Gordon Ramsey’s York & Albany

First went to this restaurant about a year and I absolutely loved it. I met up with a friend of mine in Camden and after a few pints we ended up at Gordon Ramsey’s gastro pub. It made an excellent first impression – great surroundings, not uncomfortably posh but better than your average gastro-pub with an impressive menu and polite but not ‘in your face’ staff. The food was excellent, my mate and I shared the Côte de boeuf with a selection of garnish for two (it could have been the exact same dish that is on the menu right now for £48 for two) – what an amazing value. A year on I decided to take my boyfriend with me to the celeb-chefs Camden brunch again to see what’s new. We decided to go on the budget menu which here is called Early Supper and it is available every day between 6-7pm for £18/2 courses and £21/3 courses. 

We chose to have the full experience – 3 courses each. And how bloody fantastic they were. The BF had the smoked haddock and horseradish scotch egg with tartare sauce – absolutely delicious, it had nothing to do with your average and rather revolting scotch egg from a super market. What a brilliant combination of ingredients. My starter was the chicken liver foie gras, thick, crème mousse of liver pâté with a piquant chutney – I could honestly say it was divine and I don’t use that word often.  So far so good, we were excitedly sipping our house white – told you we were on a budget – when our mains arrived. 

He was having Roast salmon, chicory jam, savoy cabbage, baby turnips – it was nice, very tasty salmon indeed but I’m still convinced that my main was the number one dish that night. Parmesan gnocchi, field mushrooms cream, truffle butter sauce – even the sound of it makes me want to go on Toptable and hit the booking button again for tonight. No kidding, it was that good. The leading flavour in the dish was the truffle butter sauce – it complemented yet not overpowered the dish. The gnocchi had the parmesan flavour as promised and the field mushroom cream was something I just had to clear from my plate using the leftover bread – not a fine diner’s behaviour I must admit but what you gonna do? Leave it there? No chance. Screw elitist table manners when you’ve got such damn good food on your plate. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough of it I must say and I don’t usually eat too much but I could have had a bit more of that…Mainly because it was really good but portions were a bit on the small side. 

Desserts were good but as much as I love chocolate puddings the dark chocolate ganache proved to be a bit too…thich, bitter and dark chocolaty for my taste. It did come with caramelised bananas and honeycomb which was a nice sweet touch and some powder sprinkled on the dish that tasted suspiciously like ginger. BF went for the ricotta and lemon cheesecake which was a significantly better choice which I of course I was not willing to admit at the time.

I won’t bother with official ratings and things like that here, I think you get the idea anyway – it’s a brilliant place based in Camden, perfect starting point of Friday night.