L'Ortolan, Shinfield
ONE visit to L'Ortolan (0734 883783) in Shinfield, just outside Reading, and my faith in English restaurants is restored.
Responsible are John Burton-Race and his French wife, Christine, who have turned an old vicarage off the M4 (exit 11) into what must now be one of the best res- taurants in the country; most definitely `vaut le detour'.
This is the place Nico Ladenis made his infamous retreat from, saying that he could not run a restaurant for people whose preferred aperitif was a gin and tonic. The Burton-Races own up to 'a different approach'. They want to please people, and if drinking gin and tonic gives their customers pleasure they are not going to turn them away or run off to the safer shores of Belgravia to escape them. Their permissive attitude extends to allowing salt and pepper mills on the tables (something Nico not simply baulked at but forbade) and even ashtrays. And you will not be shown the door even if you ask for your meat well done.
John Burton-Race was sous-chef to Raymond Blanc in the old Quat' Saisons in Summertown which Christine fronted.
When M. Blanc moved to the stately Manoir, they stayed to run Le Petit Blanc until, a year ago almost to the day, they took over in Shinfield. L'Ortolan looks much like a serious, old-fashioned res- taurant in France. There is a slightly boudoir touch about the coral interiors; but the pastel peachiness is bolstered up by the blackened wood frames of the well- upholstered chairs and heavy black glass ashtrays — shades of fin-de-siecle opulence rather than urban chic. As welcomingly unfashionable is the unmenacingly assi- duous service provided by a team of discreet and uniformed waitresses padding reassuringly across the carpeted floor.
There are several menus: one for £27.50; a lunch one for £17.50; Sunday lunch £24.50 (all three courses); and a special Sunday menu gourmand, six courses for £36. Naturally all change regularly.
You are given a good long time to study the menu, which is just as well, as some of the descriptions read like prose poems, and long ones at that. Take, for example, a starter from the main menu, the galantine de caneton: `Barbarie duck boned out, the flesh marinated in port and cognac, spiked with nuts and marbled with foie gras, cooked in its skin and served with its own jelly scented with Monbazillac, and a walnut vinaigrette salad'. Foie gras is not something I will normally eat, but I did have a mouthful of this, and it was good. No letters of complaint, please. I know.
If you are having the £27.50, menu, proceed with the poelee de pintadeau, roasted guinea fowl with pig's trotter stuf- fed with the guinea fowl legs, studded with pistachio and cut into rounds, in a smokily sweet gold-brown sauce flavoured with morilles and madeira. A further bonus on the more expensive menu are the souffles for pudding, a hot Grand Marnier soufflé which comes with an orange salad and a tarte soufflee a la rhubarbe, a sand-soft pastry case lined with creme anglaise, topped with rhubarb soufflé and thin strands of rhubarb.
The food on the £17.50 lunch menu is less complicated, as one might expect, but no less good. Start with a sea-sharp mouc- lade au safran, yolk-yellow mussels, julien- nes of root vegetables and scallop quenel- les in a clear soup, deepened with saffron and coriander. Then you could have the lamb fillet, round butter-soft slices, topped with a chicken quenelle, wrapped in its own fat and basil, in a reduction of the cooking juices acidulated with tomato and flavoured with basil — a real, last, smell of summer. There is prettiness in the design — the pink rounds of meat with the green-flecked mousseline and the veget- ables, courgette 'stalks' with 'flowers' of red and yellow peppers — but this is wholesome food, not picture-book fancy. You might end with a gratin of red and white raspberries, with a lozenge of spun- sugar-covered sorbet at its centre and an eau-de-vie-steeped biscuit underneath.
Their wine-list offers good regional wines at around £9 a bottle, though if you are prepared to bump the price up more than a little, choose from a further, all-too- tempting selection of more interesting and grands vins. If you stick to the £17.50 lunch menu and a regional wine, the bill for two, without service though with coffee (a choice of Costa Rican or Colombian) and petits fours, will come to around £50: about £20 more for dinner. To be saved up for, and to be savoured: for this is the best food I've had for far too long.
Nigella Lawson
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