L’ortolan at Shinfield - Restaurant Review

Reading’s application for city status states the town is home to ‘Michelin Star restaurants’. Perhaps those responsible for awarding civic honours are less pernickety than I am, but the fact is that it’s not. Reading is home to a single Michelin star restaurant.

For 10 years L’ortolan has, according to Michelin, been the one twinkle in Reading’s supposed culinary blackout, and to mark this anniversary the restaurant is offering diners a taste of why they’ve held on to the award for so long.

Sitting on a podium in L’ortolan’s entrance hall is Executive Chef Alan Murchison’s own contribution to the coffee table gastro-porn epidemic, Food for Thought. It’s a record not only of Alan’s astounding weight loss (he runs, a lot), but also of the cooking that built and retained his restaurant’s star. The only way to taste many of these dishes now is to cook them, so those without a spare week or two will be pleased to hear the celebrations involve dipping into the memoirs. Offered Tuesday to Thursday evenings, three courses are £45 – a snip by Michelin standards.

If a more archetypical purveyor of all things Michelin than L’ortolan exists in this country then it escapes me (and having eaten 47 Stars since last July it must be trying very hard). A grand Georgian vicarage in the heart of Shinfield village conceals cloths laden with gleaming glassware.

Turquoise chargers are whipped away by waiters who glide over lush carpets, racing to refold the silkiest of linen napkins or deliver dainty dishes with the grandest formal flourish.

That ‘daintiness’, by the way, isn’t a polite way of saying ‘stingy’ – L’ortolan do a good line in freebies. Today, a single tortellini of truffled ricotta with spinach purée, three types of home-baked bread (ask for seconds), and, direct from Alan’s book, dinky cones of vanilla ice cream.

Much of their repertoire involves reassessment of the familiar as opposed to bacon and eggs in the dessert, snails in porridge or some other silliness.

Duck? We’ve all tried duck, right? Well, not like this. Created in 2005, this foie gras ‘sandwich’ involves wafers of crisp gingerbread concealing smoked duck slithers, tangy cherry compote and a lozenge of foie gras.

Lamb? Been there, done that, yes? Well in 2003 L’ortolan were pairing lamb rump with purée of smoked aubergine, home-roasted tomatoes, chickpeas and cous cous. And while L’ortolan didn’t create Peach Melba in 2001 (Escoffier did in 1892) they did bring it up to date, adding vanilla cheesecake, a lemon sorbet, peach and raspberry purées and fruit, both poached and raw.

I’ve not mentioned Thai nage and sea bream (2002), crab lasagne with curried mussels (2004), or strawberry marshmallow (2010). Not because I’m a Michelin-obsessed loner eating on my own. No, it’s because I brought a vegetarian with me!

While her menu was without historical note it was not without culinary note – beetroot and goats cheese with black olive; fregola with pickled fennel, artichokes, sauce vierge and orange zest puree; then strawberries, elderflower panna cotta, honey comb and crème fraîche.

I’m sorry to have shattered visions of Reading as a hotbed for Michelin dining, but it’s my hope that flagging-up a £45, three-course opportunity to be reminded of why a restaurant has held down a star for 10 years will be more than enough compensation.

BOOK A TABLE

L’ortolan

Church Lane, Shinfield,

Reading, Berks RG2 9BY

01189 888 500

www.lortolan.com

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• Comment by: kevinhazel1 01 August 2011 - 10:28

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