Poached rock oysters,watercress jelly,beetroot
If you happen to stumble upon this post, you probably like eating. Eating is one of the biggest pleasures in life for me too and since I went to my first gastronomic restaurant more than 12 years ago(2* Apicius in Paris), gastronomy has become a big part of my life. Like everything in life, tastes evolve and I've realized that with time I started appreciating more simplicity to complexity. But to achieve that simplicity worth being called high end gastronomy, one has to use great quality products. What can be better than 4 year old Comté cheese shavings simply sprinkled over with fresh black truffle ,or a sweet potato from Amazon with Béarnaise sauce? If it's not high end gastronomy, then what is it?
Cévennes onions, pear shavings
I heard a lot about Hedone before having a lunch there; that Hedone's chef, Mikael Jonsson is a blogger and a lawyer turned chef and that he is ingredients obsessed. I think that nowadays no respectable restaurant would get away with bad quality ingredients, but what i really liked about what i saw on the Hedone plates is the respect to those ingredients.
Steamed wild Dorset turbot, cockles, dill
Extremely fresh oysters on slightly iodic watercress jelly were just perfect so as the almost raw lobster with pomegranates and artichokes. In fact it was one of the best lobsters I've ever had in my life, it was not chewy or dry and it's flesh married nicely with the sweetness of the pomegranate juice.
Lobster with artichokes and pomegranate
Pan fried live Poole shrimps, lemon "mayonnaise"
Because no egg yolk was used, the lemon mayonnaise served with the pan fried shrimps had a very light texture; there was no cream in between the apple millefeuille pastry sheets, just slightly cooked apples. In that sense, Mikael Jonsson's cooking is very Japanese, where subtraction is more valued than addition.
But let's leave all the philosophy behind - most of all ,the food at Hedone was delicious. And this is what counts to me.
Apple millefeuille, caramel ice cream
Mikael Jonsson
