La Trompette represented a belated Valentine’s Day dinner for me – it had been a stressful week, the complications of which meant that Tuesday the 14th had been off limits. Happily (a secret happiness stemming from a healthy disregard for all things overly smoochy), this meant dinner on a Saturday and a better, busier atmosphere, not hopeless couples mooning at each other across a bottle of prosecco.
The happiness I felt increased slightly upon having my coat taken from me at the door – a welcome touch, and one you don’t get as often as you should. We picked an excellent bottle of Portuguese white, had some bread and oil and hung around (a little too long) for our starters.
When they arrived, though, they were more than alright – Jessie’s salmon ballotine came with buoyant globs of caviar and crème fraiche, all perched happily together on and around the centrepiece. I enjoyed immensely my tagliatelle with capocollo (little weeny drops of cured shoulder of ham) – it was dressed with purple sprouting broccoli and was neither too large, so I’m filled up, nor too small, so I’m ravenous again by my main course, a trick pasta-based starters often fail to accomplish.
When it came to the mains, it was a triumph of colour rather than taste, I think. I had roast middle pork with morteau sausage and, appropriately, trompettes (the mushroom, not the instrument, fnaar fnaar). All this made the plate a picture of fiery reds and blacks, an extremely attractive sight. In terms of flavour, however, I felt it fell a little short; the white pork and extremely dark, smoky sausage set each other off well, but the liquid on the plate was a little too sweet and the mushroom a little too bland.
The sea bass on the other side of the table was marginally lacking too, although m’colleague enjoyed it more than I. Hers was a blend of greens and whites, making our belated Valentine’s dinner a very pretty picture. (In terms of the food, I stress.) Dessert was a good fondant – wet, sticky – and several unpronounceable Swiss cheeses with quince. The restaurant, for better or worse, does a stonking trade in slipping in little details to ratchet up the price; in providing us with a separate dessert wine list with our dessert menus, they were effectively saying, “If you don’t spend another £14 now, you’ll never live it down.”
Not that it mattered – La Trompette was a solid, serviceable celebratory dinner, without ever really managing to be stratospherically good. It just does what it does, very well.
3 courses with wine – c. £120
8/10
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