Telephone: 01983 760 331
Address: Quay Street, Yarmouth, Isle of Wight
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £130.
There is something about overstated ambition which I adore. If it's a choice between watching a juggler and a trapeze act, I'll go for the trapeze act every time. Whichever way you cut it, there's always bound to be something more thrilling about a trapeze artist missing a catch than a juggler catching his balls. At least the trapeze artist was brave enough to attempt the stunt. I feel the same way about restaurants. Generally, when I'm eating on my own time, we don't always go for the big ticket places, partly because my wife would leave me if we did and partly because I am not an international drug dealer with money to burn. But if the opportunity presents itself, I'm in there like a shot. I need to know the reality behind that stupidly ambitious menu and those steroid-boosted prices.
Which brings us to the George Hotel right on the waterfront in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. The hungry man standing in the rather grand, echoing lobby can go one of two ways. He can go up to the right where there is a bright and airy brasserie overlooking the sea, where they serve a menu of familiar quirkiness: chicken, pepper and Gorgonzola terrine, rabbit spring rolls with lentil sauce, fillet of bream with green tea noodles - £70 for two all in. Or he can turn left through an austere door in the wall marked only with the word 'Restaurant'.
Well, of course, I had to turn left. The menu outside, in a tight, formal script, had some odd-looking things on it and the price was an eye-popping £45 per head for three courses. Even though that includes service, you need only add a pre-dinner drink, a modest £20 bottle of wine (and there weren't many of those on the list), a dessert wine and water and we're talking £130 for two at least, a lot for outside London. Behind that door they were rigging the trapeze. I booked a table. For one.
The two operations share the same pretty wood-lined bar, and so I started in there being served little nibbles that were not presented to the brasserie folk: a bowl of caramelised cashew nuts and a refreshing slice of raw scallop (described, incorrectly, as tartar) with a tiny dollop of a citrus sorbet. Then I was led across the echoing hallway and through the door.
I have used words like funereal to describe dining rooms before, but this was the real thing. The walls were a deep red with details picked out in a gravestone grey. Heavy curtains cut out any sense of the outside world. There was space for no more than 16 people and, when I was led in, only six others were sitting there. None of them was talking to each other. The only sound was the deathly drone of the air-conditioning unit in the ceiling. I was being led into my own coffin.
Quickly, I was brought an amuse bouche which, in its strengths and failings, would come to sum up the entire meal. It was described to me by one of the young and slightly embarrassed waitresses as an 'oyster with pearls'. At the centre of the bowl lay a perfectly poached, succulent oyster. Clearly there was a team with great technique at work in the kitchen. Technique but little judgment, because the pearls were represented by grains of tapioca in a pale and overly salty broth. I'm sorry, but to me, tapioca has only ever had the consistency of, well, snot. You want to do pearls? Throw in a few grains of caviar. At £45 a head you can stretch to it.
For my starter I had chosen a hot crab soup on a crab jelly which, I was told, was cold; it would have to be or the jelly wouldn't stay set. The pale soup - whisked to a foam - was good and rich, and when the jelly first broke up under its heat, releasing lumps of crabmeat, it was interesting. But soon the jelly made the soup cold and the massive serving just became relentless. Clever but not very nice.
A main course of rabbit brought pale, floppy strips of loin on a soft ravioli of shredded rabbit confit which, in turn, lay on a disc of rabbit mousseline. Again the technique was impressive but the construction was a mess. There was no contrast at all. It was all squelch and sag. It was when I was brought a dish of an Earl Grey tea mousse as a pre-dessert that I realised every single thing I had been served was beige. What's more, I could have eaten most of it by sucking through one of those wide-bore straws that you get at McDonald's.
For pudding, I ordered a trio of chocolate desserts, specifically because it listed a raspberry coulis. I wanted colour. I also liked the sound of the deep-fried chocolate, a witty take, perhaps, on that Glasgow classic the deep-fried Mars bar. Unfortunately, before being fried, the balls of chocolate had been rolled in a crumb so that they were, yes, a dark shade of beige. A sweet white chocolate ice cream was, of course, pale. By asking to replace the chocolate soup, which I didn't fancy, with a chestnut parfait, I had determined that the whole plate would be the colour of one of Prince Charles's safari suits. And the coulis was just a tiny squiggle on the plate. The puddings were, for the record, the most pleasant parts of the meal, though nothing fabulous.
Was it, with a half bottle of Crozes Hermitage, worth the £65 a head? Not with this sort of overwrought food and this kind of eager but amateurish service. By the end I was desperate to hear the sound of happy voices again in the brasserie. The trapeze artist had missed his catch. Oh well. At least he'd had a go.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
