It has been a while since we wanted to go back to Maze, one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, located in The London Hotel, Midtown. We wanted to go there for a simple reason: the beef Wellington that is one of the dishes cooked on the Chef's TV show Hell's Kitchen, a dish that triggers a lot of yelling from the Chef.
When the entered the hotel, it was unclear where the restaurant was, no plaque visible and the place looked like an hotel bar at first. In fact I should have looked at the ceiling that represents a maze...
The menu that has some French influence was really mouth watering and I did not know what to order, between the caviar deviled eggs, the duck confit tater tots or the crab cakes. So we went for the scallops. Similar to the Wellington, the scallops are a recurring appetizer on the show that causes the Chef to yell at the contestants, especially when they end up being rubbery.
The scallops, nicely seared, were served with a delicious carrot and ginger purée (lots of ginger) and a bacon marmalade that added a wonderful smokiness to the dish. I definitely recommend this dish.
Then came our beef Wellington:
You order it for two people, with two sides of your choice, but it can probably be shared by three persons.
The meat was very good: tender, juicy and tasty, coated with a mushroom duxelle and foie gras. It was served with a Madeira wine sauce that was delicious and added some more decadence to the dish.
For our sides, we chose the sautéed wild mushrooms with truffle butter and the French fries with herbs and shaved parmesan.
The sides were a bit disappointing, especially the mushrooms. Don't get me wrong: they were good, but I did not taste at all the truffle butter. The fries were crispy, but having these big slices of parmesan was a bit odd as not heavenly distributed on the fries.
Then of course, we could not leave without trying their desserts. This choice was not driven by the show this time as they very rarely make desserts. The menu was apparently new, representing different seasons. We opted for the chocolate decadence, a dense and very chocolatey cake served with salted caramel and a milk sorbet.
I think the name of the dessert suits it: it was definitely decadent and you cannot stop eating! I loved the addition of the salted caramel that paired perfectly with the dark chocolate. This is definitely a dessert I recommend.
The second dessert we ordered was simply called Apple. It was apparently their take on a tarte tatin, the classic French dessert.
This dessert was composed of an apple bombe, apple compote and apple tatin ice cream, with a bit of caramel. Although very refreshing, I only liked the ice cream and the crumbles under. It missed a bit of the buttery taste that I was expecting.
Then, we got a surprise: more desserts on the house. It followed my discussion at the end of the meal with our waiter, Vincent, who wondered if I was working in the restaurant industry, as I was not only taking pictures, but asking questions about the dish. I explained that I was a blogger. Asking then if we were celebrating something, I explained that, once a month, we celebrate the 8th as that is the day we got married.
The first dessert was a sort of hazelnut mousse that was superb, especially if, like me, you love hazelnut desserts. The second one was on the menu: the gingerbread.
The gingerbread dessert is a celebration to Autumn and a take on a cheese plate, the bread being of course the gingerbread itself and the cheese being replaced by the cheesecake. Added to that was a walnut ice cream as well as some red wine poached pear and pear pates de fruit. If was good, but I think that the chocolate decadence eclipsed all.
This was definitely a good dinner, very refined, the highs being definitely the beef Wellington and the chocolate decadence, that were a-maze-ing. Would I go back? Probably: there are so many other dishes I would like to try...
Enjoy (I did)!
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