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The Sportsman: we wanted to love it, but we don't

7/4/2011

10 Comments

 
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We've held off visiting The Sportsman for a little while not least because we wanted some decent weather for the drive down. With the UK blessed this week with a blue sky and genuine warmth, we decided to make the pilgrimage. Indeed, pilgrimage would seem to be the right word because this place is so utterly revered in the blogoshpere that our journey seems like a trek to a food temple.

The success story that is The Sportsman can't help but appeal. We love the story they tell on their website that when they initially took over the pub, the windows were boarded up so daylight wouldn't disturb the drinkers. The dartboard too, Keith Talent would approve. Yet the transformation of this pub to gastronomic shrine invites everyone to believe that anything's possible; the pub itself is a well of hope. 

And while reportedly they get upset when people talk of the place in 'run down' terms, even the owners would surely have to admit that the outside could do with a new coat of paint but to be fair, the inside is comfortable, modern, spacious and light. Arguably the beaten up outside enhances the charm and one suspects they know this and even possibly revel in the contradiction.

We're also struck by just how far removed this is (and not just in mile terms) from fellow one star luminaries such as Gauthier Soho and Sketch, can you imagine either of these with paper napkins? The Sportsman remains true to its roots being anchored in the great traditions of public houses even if the food has made a breakout escape to the major leagues.

The daily menu is written on the board and if you want a tasting menu, not only do you need to pre-order but you need to have an early sitting for it takes several hours to serve. We have a late sitting so no tasting menu today, rather, we order from the board and wanting to try across the range of food, we take an extra main course to what's strictly needed. What's more, with a strong reputation for local suppliers, we're not wholly surprised that from the pub car park you can see lambs in the field opposite so of course we order lamb. 

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the view, or tomorrow's lunch?
The bread arrives first and we have to say it is very good indeed. With three breads on the platter, soda, sour dough and focaccia, it is better bread than you get in places that claim an even higher pedigree. It's encouraging.

The first of the starters, 3 poached rock oysters, pickled cucumber & Avruga caviar (with a beurre blanc) is truly excellent. The clean but rich saltiness of the caviar provides an interesting and different take than the deep sea saltiness of the oyster which together provide a fascinating combination and a winning plate. This is definitely the dish of the day. Three seems hardly enough but priced a £7.95, its excellent value for such a prestigious dish. 

The other starter, poached egg, bacon and purple sprouting brocolli salad is an excellent example of the kind, the egg perfectly done and with great flavour but is it, as a dish, elevated above its description? No. For sure it's good, but ultimately, it is as it sounds and as it looks. 
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tell me where is fancy bread...
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poached rock oysters, pickled cucumber & Avruga caviar
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poached egg, bacon and purple sprouting brocolli salad
It's on the mains though that things started to fall down. First, the plating, it had little in the way of finesse. We partly let this go because you 'know' that this is a restaurant the focusses on ingredients and flavours so you park the awkward appearance to one side (perhaps) but you can't fully get away from the fact that everything is on top of everything. Ingredients are too involved with each other and the bowls seem too small.

But what comes next was a real surprise, the dishes failed to deliver even on taste. The Baked cod fillet with a mussel and parsley sauce was the principal villain here and it wasn't just 'not good', it was actually quite bad. First, that parsley sauce: not only is it everywhere on the plate, but it had no freshness, no essence of parsley even but rather bitter notes only. And this coated everything, and more puree than sauce in texture. It was near on impossible to have a mouthful of anything here without it being coated in this offending green. Accordingly, everything else on the plate lost its flavour to the omnipresent sauce; why bother with the mussels if you can't taste them. The cod fillet too came skin on but presented skin side down. Whether the skin was ever crisp to begin with, who knows (though we suspect not), but submerged in the sauce, any crispiness that might have been had long since gone and what was left was flaccidly unappealing. The fish was also over salted and a third of the way into the dish we could go no more.

The other two mains were better but still not great. These were crispy duck, smoked chilli salsa and sour cream, and Roast rack of lamb & mint sauce. The 'smoked chilli salsa' seemed little more than blended tomatoes while the duck, served also with roast potatoes and cabbage, proved to be good pub grub, but not Michelin star cooking in our view. The lamb was the best presented of the three dishes but again, rack of lamb with two roast potatoes and overly horseradished spinach? This was absent any magic and being simply 'good' just doesn't seem good enough here.
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Baked cod fillet with a mussel and parsley sauce
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crispy duck, smoked chilli salsa and sour cream
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Roast rack of lamb & mint sauce
For dessert, we shared a warm chocolate mousse, salted caramel & milk sorbet. The description suggest balance between sweet and salty but the reality was that nothing else here stood up to the overly dominant chocolate. And with the caramel as a bottom layer of a deep pot, you could eat a lot of sweet chocolate before you ever got to the salty. It's a fine dessert for chocolate lovers but lacks finesse and balance.
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warm chocolate mousse, salted caramel & milk sorbet
The oysters were undoubtedly brilliant, the bread excellent, but everything else ranged from the so-so to the disappointing. If the idea is to let quality ingredients speak for themselves, why drown the cod fillet in bad parsley puree? Roast potatoes with the duck and the lamb? It felt like a Sunday special down the local, not a food Mecca. And if the lamb/duck/cod are so superior to ingredients elsewhere, with the pile high plating, it's less than obvious for none of the main courses demonstrates purity of form.

The conclusion will seem like blasphemy to many: our meal today was in line with a try hard gastro pub but no better. In East London, the well regarded gastro-pub The Gun is as good or better and on seafood, the award winning fish restaurant at historic public house The Grapes will serve you better fish. For rich earthly flavours from meat at equivalent prices, Bistrot Bruno Loubet delivers more depth by using ingredients more cleverly.

We really, really wanted to love The Sportsman so that through the summer we could enjoy superlative food and have an excuse to visit the seaside on a regular basis, but the sad fact is, we don't. For us, there's better food right here on our doorstep.


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Related pages: The Gun

Related pages: The Grapes

Related pages: Bistrot Bruno Loubet

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10 Comments
Donald Edwards link
8/4/2011 06:45:31 am

Sounds like you had a mediocre meal - with some real high lights and a bunch of disappointing courses where the cooking was a little out and ideas didn't really work.
Sorry - but isn't that the definition of 1 Michelin star?
I've lost count of the number of places that one star seems to ruin. Both in the changing of the chefs idea of his cooking and the burdening of diner expectations.
The cod and parsley sauce dish did look far to nuclear though...

Reply
thecriticalcouple
8/4/2011 08:55:32 am

Donald

thank for your comment though but we must disagree.

You say 'sounds like you had a mediocre meal... isn't that the definition of 1 Michelin star'

Surely the answer is no.

If mediocre qualifies for one star then only the truly bad would not have a star. Michelin surely implies a higher standard.

And while you say 'some real highs', only the oysters qualified on that basis. The five other paid for dishes ranged from so-so to bad.

Consider 1 Michelin star at Apsleys or Martin Wishart and it's a world removed.

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tehbus link
8/4/2011 09:50:47 am

I've only been to the Sportsman once (at the back end of last year), but the tasting menu was so damn good, balanced by perfect cooking, great ingredients and interesting invention in some of the courses. Sad that you had a bad experience, but I certainly wouldn't write it off. Try heading down for the tasting if you can.

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SB link
8/4/2011 04:31:23 pm

I have heard a lot of great things about The Sportsman but never visit the place myself. Looking at your pictures and reading your review, somehow, put off my eagerness to dine there. The parsley sauce appears radioactive and the other dishes you ordered seem average. While one Michelin star suggests a positively special meal, this doesn't seem worth a detour and even if the tasting menu is brilliant, I feel other dishes should deliver - if not at the same level of balance and perfection - an experience not far too dissimilar. Just a bit of fairness to those who might not want to afford the whole tasting menu or do not fancy eating that much food. Many Michelin starred restaurants in London have managed to rectify their stellar standard with their cheaper lunch options and so should The Sportsman.

PS I have read you enjoy Sketch. Perhaps it's about time to check out Pierre Gagnaire in Paris?

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Felix Hirsch link
10/4/2011 03:59:43 am

Interesting you didn't enjoy it. Whilst I totally respect that, there are just two points that I don't understand or think are not quite accurate:

In terms of fish and seafood, there is no restaurant in the UK that does a better job in sourcing and cooking it than the Sportsman. Maybe cod is not quite what they're best at, but if you have some turbot or sea bass, or even brill you'll almost certainly have a piece of fish of the standard of some of Paris' finest restaurants. In that respect the the comparison with the other gastropubs is not fair I would think.

As for some of the dishes you had (cod, duck and egg) I haven't had them, so can't say anything. But, the difference between the normal menu and the tasting menu here is quite big. If you have a tasting menu, you are likely to eat better here than anywhere else on this island. That's at least what I experienced from having one tasting menu at lunch, followed by a la carte at dinner.

If you take a look at this, you can hardly say its not pure:

http://www.qliweb.com/food/_the_sportsman

If you still feel like you want to give them a second chance, try to have a tasting menu, I am sure that you will not regret that (and bring some great wine along!).

Felix

Reply
thecriticalcouple
10/4/2011 08:48:50 am

Felix,

thanks for your comments. Indeed, the comments are in line with much of the feedback we've received since posting our article. However, it raises three obvious points:

1) don't customers eating a la carte deserve a decent meal too? Even you note the 'quite big difference' between the tasting menu and the a la carte. Given the scale of this difference, one could almost go as far to say that they should not serve a la carte if their interest in quality meals stops at the tasting menu.

2) while everything you suggest about them sourcing the very best quality fish may be true, if the fish is then drowned in an unpleasant parsley sauce, the effort is wasted and indeed redundant. The kitchen should also understand that.

3) comparisons with other gastro-pubs is fair not only because The Sportsman is a gastro pub, but because in respect of the meal we ate, their 'lower quality' a la carte offering is no better in our view than other top end gastro-pubs elsewhere.

But I have to say, looking at the pictures of the food on the link you provided, on presentation alone the food looks a world away from that featured on our post. That however does not we think invalidate the above points.

Once again thanks FH, your views and comments are much appreciated.

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Felix Hirsch link
11/4/2011 07:18:07 am

I understand your points.

To answer to the first one, there is certainly a difference, but even eating a la carte, the food was miles away from 99% of all restaurants in the UK. The key is chosing the stuff that is sourced locally (i.e. the lamb, oysters, turbot, brill,...). That some dishes are a little less great can happen. I didn't have the cod as such, but a similar dish with turbot, where it worked well. Maybe it has changed, I don't know.

For the gastro pub. That explains in a way why there is a normal a la carte menu too. After all it is a pub, and up until recently I doubt that they had the ability to solely rely on those wanting a tasting menu (which is so generous that they probably lose money on it). Thus, you have to understand why they serve slightly simpler dishes on the alc. To say alc isn't decent is quite harsh, at least when I look back at my experiences with it.

Even with a parsley sauce that is not to your liking, I doubt that there is even a single gastropub elsewhere that has better fish, or cooks it this precisely. As much as I love the HArwood Arms for instance, they have certainly great game, but lack fish of a similar quality.

Well, anyways just wanted to point those out to you.

Best,

Felix

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Valerie Ferman
27/3/2012 05:08:40 am

Again, very interesting review. I have eaten at this pub, and to be truthful I thought it was a triumph of good press over reality. I thought the food was mediocre, and the price top heavy for an out of London venue. I loathed the toilets (1950's cold damp brick efforts!), and for the prices I do not expect paper napkins, or tripping to the bar for service, and I certainly expect someone to be able to discuss the wine list in intelligent terms, if there isn't sommelier. Overall, despite being local to me, there are plenty of other places I would rather visit. If the a la carte menu isn't expected to be of the same standard as the tasting menu, then they should jolly well advertise that despite the Michelin star prices, it isn't Michelin quality...

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Sir Arthur Strieb Griebling
23/8/2012 01:58:39 am

I think you probably need to try this one again.
Try the slip sole with seaweed instead of cod next time...
...or just accept it and have the tasting menu.
The tasting menu must be one of my top five meals ever.

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Bryan Burrell link
7/4/2013 02:22:48 am

Love reading your reviews, keep up the activity. Re Avruga 'caviar', note that it is NOT caviar, but chopped herring bits. Why well considered restaurants would bother serving this instead of genuine caviar I do not know. Calling it 'caviar' is misleading, maybe dishonest. Just like truffle oil!

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