Keepers House, Peyton & Byrne, Royal
Academy, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
25/02/2014
She said: When I heard of a dedicated
vegetarian menu every Tuesday at the Royal Academy’s new restaurant I
immediately booked a table for the opening night. The sensation of walking
through the Academy courtyard long after the galleries have closed is truly
magical. A modest door to the side of the main entrance and a trip down an
inconspicuous flight of stairs revealed a warren of rooms including a buzzing,
cosy bar and a sleek, contemporary dining space. We were shown to our table and
presented with a glass of champagne each which got me very excited about the
culinary wonders to come. The vegetarian set menu, at £35 per head, was
essentially a series of six small plates with mostly earthy tasting vegetables
presented as works of art. The food did indeed look beautiful and tasted very
fresh and I really liked the fact it wasn’t soaked in oils or powdered with
salt which so many other places do. We were able to take our time over each
course and enjoy the setting. I did enjoy the experience but at the same time
don’t think I would go back. Each course was interesting, enjoyable and
contrasted nicely between them; the service was good; the price okay for the
setting and specialist nature of the evening but it didn’t blow me away. These
days, vegetarian food does blow your mind and there was something just a bit
too purist about the food here. It’s a bit like watching a technically
brilliant ballet dancer but not connecting with the story she’s telling.
Anyway, in short, check it out once.
He said: The waiter should only ever
approach my table with small plates of cutesy nosh when it’s Chef sending it
for free to keep us calm between courses. If it’s actually meant to be one of
the courses then my mood blackens instantly, just like the skies over Wimbledon
on an English summer’s day. That kind of refinement (‘my cooking is so amazing
that you only need a spoonful because it will knock you off your chair and you
won’t be able to eat more once you’re on the floor’) is entirely lost on me.
Maybe I’m just a brute. Or maybe years of eating spicy curry and chugging
whisky has numbed my taste buds to anything but slap-you-in-the-face flavours.
Whatever it is, there is nothing I dislike more in a restaurant than tiny
portions. All that alchemy from Keeper’s House, the heirloom carrots, the foamy
this and that’s, might have been genius, but the first thing on my mind is not
that Chef is the Caravaggio of Carrots, but that some miserly bean-counter has
decreed that for the business to succeed each diner must be served no more than
127 micrograms of potatoes and one iota of polenta. For me going out to eat is
as much about the generosity, the devil-may-care abundance, as it is about the
skill. I want to go in hungry, and I want to come out satiated; obviously I’d
like to experience awesome flavours, etc. but the priorities will forever be in
that order. There are some good things about Keeper’s House, and the cooking
might be one of them, but you’ll have to read what She said to find out about
that. I did like the location of Keeper’s House, and that it offers a veggie
tasting menu. But if eating at the Royal Academy I will always opt for the much
more interesting space of The Restaurant and its more laid back, more generous
cooking.
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