Whits
21 Abingdon Road,
W8 6AH

Actual price per head: £45

Nearest tube: High Street Kensington (Circle Line and District Line).

Remarks

I’d happily highly recommend Whits to anyone in the area. The welcome was good, so too was the food.

Some starters: The Cauliflower Potage with Four Cheese Ravioli was delicious. The Panacotta of Red Peppers with Pancetta and Parmesan Crisp was beautiful. The Smoked Duck, Duck and Foie Gras Parfait, Mimolette Cheese Tuile was an interesting presentation because the parfait looked like a ball of chocolate ice-cream with some wafer atop (the tuile).
Some mains: Whole Grilled Lemon Sole, Sprouting Broccoli Hollandaise, New Potatoes looked great. The Roast Rib of Scottish Beef, Yorkshire Pudding, Roast Potatoes, Seasonal Vegetables was a huge plate of food and ‘Seasonal Vegetables’ seems like a completely inadequate description for the assortment of seven different vegetable concoctions on the plate (I can recall asparagus, carrots, cauliflower, parsnip, and swede but there was more). The Roast Loin of Pork, Crisp Crackling, Sage and Onion Stuffing, Apple Sauce also looked like a full plate neatly arranged.
My dessert: Hot Red Wine poached Pear Crumble, Ginger Ice Cream – The hot wine was good, the ginger ice-cream was scrummy. The crumble was a little hard.

The food was very good with extra points for the presentation. The quantities were perhaps too much. At least one of our group asked for a doggy bag for his beef.
My only quibble was that some of the food might have been served a bit hotter; the vegetables with my beef were cold very quickly and the poached pear crumble had a hot plate and hot wine but the pears were cold. Ah, almost forgot to report that the Yorkshire pudding was on the stodgy side.

The wine was not cheap. I usually prefer red to white but the house white here was very good, so much so that I only had one glass of the red before reverting to the white.

Attendees

Chris D., Colin B., David W., Fred D., George G., Ian S., John R., Martin T., Ricardo B., Richard O., Stéphane B.