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The Honours: awkward service meets disappointing food

4/9/2011

14 Comments

 
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The Honours is Martin Wishart's new Edinburgh brasserie and has already opened to much praise from the online community. In Edinburgh, Chef Wishart is revered as a food god and why not, he gave the city its first Michelin star back in 2001. His fine dining restaurant in Leith (Restaurant Martin Wishart) remains one of the country's most well thought of establishments and when we visited it in November of last year, we considered our meal to be easily at the two star standard. We've been advocates of Martin Wishart ever since.

The menu at The Honours is described on their website to be 'where traditional French cuisine meets the flavours of the Scottish market' and yet looking at the menu, this seems perhaps a touch heavy on marketing spin. A quick glance sees Oysters that are sourced only from Cornwall, Jamon Bellota from Spain, and Caponata, a Scicilian dish no less, which is all fine but Paris meets Scotland? Really?

There is though much that appeals on the menu and for starters, we order the Crab Chowder, and a Swiss cheese souffle. The crab chowder was too smooth to warrant the name we felt and we couldn't help agree with Joanna Blythman's review in The Guardian where she said of the dish 'half crab bisque, half bouillabaisse, it certainly wasn't a hearty textured chowder'. 

The Swiss cheese souffle with spinach and bechamel has the potential to be a show stopping dish but here it too falls short. Admittedly, our base line comparison is the height of cheese souffle greatness, that served by Le Gavroche, a souffle offering head spinning indulgence delivered by the remarkable coming together of souffle textures, cheese and cream. Here, they delivered something that was good, but never reaching a peak of brilliance, clear cheese flavours, but never indulgent cheese flavours and a texture that was a little on the heavy side to be considered a great dish.

This too seems like a good place to discuss service. While The Honours has been open almost two months now, much of the service seemed awkward and unsure. We were not offered an aperitif until a good 10-15 minutes after we had been seated. Then, when ordering food, I asked for a glass of white with my starter and a glass of red with my main. The white had failed to arrive by the time the starter was cleared from the table such that I then asked them not to bring it. We were also surprised as we waited for our mains that when the newly arrived table next to us were given their menus, their waiter reeled off a list of the day's specials, since our waitress had failed to mention there were specials period; it would have been nice to know. 

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Crab chowder, croutons and parmesan
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Swiss cheese souffle, spinach and bechemel
So to the mains. We were intrigued by the 'Slice of coq au vin' and felt compelled to order it, with the other main comprising of a half North Berwick Lobster Thermidor and an accompaniment of Macaroni with mushroom cream and poached egg.

The slice of coq au vin provides a variation to the classic, with the chicken taken off the bone, pressed into a terrine and therefore amenable to subsequent slicing. Sadly, the overall effect was a rather dry slab of pressed chicken with an insufficient quantity of a mediocre red wine sauce to help you get through to the end. In fact, I did fail to reach the end and a third of the chicken departed the table for the return journey to the kitchen when the plates were cleared. Great coq au vin plates at Bar Boulud and Coq d'Argent haven proven that this is a dish which can still be a show stopper in its own right when executed brilliantly well, but sadly not here. The additional side of 'golden wonder mash' had the texture of drying cement and reminded me of school dinners. It cried out for butter, preferably a lot of it. All but an exploratory bite of the potato dish was returned to the kitchen.

The lobster faired somewhat better but from lobster tastings this week alone at Ondine, through to The Lobster Shack and then Castle Terrace, the Honour's lobster was never a contender. The macaroni came artfully arranged in stacked parallel tubes though the heterogeneity of macaroni, some straight some curvy, made the presentation look simultaneously pretentious and awkward (a word that just keeps cropping up). The mushroom cream sauce meanwhile appeared to lack cream and the plate seemed generally ill at ease. This macaroni dish is also available as a stand alone main (we ordered a starter size portion as a side), but if this had of been our main course, I can only imagine what a disappointment we would have felt.
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Slice of coq au vin
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Golden wonder mash
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North Berwick Lobster Thermidor
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Macaroni, mushroom cream, poached egg
So, with disappointments all the way down the line, we didn't want to get too adventurous with desserts and opted for an ice cream sundae: toffee and caramel ice cream, honeycomb, caramelised banana and pecan nuts, a dessert in its totality named after the restaurant, The Honours. The dessert was nice enough and delivered per its description. But on spooning out the honeycomb from the bottom of the glass, we are 99% sure that it was a broken up Cadbury Crunchie bar. We know that a lot of restaurants would go that route if honeycombe were needed in a dessert, but we can't, for example, ever imagine Raymond Blanc allowing such a thing, even in his Brasserie chain; we're surprised that Martin Wishart is happy to do this. 
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toffee and caramel ice cream, honeycomb, caramelised banana and pecan nuts
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the honeycomb in the dessert is we think a broken Crunchie bar
We have the utmost respects for Martin Wishart's talents as a chef and as already noted, we have been almost evangelical about his fine dining restaurant since our visit there last year. It was clear though from looking round at the customers in The Honours tonight that this was a big night out for many: an above averagely expensive meal and a desire on their part to eat the food of a local legend and one of the country's best chefs, and yet how far short of delivering anything close to that experience did this feel? To be brutal, Cafe Rouge delivers a better brasserie experience at their ubiquitous chain while the nine outlet Brasserie Blanc also offer in addition to food a slickness to operations that was not evident at The Honours. The Honours should however be kicking the ass of places like these.

The really sad thing is that if this were our first experience of Martin Wishart's food, we would simply strike Restaurant Martin Wishart off our list of restaurants and never visit it, convinced we'd be wasting our money. And that would be a total shame because Restaurant Martin Wishart is simply brilliant; disappointingly, The Honours is not.


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Related links:

The Honours website


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The Honours on Urbanspoon
14 Comments
James link
5/9/2011 05:52:28 am

Now that I have picked my self up of the floor.... it certainly looks like a broken up crunchie, shocking, just shocking that Wishart would alow this.

Very disappointed to read about the service too, I was looking at going there soon, but not any more.

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Melbourne chef
6/9/2011 04:07:22 am

Not uniformed enough (note top right hand corner) to be a crunchie!!!
Just a little harsh!

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Melbourne chef
6/9/2011 04:12:56 am

and clearly bubbles on the chocolate! that has been dipped!!!
I dont thing cadburys would be impressed!!!!!
Guys this is not a bought crunchie!!! get a grip!

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thecriticalcouple
6/9/2011 05:57:52 am

Melbourne chef,

thanks for your comments. However, we continue to believe it is a Crunchie. I in fact have a Crunchie bar in front of me right now as I write this, and would highlight three things.

1) the chocolate around a Crunchie is not uniformed, especialy at the top corners of the bar where gravity I assume plays its part. Chocolate at the base corner of Crunchies is meanwhile thicker as can also be seen in the top left hand corner.

2) the honeycomb in a Crunchie is dark orange in the central vertical axis before becoming a more yellow orange at the side walls. An identical colour pattern is clearly seen in the picture above.

3)On the base of a Crunchie bar within the chocolate, there is a distinctive cross hatch/lattice pattern. While not visible in the picture above, a visually identical pattern was seen on some parts of the chocolate coated honeycomb in the dessert.

It is possible that they have a near identical production method to Cadbury that results in their honeycombe having identical visual and physical features to a Cadbury Crunchie. However, the more simple explanation is that this is a Crunchie.

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Mark
6/9/2011 07:24:28 am

Have you ever thought that it is intentional? And What is wrong with using a Crunchie Bar in a desert?

Your second to last paragraph makes you sound like ridiculous snobs. Is that true? I have never met you so don't know, but you are clearly prejudicing other people with simple sideswipes I might as well assume as much.

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Rob
6/9/2011 07:53:49 am

It is a crunchie. But it doesn't really matter.

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Tim
6/9/2011 08:03:41 am

Wishart is not the first, there's another famous Scottish Crunchie based dessert from someone more famous than him: the Crunchie McFlurry

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mymonkfish link
6/9/2011 10:05:34 am

Having dined at The Honours within two weeks of its opening night and having given it a glowing review I read this with interest. There were ‘glimmers’ of poor service when we were there – pre dinner champagne was clearly flat yet had gone unnoticed by the waitress – but I shrugged this off as ‘opening fortnight nerves’ (?? mmmm) and as the rest of the evening was excellent it was kind of forgotten about (but not quite). From reading about this Honours experience it sounds like the customer service was clearly not at the level we would expect from a Wishart establishment. Yes he is revered in Edinburgh, yes his Leith restaurant is amazing but he should be careful that experiences such as this do not tarnish our overall impression of him and his eateries.

As you say, if this was the only time you had experienced a Martin Wishart restaurant then would you now dine in Leith? Unlikely?? And let’s face it it’s not quite in the bistro dining bracket by any means (meal for two averaging £125 with drinks) so we expect more from The Honours and the main man. Watch out MW, don’t let us down, some of us don’t have the extra cash to regularly eat in Leith and are keen to experience fine dining service at your bistro. Time to pull the socks up as this review may stop my comeback visit....and I'd be quite upset about that.
www.mymonkfish.com

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mr me
7/9/2011 03:18:42 pm

I am begining to wonder if the critical couple no what they are talking about they have alot of praise for the resteraunts they want to be good i mean if you look through some of the blogs im sorry buust dont agree after looking at the photos or having eating there myself

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Lee
9/9/2011 04:54:05 am

Most amused by "Crunchie-gate", and good on whichever one of CC it was that was prepared to purchase and pay such dilligent attention to said confectionary in order to back up their claims/ suspicions. For what it's worth, I see no snobbery on their part: if you want a Crunchie you nip down the corner shop, not get tarted up for dinner in a Martin Wishart restaurant. Ps, any good wine pairing suggestions for Crunchies?!

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Edinburgh Foody link
9/9/2011 05:50:30 am

A very fair critique based on our lunch yesterday. Being local I am prepared to give them time to improve - as it stands it's not found its footing

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Martyn
27/10/2011 02:40:25 am

Mark, everything is wrong with using a crunchie bar on a dessert, especially as Martin and Paul (Head Chef) are at such a high level within their career.

There's no excuse, a pastry chef WOULD be able to make honeycomb, it's not hard. There is no skill shown from the chef using a crunchie bar, it's just idleness.
If it was intentional it would state so on the menu, clearly it doesn't.

They are not snobs, at all! They eat at restaurants and give an honest review based on their own experience.

Based on this review I am so glad I never went to my working trial in the kitchen and worked there, thanks!

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Little Things
30/6/2013 01:16:39 pm

I ate there for my birthday this week and has nothing but good things to say!
http://rozis-little-things.blogspot.co.uk

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TCC
30/6/2013 03:56:47 pm

that's great, glad you enjoyed it, and happy 22nd birthday from us.

that said, while you comment that you have 'nothing but good things to say', you do suggest that one of the two main courses 'became quite sickly'. With two diners, no desserts, one of the mains sickly, that makes for a mixed review in our book.

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