377. Andy Low & Slow Takeover At Le Petit Bois

 

  The proprietors of Le Petit Bois were taking a month’s break and the Moseley restaurant had been taken over for their period of absence by Andy Stubbs of Andy Slow & Low. I was meeting an old friend and we thought it would be a good idea to ‘go French’ and since he lived a short distance from Moseley we decided to meet up at Le Petit Bois. On making the reservation, we discovered the change of chef and cuisine but that seemed satisfactory given that Andy Low & Slow is well thought of and I’ve experienced his cooking before.

  It turned out to be disappointing and all a little odd. There was a choice of three starters - two variants of fresh oysters and a dip of a cheese and spicy pepper. The dip was fine but hardly exhilarating and seemed like something I could have whipped up at home in next to no time. What was odd was that it was served with what were undoubtedly Ritz crackers. I’ve never been to a restaurant and been served Ritz biscuits before. It just seemed too lazy. Perhaps some fresh bread would have made the dish look like a professional had prepared it but this did not seem like a good start.

  For the main course I was thrilled to choose smoked sausage and chicken gumbo. This took me back, more years than I care to think about, to a trip to New Orleans and dining on gumbo one night and jambalaya another night and walking past the numerous bars on Bourbon Street and listening to the jazz that drifted out from the open doors,; what excitement. The gumbo served by Andy Low & Slow was edible enough but really quite disappointing. The only real spiciness seemed to come from the sausage, the chicken was lacking in flavour and the sauce was thin and uninteresting. The cornbread which eventually appeared was powerfully prawn flavoured - it reminded me of the bread served at 670 Grams, where I attended a 670 Grams x Andy Low & Slow collaboration last year. The bread’s texture was lovely but, unlike the rest of the meal, the flavour was just too powerful for me to find enjoyable. I felt at the end of it all, that I could have cooked a better gumbo than this at home.

  My dining companion was pleased with the six impressively large langoustines he was served and to add some carbohydrate he ordered a plate of tender, charred leeks served with beans. The dish looked exciting but tasted fairly ordinary. For dessert I ordered the only available item on that part of the menu which was buttermilk pie (which I forgot to photograph). The pie looked neat and the custard was a nice consistency but, for me, a little over-sweet. The pastry was very humdrum and certainly did not rise above that achievable by a middling home cook.

  It’s always hard to record a list of disappointments when one considers the time a chef has invested in preparing their dishes but this was not a cheap meal and for the price I would have expected something a little more exciting and accomplished and I really found it depressing that Ritz crackers were used with the dip. This was one of those meals which really did not live up to my expectations.