Le Cercle - remind me what the fuss is all about...

Well, I guess it has to be done... I have been alluding to our visit to Le Cercle so many times now that I won't escape doing a review. It's difficult, though, I just don't like giving an overly negative review, raving about a restaurant is so much easier than criticising it. Except when it's so far off the mark that you're on some sort of mission and feel it is your duty to let everyone know about it, with some kind of "I'll-save-the-world-from-ever-having-to-experience-mediocre-food-ever-again" attitude. (As was the case for Allium last year)
Le Cercle is in a sort-of in between category, which makes it particularly hard to write about it. It's sadly not the great new dining experience many hail it to be, but it's not bad enough to be ranting on and on about it either. The concept is that of brother/sister restaurant Club Gascon in Smithfields, and many say that the Sloane Square offspring is "even better" (quote, unquote) than the original. Well, better it may well be, I couldn't say, but if that's the common perception, then I don't feel tempted to see Club Gascon from the inside.
Sorry for getting side-tracked. Ah, yes, the concept. Like the Thyme I loved (and which sadly, as I feared, hasn't mastered the move from small and unpretentious (Clapham) neighbourhood gourmet temple to Dave Stewart-owned, mega-hyped restaurant and therefore has gone into receivership earlier this year) the approach is to have many but small portions in order to taste a great variety of (here French-inspired) flavours during the course of one meal. This can work beautifully, but it doesn't here. The food lacked inspiration, taste and aesthetics, even though it wasn't even over-ambitious... the sort of dishes even amateur chefs can reproduce at home without problems - while I was expecting to be wowed. On top of this, despite many saying that Le Cercle is essentially serving French tapas, the dishes might be the right size, but the majority are clearly not designed to be shared.
The ambience is another backdraw. Arriving at the venue, we were immediately intrigued by the fact that the cabbie didn't even know the place, it's hardly discernible from the outside, in a residential street with almost unnoticeable signage, which makes you feel you've found a real gem, it's got that secretive sort of touch. The long and narrow staircase leads you past a (small but comfortable) "bar" area - no bar present, just sofas and a huge glass pane overlooking the restaurant below - into the dining room itself. That area felt really cold - not only because it was overly air-conditioned, but also in terms of its décor. And the place was half empty on a Thursday night. Which turned out to be a blessing, as I could not have dealt with another table of obnoxious Essex girls and their equally annoying partners like the one next to us, who not only were the only smokers in the restaurant (like so many other fine-dining institutions, we were assuming the place would actually kindly ask patrons to not give into their vice as courtesy to their fellow diners), they also smelled, no, reeked, as if they had just taken a bath in the cheapest, most disgusting perfume on this planet. But we'd come for food, not for company.

The menu is almost overwhelmingly long, the dishes grouped into themes (Végétal, Marin, Fermier, Terroirs, Plaisirs, Fromagerie and Gourmandises), rather than courses, so not only can you select what you want to eat, but also in what order to have it. So far, so nice.
We started off with oysters, which were actually lovely - real fresh, as you'd expect, plump and full of flavour, served with the usual shallot vinaigrette. The roast langoustine with (an espuma-like) lemongrass velouté was nice enough, even though pan-fried, but the lemongrass must have been nothing more than a passing thought... it was the stock cubes that ruled the taste! Foie gras was served on a tartlet of brioche, topped with a citrus-flavoured jelly - the liver foie gras definitely not of the nice, creamy, indulgent kind, but the sort where you realise what this does to your wasteline and you're accutely aware of the amount of fat your consuming. I guess the purpose of the jelly was to cut through all this, but the combination didn't work for me - foie gras needs sweet fruit, be it the native berries or mango, pineapple, figs, etc worked into a smooth and sweet preserve, and while the tartlet idea was novel, it didn't give you enough dry carbs for the amount of protein you had on the plate.
Next up a carpaccio of figs with thin slices of smoked duck breast. Sounds like a perfect dish, but the duck breast wasn't smokey at all, pretty much tasteless even, and I had expected the figs to be fresh - instead they must have been poached in red wine or similar, and had lost all their autumny goodness. The summer truffle tartine turned up in the form of a super-thin slice of Poîlane bread topped with slivers of black (wet!) truffle and rocket salad - I had been waiting for this dish as truffles always make me happy, but again I felt like they could have done a better job of it: the truffles weren't strong enough to be a good pairing for the rocket, the whole affair was too dry and it completely lacked oomph.
As for the meat courses, we chose quail breast with crispy leg dumpling and a beef tartare with quail's yolk. The latter was quite bland and must have been sitting in the kitchen for a while - tartare is just not something you can prepare in advance. I can see it in front of me (because the first time I made it, the same happened): a bowl with the chopped beef, the top gone brown, and instead of diving into the deeper end of said bowl and skimming the oxidised meat off, they must have just mixed it all up. So there was (good quality) vividly red meat with brownish speckles - oh dear. The quail breast, however, was cooked to perfection, perfectly tender and juicy, but the taste was letting it down again - it was supposed to be served with a spicy sauce which didn't even show hints of spiciness, and it wasn't showing the richness and heartiness you would expect of such a dish. The cheese course was fine in the sense that the cheeses were all à point, the selection could have been a better one and they were served with the figs which were earlier passed as a carpaccio. On a high note, I ended the evening with a chocolate fondant which was divine and, rather unusually, served with mint icecream.
The most annoying element of the evening, though, was that the staff were so utterly unenthusiastic as I have never seen anywhere before. Even the staff at my local pizza joint seem more interested in food, while most of the waiters at Le Cercle seemed like a McBurger would be a better fit for them. This became obvious in many situations, like one of them dropping some fig confit on the table while clearing up the cheese course, using my (!) napkin to wipe it away (I was heading for the restroom) and not bringing me a replacement, another bringing the coffee, but no sugar, the cheese course and (warm!) dessert arriving long before the wines. Even more so, though, when we asked for a ristretto and it took two waiters not to understand what we were asking for. When we pointed it out on the menu, one of them knowingly said "Ah! Risotto!" (almost in a "you should have said" sort of tone). I am not making this up.
Oh no, even more annoying was the value for money. We pay mad prices here in London, truth be told, and you have to kiss a lot of frogs (read: eat at a lot of mediocre restaurants) to find a prince (read: discover a place where you're not sad to part with your hard-earned pounds at the end of the meal). But £171 for 7 (small!, remember?) dishes, 2 beers, 2 glasses of champagne cocktails (which were utterly delicious) and 4 (125 ml!!!) glasses of (sadly non-descript) wine is way exaggerated, even by UK standards.

So the long and short of it is that the food is underwhelming at best, the place lacks atmosphere and you certainly don't get your money's worth. But that's only my humble opinion.

Le Cercle
1 Wilbraham Place
London SW1X 9AE
T: +44 - 020 - 7901 9999
Nearest tube: Sloane Square

Comments

[fernando]

ate there last week (was staying in phoenix house, the serviced apartments in the same block). the meal was probably a slightly better experience than yours. the food quality was a little more consistent (in the good direction) and the clientele a little less essex-ish. however, the service was poor, the dishes less interesting than their descriptions suggest and overall it pretty poor value.

i would consider eating there again, but I wouldn't go out of my way for the experience.

[johanna]

thanks for that, fernando, i am glad i'm not the only one going against the raging reviews this restaurant gets. far from wanting to slag it off completely, i just feel that there are so many better restaurants out there... and it's good to know that i am not alone in thinking that.

[Paz]

Interesting experience. It's always disappointing to go to a place where you expected more and leave with less -- especially when you have to pay for it.

I've been enjoying good show by Gordon Ramsay, where he goes around to failing restaurants and helps them to turn it around. A lot of the times, the problems are simply fixed by doing more things to appeal to the customers. For example, serving food that the customers want, training the staff to know more about what they're serving, making the ambience more appealing to the customers, etc...

Anyway, it sounds like this restaurant could use the benefit of your comments to see how they could improve on their services for future guests.

Paz

[johanna]

i actually saw one or two of the episodes and quite enjoyed it, too. it's amazing how many mediocre restaurants are out there, and even more so how many restaurateurs with no ambition to improve the quality of their product either... as long as they're making a profit!

[Andy Hayler]

I just came across your blog and like it very much. I am part time food writer and I ave to say that your Le Cercle visit was rather like mine, not actively bad but undwerwhelming. This is much less good than Club Gascon.