi?

The next dish was crab, and another knock-out. Very unusual to see unrefined pieces of crab claw meat on a fine dining plate. These were topped with blobs of awesome hazelnut mayonnaise (I’m gonna make me some hazelnut mayonnaise!) and bathed in crabby broth with parsley oil and apple. Top notch.

Loved the single-mindedness of the next dish. It was a scallop, just barely blow-torched, then halved. A few leaves, tiny drizzle of innocuous (yuzu?) dressing. This dish lived or died by the quality of that scallop and it was an absolute beauty.

The main fish dish was a piece of cod with green olive sauce and fennel on the side. By now I don’t really need to say that the cod was a beautifully cooked piece and the sauce sang like a drunken shepherd on the hills of Crete, you get the idea – the kitchen at Hedone only puts out faultless dishes. Hmm. Then again, the splendid chunk of lamb for our main course was arguably just a little on the salty side. Lovely though, with artichoke and sea aster accompaniment. And I have to say, neither pudding knocked my socks off. The main pud was a warm chocolate mousse with a praline-dusted biscuit on top, and trendy though warm chocolate mousse is right now I’ve not had one yet that I would really call a mousse. Thick soup is more like it.

So, Hedone. Absolutely cracking cooking, loved it to bits. All the real whiz-bang star dishes were earlier in the menu, which is no real surprise to a jaded Michelin-fatted gastronaut like myself. But at £85 without drinks Hedone really stands toe-to-toe with the best in the country, and knocks spots off a bunch of old dogs around the same price. I’ll be going back.