So, as part of my month-long birthday celebration, Niamh and I went to Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant for sushi.
We were, honestly, a bit worried at first; we’d bought it as a “Red Letter Days” voucher, and when we got there and explained this, there was a certain amount of “er, we don’t know how to deal with that” and barely concealed snootiness at us having a voucher like the terrible commoners we are and so on. And that got combined with us saying that Niamh is both vegetarian (well, she eats fish, otherwise we wouldn’t have been in a sushi place, of course) and gluten-free, at which there was further barely-concealed snootiness at first. But, they got over it. And quite well, too; the remainder of the evening, the staff were the souls of courtesy, and that helped a lot; good one the Maze.
We were having the seven-course tasting menu. I approve of this idea.
Of course, we did the shameful Instagram thing and took pictures of all the courses.
Free glass of champagne! Actually, two free glasses; they seemed to think that Niamh was 18. However, she doesn’t like it, so that’s two free glasses for the birthday boy.
Kani snow crab, wakame, wasabi
Hiramasa: kingfish, pecan nut, red onion vinaigrette. (I really liked the crunch of the pecans in this. Will steal this idea.)
Spicy tuna tartare, chilli garlic, yuzu avocado, wonton crisps. (We have decided that it ought to be possible to do a whole meal with the courses served inside a fruit.)
Chef’s sushi platter: from left, wasabi, pickled ginger (which I again ate a bunch of in one go after Niamh lied and told me it was chilli garlic, which it was not), salmon, kingfish, sea bass, tuna, crab, tuna. The crab was the nicest; Niamh’s is pictured with puffed rice and mine had little wheat strips.
Suckling pig belly, crackling, mandarin salad, pork jus. Of course, Niamh didn’t have this, and instead had:
Fish (of some kind, we can’t remember) with radish salad and cream sauce
Mango with lime and shichimi pepper is what the menu says, but I’m not sure that’s what this was. It was a sort of mango foam as a palate cleanser, and was delicious.
Then a cool thing happened. They brought out a dish of lemons, and then poured water into it; it turned out it was a dish of lemons and solid carbon dioxide pellets, meaning that we had boiling clouds of dry ice flowing all over the table, and we were massively impressed. Also took the opportunity to revise what “sublimation” is in preparation for Niamh’s chemistry GCSE in a couple of months.
Lemon pie with Italian meringue and passionfruit sorbet.
Niamh’s passionfruit meringue with lemon and lime curd (since lemon pie has pastry in)
We like the Maze. Nice work, restaurant team. More sushi for us.