not quite. let's start by saying that brents is a wonderful place in terms of ambiance and certainly exudes the feeling of a fine dining restaurant. being based in a suburban house provides a warm and inviting place to sit and enjoy some food. there's a split level dining area with the top floor providing both secluded rooms as well as a larger space with windows to the herb garden out back. overall the design is modern and tasteful. unfortunately the early impressions were tainted when we found that two of our wine classes had been tabled with chips out of them. not major, but if you want to be a fine dining restaurant then things like this should be observed more closely. this wasn't the only problem the restaurant showed in terms of attention to detail but more on that later. we opted for the gourmand menu as it seemed to provide agoodcross-section of what the chef had to offer.
to start with there was an amuse bouche which was presented as some cream cheese in a shot glass with citrus cured salmon. tasty, but nothing special and showed nothing in terms of preparation or skill.
next was a wild mushroom cappuccino with prosciutto dust. a nicely done appetiser which providedgoodflavour blended with some imaginative presentation.
next, crumbed & fried goats cheese, beetroot & sorbet, candied pecan & charcoal lavosh. wonderful presentation -goodingredients and flavours individually, but given that a tiny piece of fried cheese is the star, it's really too simple and doesn't offer much in terms of technique. beetroot sorbet was again, nice, but simple and overall the mix of flavours didn't actually work well in unison.
next, red claw yabby, citrus cured salmon, cucumber, melon, nasturtium & mandarin jam - probably one of the stand outs on the degustation. heavily biased towards citrus flavours which worked very nicely in combination with the yabby. very tasty!
next, something billed as a "palette cleanser"..chartreuse marshmallow, compressed apple, cucumber snow & milk wafer. absolutely horrible in every way. how on earth the quite pungent herbal flavours of chartreuse mixed with sugary whipped egg-white and cucumber is meant to cleanse your palette was beyond us. in fact the whole table found it a mismatched attack on your taste buds which lingered horribly for the remainder of the night. a definite blemish which should be gotten rid of.
next came a crispy confit duck which was another of the stand out dishes. wonderfully soft and flavoursome meat, mould pressed and presented as a slice topped with crispy skin and some very intense lemon curd. also included was a waver of liquorice which worked very nicely with the meat.
next, slow cooked beef cheek, paris mash, sautéed mushroom, prosciutto & garlic croutons. yet another well prepared dish, but very simple. attention to detail was lacking in this dish as one plate was presented without the garlic croutons. what was even more disappointing was the fact that no offer was made to replace the dish. not really acceptable when you pay for fine dining.. sorry.
next came a plate of soft blue cheese with fig cooked in pedro jimenez sherry. acceptable but apart from the fig, nothing to showcase the chef's talents.
finally, a desert plate consisting of coffee & fennel seed ice cream, chocolate sponge, aerated chocolate and genache. since the menu is french inspired we'd placed high expectations on the deserts, however this turned out to be another great disappointment. the aerated chocolate was undoubtedly a piece of cadbury aero-bar - gimmicky and quite frankly dreadful in terms of flavour! the sponge cake was dry and flavourless. the remainder of the chocolate was also sub-standard and fell well below expectations. how difficult is it to make a ganache and pipe a string of it on a platter. very unimaginative, showing very little technique - nicely plated but horribly executed when you consider that his meant to be fine dining.
whilst still a fine dining experience, overall it was quite disappointing considering that the restaurant was awarded a chef's hat this year. lots of places can pretend to be fine dining, but few actually manage to pull it off consistently and unfortunately brents didn't do so for us on this night. you don't go fine dining to look for value, so the price (at a minimum of 100 per head) remains reasonable for a degustation, although the ingredients should be top class which unfortunately they weren't in several cases. a lot of people will walk away from here impressed (probably mainly due to the presentation of the food and the air of exclusivity that a place like this offers), but true food lovers will undoubtedly be disappointed. there are some nice elements, but realistically you don't have to search far to find food at an equal or better level and at a cheaper price point. presentation was always good, service on par, however the delivery was a little too slow and lacking attention to detail. the mix of flavours was often confused and most of all there wasn't enough in terms of technique and imagination to show-case what's possible at this level. i'm guessing that many return customers would do so only to savour a few favourites but i can't see anyone wanting to repeat the degustation here.