St. Germain

Another day of French food after 2 weeks of indulging in France. Never mind, I will take this opportunity to compare London and France while things are still fresh in my mind.

Food

Wow, I don’t know if it’s because I just came back from 2 weeks of fabulous feasting in France, but St Germain made one of the worst French food I have tasted. The menu isn’t really classical French, but a blend of French brasserie and Modern English. Because there was a large group of us, we had to order from a restricted menu. We started with baguettes, which normally would be quite nice, but do not stand up to the test of the baguette in France. The Warm Goats Cheese Galette - onion marmalade, mache salad turned out to be the best dish of the day. Crunchy puff pastry base rests on a bed of rocket, with a disc of just melted goats cheese. The goats cheese of course was not as good as anything I had in France, but it was not overpowering, so even non-lovers of goats cheese can enjoy this. The Terrine de Campagne - toasted country bread & chutney was not bad either. The terrine, yet again, not as good as anything we got in France, even those from the supermarket, but the chutney was outstanding.

Things went downhill for the main, the Baked Herb Crusted Cod - mushroom & pearl barley risotto, prawns, cep cream was firstly let down by tasteless cod. The sauce was strong to compensate for the lack of flavour though, but the risotto was overly salty, the prawns tasteless, and the cream too thick. This though, was much better than the way too salt Coq au Vin - pomme puree. The chicken was tender enough, with soft flesh and soft skin, the “pomme puree” is really just mash, and quite nice. The whole thing was let down by what makes the coq au vin wonderful though – the sauce. Overtly salty, with none of the flavour of the wine shining through, and the onions didn’t do enough to sweeten or thicken the sauce.

Desserts were again a let down. The Chocolate Marquis - clotted cream was way too heavy and way too sweet, not to mention one dimensional, and paired with the rich clotted cream, just tipped the scare into overload. The Amaretti Cheesecake - espresso syrup tasted nothing like cheesecake. A very sweet coffee syrup dominated all flavours, tasting like one of those bad and cheap tiramisu.

Rating - 5

Atmosphere

This place is definitely a favourite with the young and hips, with lots of couples choosing this place for public displays of affection. I wouldn’t say it was romantic at all, with dark brown banquette seating, black chairs and black lamp shades. They did start dimming the lights as the night went on, but I think it’s more due to the cocktails that attracted the crowd.

Rating - 2

Service

Back to the good old lacklustre service. You could hear them breaking things all night long. Service just took way too long. We all arrived promptly at 7pm, but they didn’t seat us until we requested them to several times, and by the time they came around to take orders and stuff, it was at least 9pm before we got to eat.

The wait staff were nice enough, but things were so slow. We often had to wait a long time before all the meals arrived at the table, so long so that we actually didn’t want to wait longer for fear the already delivered meals were getting cold from the wait.

Rating - 2

C-factor

The group menu was 3 courses for £22. However, when you include service and drinks, it turned out to be £35. Definitely not worth it, considering I ate for much less at Michelin star places in France.

Rating - 0

Brownie Points - 9

Info

89 - 90 Turnmill Street
London
EC1M 5QU
Phone +44 (0) 20 7336 0949
Website