This week's Restaurant of the Week is the Michelin-starred Latymer at country manor hotel Pennyhill Park in Bagshot, Surrey.
Pennyhill Park is one of Surrey's most remarkable hotels. Set in more than 120 acres of park lands, the Exclusive Hotels-owned property features its own golf course and impressive spa as well as 123 beautifully decorated rooms.
Two restaurants provide sustenance to visitors: an informal brasserie serving comforting classics and the more formal Michelin-starred Latymer Restaurant, which bears the name of head chef Michael Wignall.
Best known for his five-year stint as executive chef at the Devonshire Arms Hotel in Yorkshire, where he held a Michelin star for four years, Wignall joined Pennyhill Park at the end of 2007, stepping into the shoes of former executive chef Andrew Turner, who left to set up the Landau restaurant at London's Langham hotel.
The Latymer is a 50-seat dining with interiors featuring dark wooden wall panels alongside green banquettes and steamed glass screens separating tables.
Wignall serves a set menu of three-courses at £58 as well as a ten-course tasting menu at £78. He describes his cooking style as "complex and carefully crafted". "While the style is technical and the presentations elaborate, the food itself is not intimidating, having its roots in familiar classical themes," he says.
Starters include scallops, slow cooked octopus préssé and baby squid served with a lobster powder, carrot sorbet, watercress pesto and shell fish biscuit; next to open ravioli of quail with duck liver, spring truffles, "petit pois à la française", morel mushroom, glazed comté and chorizo oil; and pork belly cooked for 24 hours with calves sweetbread, smoked eel beignet, celeriac pureé, bacon crisp and Jeres jus.
Main courses are equally elaborate and feature fillet of red mullet with a cassoulet of razor clams, baby squid and soft herbs, scallops, puffed tapioca and bouillabaisse velouté; poached loin of rabbit with langoustines, spring truffles, butternut squash risotto, baby turnips and Madeira jus; and slow cooked suckling pig with crispy ears, white asparagus, roast globe artichoke, buttered cos lettuce, deep fried consommé and lavender jus.
All of Wignall's dishes display a perfect balancing act with the many ingredients he uses including the desserts which feature combinations such as strawberries, lychees, marscarpone mousse, cream cheese frosting and strawberry sorbet; and tiramisu parfait, coffee tagliatelle, muscovado foam, cappuccino cup, honey ice cream.
Three courses £85; nine-course tasting menu £78 (coffee and petite fours £5)
Pennyhill Park Hotel, London Road, Bagshot, Surrey GU19 5EU; Tel: 01276 471774
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