I have got my just desserts
Allow me, then, to introduce five glorious courses of pudding. Each one is a joyous occasion in it's own right; the combined effort is an exercise in supreme and heartfelt harmony.
This is the degustation dessert menu at The Grove. To embark on it is to abandon all preconceptions about dining out.
Degustation sounds like such a dirty word, when all it really means is 'tasting'. Clearly, a neighbouring diner is concerned about its true interpretation; he is on his cellphone asking what it means. He should have been brave enough to try, and thus treat himself to a succession of treats, courtesy of head chef and chief magician Sid Sahrawat.
In the interests of keeping up with the Johnses, the Duke will embark on a degustation menu – the vegetarian one. He will get eight courses ($100 without wine); I (a high) five, at $50 without wine.
It is as much about timing as it is taste. Each course here – both savoury and sweet – is a well-paced and supremely balanced amplification of what went before.
It is unkind to single out any particular dish when all perform so perfectly. But space only allows the mention of a favoured few: the outrageously triumphant tortellini of goat's cheese and chives with smoked beetroot and peas for him; the precociously gifted roquefort cheesecake for myself; the velouté of cauliflower with porcini powder (his) that I could not say no to.
Great food alone is not good enough if the service and surrounds fall down. What I like about dining at The Grove is the reassurance that we will be treated as adults, by adults. It is a warm and considerate and, genuinely, a location of great occasion – whatever your reason for being there. A capacious wine list is offered. It is a place for grown-ups – and it is only a pity that some of the guests can't dress up too.
A wine merchant of considerable expertise and taste stops by. He raves about the place even more than I have. He extols the delights of Sarawat's signature dish of ostrich – which we have got ourselves similarly excited about.
To go to The Grove is to dine in complete confidence; to do the degustation is divine.
