In Blog 519 I bemoaned a dull evening in November 2025 of middling food at a fundraising banquet held at the second or third rank hotel, the Park Regis, on Broad Street at Five Ways. The food was not actually bad - for instance the chef had negotiated the difficulties of cooking chicken satisfactorily - but it was all so dull. I concluded that when asked to go along to a banquet - be it for a good cause or not - one should find a reason for not going but I failed to follow my own advice and once more I found myself heading for Five Ways with a sinking feeling in my heart and a general gloom in my mind.
To steel myself for the upcoming ordeal, and having an hour to spare, I managed to obtain a bar stool place in the Grand Hotel’s Madeleine bar and I girded my loins with my new best friend, well at least it was my present favourite cocktail, the 1879, so named, or do I mean so numbered, after the year Isaac Horton opened the Grand Hotel and currently touted as the hotel’s signature cocktail. It is delicious and comes accompanied, appropriately, with a Madeleine wbich is the proverbial icing on the cake. Sadly, and I thought rather naughtily, my cocktail was served and I was told almost rather curtly, as the waiter disappeared into the distance among the milling throng of drinkers in the bar, that the madeleines had run out and so my 1879 was served nude and unadorned. Still, I enjoyed the liquid part enough to order a second glass, again demadeleined, before departing for my date with what I was expecting to be a less than exciting evening.
 |
| Nude - sans madeleine |
 |
| Fully clothed with madeleine |
I joined about 140 other diners on the sixteenth floor of the Park Regis. Everyone was very chatty though they may not have had the benefit of two recently imbibed 1879s to get into the spirit as I had. Then into the large and spacious dining room where I found the seat plan did not match up to the allocated seats at the tables but, once a place for me had been tracked down, and all the better for having drunk most of a quite well made Cosmopolitan, I entered into the spirit of things, munched at a very edible bread roll and butter, and settled down to eat my starter which was actually rather good - a slice of a very tasty chicken and apricot terrine, the fruit in the terrine and the accompanying apricot chutney nice and sweet and well judged in its ability to cut through the pleasant richness of the terrine.
Then on to the main. This was really very good. I had the supreme of chicken which I thought was excellent - pleasingly cooked - moist and meaty - and this was served with well cooked and well seasoned roast potato cubes, nicely cooked carrot and seasonal braised leeks which were fine and enjoyable. This was good old fashioned accurate cooking and as ambitious as one might hope for at a banquet serving 140 diners.
The dessert was a chocolate brownie (the menu emphasised that the dish was vegan).I am not a chocolate brownie fan but I found this to be edible, moist and tasty enough. The raspberries and cream helped along though some more cream would have been been even more helpful.
As banquets go, the Park Regis served a good meal. The Head Chef is Manish Patel who was appointed to the role in November 2021 having worked there as senior sous chef since 2019. The question remains, just how much can the diner expect to obtain full satisfaction from a meal the contents of which they have no real say in choosing, served to over one hundred people all at the same time and in a hotel rather than a dedicated hotel?
3 October 2026
Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛
No comments:
Post a Comment