Foliage

My second restaurant week foray was Foliage. Foliage is a very swanky place inside the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel, and I read all about its design going in, particularly how the wait staff picks leaves in the morning from Hyde Park and puts them under the glass plates.

That was true.

The service was spectacular, with a head waiter for every table basically just hanging out and filling our water and whatnot. The food was also very good, but we're going to say the Michelin star was due in large part to design and service as well. It was a little surprising that a restaurant this swanky was amuse bouche-less. That's retrospectively quite upsetting. I guess that leaf counts.

So to start was the warm calves head terrine/picallili/speck/watercress.


This was not bad but not as good as my entree, the lamb neck / olive mash / sweetbreads / pepper. The lamb neck was super tender and delicious, and the glazed sweetbreads were like little bits of happiness.


My mom had Mackerel/Escabeche/Aubergine/Parsley, which was a surprisingly mackerel fishy I thought, but the little onion rings on top - phenomenal!

For dessert, I did the Stilton/Port/Poached Pears/Honey Jelly. Very good as well.
and my mom had the Chocolate Fondant/Amaretto Parfait/Pearl Barley Sorbet