Telephone: 01303 220 444
Address: La Terrasse, Sandgate Hotel, The Esplanade, Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent
Rating: 18.5/20
The subject of this week's review is La Terrasse, Sandgate Hotel, The Esplanade, Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent. Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent... what other names speak so eloquently of bourgeois decencies, propriety and tact? Sandgate, the shining epitome of seaside sobriety; Folkestone, a bastion of Daily Mail Britain; in Kent, its heartland. Most of all, however, I love that word "esplanade". It has magic in it. It has a seemly, orderly ring. It suggests Edwardian elegance, lemon light and the hiss of tidy Channel breakers on a shingle beach.
The Sandgate Hotel, looking out over the esplanade, has all of these qualities. More important, on the evening that Hermione and I stepped out of a howling blizzard that was raging through southern England, it had a blazing wood fire and the kind of seats from which it is difficult to lift yourself, so deeply do you sink into them, so cosseting is their embrace.
But there is nothing showy about the Sandgate Hotel, none of the gimcrackery of five-star flash. Instead, it has all the quiet virtues of respect for the enduring luxury of comfort that you seem to get only with a family-run establishment - or, as is the case with the Sandgate Hotel, a hôtel de famille. Yes, the Sandgate Hotel - and its restaurant, La Terrasse, in particular - are in air and in essence a little corner of France on the very edge of the other side of the Channel.
What other conclusion could you possibly come to when faced with service of such raffish French charm, and with dishes such as coquilles St Jacques po?lées aux truffes noires du Périgord, pomme ratte du Touquet et jus truffé monté au beurre? Monté au beurre (enriched with butter): doesn't that phrase send a shiver of pleasure down to your very withers?
Tron?on de turbot rôtie aux cèpes, sauce à la lie de vin rouge; noisettes de chevreuil, sauce Grand Veneur au chocolat amer et garniture chasse; moelleux "pur Cara?be" Valhrona tiède, crème d'amandes amères et place au café grillé. This is French cooking of a very specific kind, rooted firmly in a region, buffed and burnished to a handsome sheen by the disciplines and standards of the haute cuisine kitchen.
The chef - who is also the co-proprietor along with his wife, Zara - is Samuel Gicqueau, who comes from the Vendée, a place of wind and water. It may be this, or the proximity of the sea on his own doorstep, that accounts for the large proportion of fish dishes on the menu. From among them, Hermione selected the carpaccio de coquilles St Jacques au caviar oscietra, tagliatelle de concombre à la crème fra?che accidulé et ciboulette. I could scarcely contain my excitement at the sight of fricassé d'anguilles, pommes ratte du Touquet écrasée à l'ail et artichaut. Eel, eel, I could sing a hymn to the eel as a fish to eat. Most people squirm at the very thought. I smack my lips in anticipation.
But eel has to be handled carefully. It is a fish of liver-thrashing richness. Unless the fat is cooked out of it, it can taste like greasy blotting paper. This eel had been rendered to a state of crisp perfection. The outside had a light, friable rime that gave way to a succulent, firm flesh of distinctive flavour.
The garlic, artichoke and potatoes provided earthy doo-wah-wah backing to the piscine richness, with a well-moulded chicken stock lubricating the elements.
Hermione's carpaccio of scallops was more refined and, if anything, even richer. It is easy to forget just how filling fish actually is. The surface of a large plate was covered in wavelets of thin, opalescent slices of scallop, which had that penetrating sweetness you get only with very, very fresh shellfish. There had been no stinting with the caviar studding this lagoon of scallops, which was sprinkled with sea salt that crunched agreeably between the teeth. In fact, the dish would have been too salty had it not been for the bland but crunchy tagliatelle of cucumber.
From there, she progressed on to the noisettes of venison with the classically appropriate red wine-based sauce Grande Veneur that had been given new life and oomph by the addition of chocolate. This was grand cooking. The venison was mellow flavoured, cooked enough not to offend the sensibility that baulks at blood, not over-cooked to make life difficult for the dentally challenged.
If that dish was like the brass section of an orchestra, my canon d'agneau de Romney Marsh rôti, jus simple au romarin et tian de légumes aux saveurs de Provence provided the strings. In the midst of foot-and-mouth mayhem, it was cheering to be reminded just how good British meat is when sourced with care, butchered with skill and cooked with real respect for its qualities. All M. Gicqueau had done was to provide the lamb with the accompaniments to show off its herbal sweetness, depth of flavour and natural tenderness. The gravy was a superb example of self-effacing support, its own balance helping to bring out the shining quality of the meat, and the vegetables robust enough to bring a change of direction without upsetting the equilibrium of the whole.
If ever a dinner called for a pudding, this was it: for me, the chocolate and almond cream thingy proved irresistible, while Hermione cleared her palate with pomme soufflé au calvados, beurre de cidre au pommeau et son croustillant glacé. Both of these dishes were on a par with what had gone before, and very quickly went the same way.
It's not often these days that I come across a menu on which I want to eat every dish, but I would have happily permed any of the seven first courses, seven main courses and five puddings, and still come out purring.
As befits such a place, the wine list is also almost exclusively French - well, the most serious part of it is, anyway - but when those wines are of such consistent excellence, why on earth would you complain? They go exceptionally well with the dishes. Certainly our bottle of Alain Graillot's Crozes-Hermitage stood up with great elegance and force to the battering our dishes gave it, and was worth every one of its 29 pounds. On top of that, we had a glass of this and that, water and such, so that the liquid element of the bill came to £46. The food came to £92, and so the total was £138.
Now, £138 is more than a day's wages where I come from, but finding French cooking in England of such quality is rarer than an Andy Cole goal in an England shirt.
· Open Lunch, Wed-Sun, 12.15-1.30pm; dinner, Tues-Sat, 7.15-9.30pm Menus Midweek lunch/dinner, £22 for three courses; Friday dinner-Sunday lunch, £31 for five courses. Cards All major credit cards. Wheelchair access (no wheelchair WC).
