Restaurants

Aubergine is a pretty restaurant, intimate without feeling cramped, welcoming by day, soothing and flatteringly low-lit by night. It’s a firm hit with Chelsea locals and you’ll need to book at popular times, especially since lunch remains one of the best-value haute cuisine deals in London. William Drabble has headed the kitchen for ten years and his sound grasp of classic French cooking is blended with tenacious sourcing of fine British ingredients. Offal is a passion. Expect cooking that is seasonal, varied and skilfully executed, but also eschews passing fads in favour of a studied and occasionally challenging style. This is food for food-lovers rather than restaurant-goers. Our meal started deliciously with a plate of tender snails in red wine, heartily garnished with frizzled bacon, truffle dust and boudin blanc. Different but equally lovely were sweet scallops on a tangy pool of gingered apple sauce. Though a main course fillet of dry aged beef with celeriac purée, seared foie gras and Madeira jus was perfect, things went badly wrong with our other choice, advertised as roast saddle and confit leg of rabbit with various trimmings. What actually arrived, after a good half an hour’s wait, was something that could easily have been saddle of a somewhat tame rabbit – on pan-fried calf’s liver. When we questioned this we were told that the rabbit legs hadn’t been delivered that day. An apology was forthcoming, and a glass of dessert wine later on, but that’s not enough. Did the staff simply serve the wrong meal and hope we wouldn’t know the difference between rabbit legs and calf’s liver? We weren’t impressed. Service was on the panicky side too. New restaurant manager, Jean Kessler, has his work cut out.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008