The Greenhouse

A very pleasant place always attended by nice people and providing deliciuos food ! Typical british and european cuisine with superb service!

I can’t find a single flaw with the Greenhouse. I just can’t. The style has changed over the years — but that’s more to do with the fact that the second Michelin star made it less business-​focused and more Special Occasion Destination… (not that it wasn’t luxe to begin with). The food is just SO perfect (and knocks Ducasse, with his risible three stars at the Dorchester, out of the game). Fresh, innovative, modern, delicious — French, but with very broad horizons. But this aside, everything is just done so well: nearly every table has eyes out. The lighting is perfect. Service impeccable. The acoustics are wonderful (let’s hear it for actual tablecloths!). It feels like a secret location, in a garden in the middle of Mayfair. This is a REALLY special place — made even more special by the fact people actually dress for dinner…

This restaurant deserves 3 Michelin starts; 2 stars just don’t serve it justice! Compared to its 2 star peers (Marcus, Hibiscus, the Ledbury…) the service here is outstanding, and the food is just beyond words. Been there twice, can’t wait to go back.

What a great meal my friends and I had at The Greenhouse. The setting is very serene and the staff is great, more about that later on in the review.
The best option is to go with the tasting menu. There are two options. First you can go with the confirmed tasting menu and know what you will be eating, or you can roll the dice and go with the discovery menu. The catch is if one person at the table wants the discovery menu, the whole table will have to order the discovery menu. The kitchen will make substitutions on items for allergies or preferences. My cousin does not like pork, so for one of the dishes Chef Arnaud switch the iberico pork with lamb.
The meal started with canapés of beef tartare and a tart that tasted like chips and guacamole. Both were delicious and perfect starters.
The meal continues with bread service. This is where we all got very happy because there are so many options and the bread is so good. My go to was the chestnut puff pastry and the chorizo cheese roll, which I got seconds of.
The first dish was crab underneath a mint jelly topped with a cauliflower purée. My friend was so excited to have this dish because it was her favorite from her last visit 2 years ago. There is rich crab flavor with a hint of mint and ginger. The small cubes of apples really brought needed sweetness to the dish. Unfortunately there were 2 small pieces of cartilage in my dish.
Next was scallop marinated in yuzu topped with a tomato jelly and lemon grass. This was a very unique dish. The scallops were sweet and the jelly was tart. The added lemon grass gave it the needed crunch and texture to make the dish work.
Next was my favorite of the night, which was lobster with a grapefruit coulis topped with a tarragon lobster vanilla foam. First off, the lobster was perfectly cooked. The foam was savory and descendant. This created the perfect mix of highs and lows on my pallets. The grapefruit added the tart to the savory and the slice of grapefruit broke apart with the fork like a piece of fish, that cooking technique was very impressive.
Next were fried morels served up with fried country bread topped with a pork spread. The cook on the morels resembled meat. The fried bread… outstanding tasted like a churro, just awesome.
Next up was a very unique dish. An egg yolk marinated in soy sauce, sitting within a potato emulsion, topped with black truffle. Given the fact that this was topped with 4 generous slices of black truffle, I just couldn’t dig the dish. The texture was all soft and even though the yolk added richness, it was all too watery for me. This is where we got to know the staff and they made the dining experience so much fun. Our hostess led this dish off by saying that you are either going to love this dish or hate it. My wife and my best friend liked the dish. My best friend’s fiancé and I did not. Then we got on to the topic of the twitter phenomenon, what color is the dress. Wouldn’t you know that my wife and best friend saw the dress blue/​black, and my best friend’s fiancé and I saw the dress white/​gold. I guess we have a different perspective on things. Then my best friend thought it would be a good idea to ask the staff what they thought and not all saw the same colors, so they got into it with each other. It was pretty funny and the they were good sports to play along.
Next came the poached dover sole with yellow beet purée and red beet shoots. The dover was perfectly poached and the yellow purée was very tasty.
The last savory dish was the iberico pork with onions, soy and cardamom. The cook was medium rare and the dish was very delicious. My second favorite dish of the night.
The meal ended with a bevy of dessert dishes that were as tasty as they looked like works of art.
After 4 hours we had a great time and had a true foodventure.

What a place — outstanding in the quality of food, remarkable when it comes to the type of service and a wonderful place to have a business dinner as well as a romantic dinner with a beautiful woman ;)
We — unfortunately — did not have a romantic dinner but an exclusive business dinner and it was special for sure.
We took the tasting menu, a choice to recommend to everybody, starting with a
— beef tartare with truffels (lovely!)
— followed by a scallop with a cauliflower crème/​sauce — special because of the combination of the scallop and the groundy taste of cauliflower
— followed by a brill filet, steamed to the point with a well seasoned seashore salad
— this was followed by the foie gras, which I usually love, but this was unfortunately accompanied by hazelnuts, which covered the loveliness of the foie gras taste too much, also was the foie grow too stringy for the expected quality
— then came the pigeon breast, lovely colored, very well seasoned for some of the people at our table a little bit too red, but for me perfect
— an Apple sorbet for the finish with cider espuma — grand
All of the dishes looked beautiful as one would not expect differently at such a place. For the excellent coffee we had (twice) a wonderful selection of petit four.
As a wine we have chosen for the starters a Sancerre Alphonse Mellot, 2005 — outstanding, for the second half we went onwards to a Chilenian Puente Alto, Almaviva, 1998.
The service was excellent, even though some of the description of the various courses, were hard to understand ;)
All in all, a wonderful place with a extreme high standard — but exactly because of that only four stars due to the foie gras.

My sister’s recent birthday gave me the perfect excuse to explore another of London’s fine dining restaurant
It’s located in Mayfair, the most expensive property on the London Monopoly board and quite rightly so, housing some of the capital’s most exclusive hotels, designer shops and restaurants. The Greenhouse is however tucked away in a quiet residential street, which is currently partly obscured by scaffolding
I do like the fact that the restaurant is a bit recessed from the main street as the walkway into the restaurant is along a nicely lit walkway and your excitement is built up as you see diners in the restaurant through the large windows
The atmosphere is fine dining in the décor and service, including a hand made individual sculptures on the tables. However, it is definitely not stiff or starchy and we had a great time joking with our waiters all evening as we enjoyed our meal
There’s a choice of a la carte, regular tasting menu and special tasting menu. As it’s autumn, the special tasting menu concentrated on mushroom including truffle. Sis chose the special tasting menu, which would have been my choice too
We had some canapes to munch on while making our choice, always a nice touch. A nice bowl of amuse bouche soup also arrived as an extra course before the menu began
1. Ceps, foie gras, praline
Arrived as a surprise presentation — layered into a glass, there were hot and cold layers of umami-​laden contrasting light layers of mushroom layers. Wonderful and probably my favourite dish of the evening
2. Shimeji, hand of Buddha, Mediterranean prawns, coriander
Fininshed off at the table with a pour of deep seafood veloute, the sweet prawns stood up well against the earthier accompaniments
3. White truffle, fregola sarda, parmesan
White truffle was the most expensive ingredient we had this meal and it was served with al dente fregola sarda, which is a toasted giant couscous. Sis and I were a little disappointed with our first taste of white truffle. We got more truffle flavour with other dishes
4. Girolles, turbot, Vin Jaune, Spinach
I do like turbot, especially as it’s not readily available to home cooks. This dish delivers this firm fish with classic partners and was a classic triumph
5. Black truffle, chicken, button mushrooms, conchiglioni
The chicken breast was evenly cooked and moist — I suspect it was cooked sous vide. The chef has elevated the humble chicken to take its place among most illustrious ingredients and it wasn’t embarrassed
6. Pomegranate, coconut, meringue
A small bowl of nice palate cleanser before dessert
7. Black truffle, Manjari chocolate, Gianduja, Tonka bean
I love the little ‘mushrooms’ on the plate, giving a nod to the special star ingredient of this tasting menu. Nice end to the meal
We got some nice petit fours with the bill
A nice venue to celebrate my sister’s birthday