Review: La Trompette, Chiswick

It does get difficult reviewing restaurants that are very good but not explosively brilliant. Unless something interesting happened on the way to the restaurant, or there’s something on my mind I’d like to moan about, it’s hard to decide how to make the review interesting. As you’ll have spotted, my reviewing style is not to deliver a detailed dissection of each plate of food with an accompanying photo, I’d rather cover the dishes in brief and pick out a few high- or low- lights to make the case for my conclusions. That’s just how I roll. So I need something else to say beyond a description of the dishes, or you’ll all fall asleep.

My other problem is that I just won’t do florid writing. This bothered me when writing my travel blog as well. I distinctly remember reading another blogger’s description of a journey through rainforest mountains in SE Asia: the view was indescribable, like

discovering Shangri-La, epic vistas of verdant forests clinging impossibly to sky-piercing peaks, etc, etc. When I made the same trip I thought: dense jungle, arresting views, but I’ve seen better. I’m not going to wax euphoric about a plate of food that is just well-cooked, well-presented and very tasty. After all, I’ve eaten some genuinely phenomenal food in my time and I don’t want to give a misleading impression about the “merely very good” by over-enthusing. Likewise I can’t bring myself to throw vitriol at food that was at least fairly edible.

So, at the end of the day, if I have to write about a meal that was jolly good yet not amazing and if there’s nothing else on my mind remotely related to it, then you’re liable to get a fairly beige review. See what you think of this one about a jolly good Saturday lunch at Michelin-starred La Trompette in Chiswick…

My starter of goat cheese panacotta on a sauce vierge led me to wonder why anyone would take the trouble to make goat cheese

panacotta, since a chunk of the raw cheese on the same sauce would have been every bit as good. However, it was good. Maureen had a smashing piece of mackerel neatly accompanied by earthy balsamic beetroot. Across the table the lasagne of braised rabbit with broad beans looked very good and was lauded.

For main I settled on roast chicken supreme with morels and a creamy wild garlic sauce. Goat cheese starter and chicken main? I confess, I’d had several rich meals on the trot and needed some lightness. In the event, the chicken was gorgeous, juicy and packed with taste, and the sauce was a warm, stinky, rich delight in the mouth. The whole dish made me want to pile on an outrageous accent and declare “Zis. Zis eez ze proper French cooking!” Maureen, also feeling over-fed,

picked out the parmesan gnocchi with globe artichokes. Along with the girolles, pea puree and grelot onions there were certainly plenty of strong flavours on the plate but nothing tying them together.

Over dessert we were able to compare the warm ginger cake with pineapple and crème fraiche to the almost identical dessert I had at Medlar the night before. This one was tasty enough, but I declare Medlar the winner.

All in all, a delicious lunch. The restaurant is light, bright and elegantly decked out, the staff deliver pretty much perfect service with a friendly informality. For dinner the three courses will set you back around £40 before wine, so although a wonderful neighbourhood restaurant for Chiswick it’s not quite a bargain find.