It was the same with the dish of scallop (note the singular). One scallop, wrestling for attention underneath breadcrumbs, swirls of buttery, garlic cream, winds of grass-like agretti (a marshland crop) and cubes of celeriac. What have they got against a decent scallop that it must be so subsumed?
There was similar malarkey with a delicious soufflé Suissesse, a rich, indulgent dish that a place like Le Gavroche would have delivered unadorned, confident of its own divine machinations. But here, it came beneath a welter of dill, parsley and onion – less a garnish, more a dump of herb salad. Split between friends, to lessen the herby impact, the flavours were actually great and it was a properly buttery soufflé tempered, like a cold shower, by the spring-like dill.