Wild Honey (7.5/10)

Aunt Victoria and Uncle Patrick were in London from Australia this week. Of course, that means I have to come up with a restaurant idea (the thought of cooking mid-week in our small flat was immediately dismissed). Always tricky to balance a number of considerations - type of food, style of restaurant, price point. It seemed to me that it would be nice to do something 'British' as we are, after all, in Britain and the next day was the English national Day, St George's Day.

So after reading some good reviews (such as on London Eater, who named it his 'eat' of 2008), I decided upon Wild Honey. Good quality British food, good ingredients well executed, impressive wine list, reasonable price, centrally located. Ticked all the boxes.

No photos this time, unfortunately, but bear with me . . .

I started with a warm salad of purple sprouting broccoli, goat's curd and smoked pork belly. Purple broccoli is one of those ingredients I see around a lot, but my fruit and vegie shop doesn't have any, so we don't get it. In actual fact, it isn't all that exciting. It tasted just like broccolini, but looked a little brown at the top. The salad was nice enough but nothing really amazing. Kyle, however, had the warm smoked eel, beetroot tart and horseradish which was exceptional. Really delicious. Neither of us had ever tried eel before, but I am now definitely keen to go again. Rick, smoky, oily fish cut through with the horseradish on a crunchy pastry base. Yum. This turned out to be the highlight of the night.

For main, I had the slow cooked English veal 'blanquette'. I didn't really know what this would be but Wikepedia now provides this handy and approriate description. After two guilt-enducing veal meals in Venice, I thought I would attempt to redeem myself by having some more 'animal-friendly' English veal. The dish was very pleasant - the veal was tender and flavoursome and the accompanying vegetables of baby leek and cabbage were tasty. The dish was served in an attractive copper pot, but with a plate that you had to dish it into yourself. Erm . . . what is the point of this please? Kyle's main was the soft polenta with portobello mushrooms, pecorino and olive oil. It was fine.

To finish, we shared some cheese. Wild Honey has a proper cheese board in the French cheese trolley style. Kyle chose the cheeses for us and they included a Comte, Brie de Meaux, a blue and another smoky style French cheese (can't really recall the details). They came with some crackers, grapes and honey. The cheeses were all good served at the perfect temperature and the honey was a nice, location-appropriate touch.

My expectations of Wild Honey were very high, I will admit. So it is possible that is why I thought it was just okay. It wasn't cheap, but I wasn't expecting cheap, I was expecting excellent food. The service was quite good (the two girls on the door were in particular very friendly and passionate about the restaurant) but a little patchy at times. The wine list was very long and there were a lot of choices by the glass (250ml carafe). In the end, we chose a bottle of Cotes du Rhone, which was nice enough.

Ultimately, I feel like I missed something. I probably wouldn't go back due to the 'lots of restaurants in London' issue and maybe that's a shame. It wasn't an embarrasing restaurant to have taken people too, but I was kinda hoping for something wow, you know?

Food: 7/10
Wine: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 8/10
Overall: 7.5/10

Wild Honey
12 St George Street
London W1S 2FB