One of the dilemmas that often faces me in my high paced and stressful job (that’s my amateur food blogging in case you were wondering ) is how to score a restaurant. It has led to many heated and impassioned debates with friends and acquaintances. Even though I delight in providing unsolicited commentary of restaurant food, I cannot say that I always appreciate the same of my blog. When looking for things to pick on (everyone, as I well know, is a critic), one easy target of debate is my scoring. It might help here to give you some background about this.
Rosie Alittlelusciousness
+3.5
Restaurants open so regularly in London that it's hard to get to all the ones I want to try! However there was one that kept on popping up on Instagram accounts I follow, and having checked out the menu I was determined to get to Clipstone, little new sister restaurant of Portland, as soon as possible. Which was last Monday, when I headed there with Rhea to eat all the food! We totally over-ordered as usual, and whilst I really loved a lot of what we chose, if I go back I'll definitely order lighter dishes as I felt everything we had was very rich and heavy. We started with fried leeks and sauce gribiche. I thought the leeks would be chopped and fried, rather than whole and battered, but the sauce gribiche was good and had a nice tang to it. This was was swiftly followed by one of my favourite dishes of the evening, though hardly a contender for the "light" dishes I referred to earlier - rillettes of rabbit, pork and foie gras were topped with mustard seeds and sat on top of buttery grilled bread. The rillettes were unctuous and very more-ish despite their richness. Perfectly seasoned and absolutely delicious.
Cozy neighborhood restaurant that's easy to book on the weekend.
Food was a bit mediocre, but cooked with quality produce. Nothing was surprisingly good or bad. I would only come if I'm around the area.
Service was okay. There was a moment when the server was putting down cutlery, and my friend had her phone and glass near her right hand side. The server put the knife half on her phone and the fork in between the space of the phone and the glass. I'm not sure if that was necessary at all and a hygienic choice. I'm sure we wouldn't mind having the cutlery place a bit away from our right-hand side. I just found it a bit passive and agreesive and kinda laughed it off after the server left.
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