The three of us had heard so much about the restaurant and the type of food we would encounter with viajante being compared to both the fat duck and El Bulli ( both winners of the worlds best restaurant) our expectations were high.
The head chef is Portuguese Nuno Mendes, however his cuisine, like the name of the restaurant is travelled, there is no real way to pigeonhole it under a certain bracket., He took two years off before opening Viajante to travel and get inspiration and this is evident in his cooking with dishes being influenced from his native Portugal but also Thailand, Japan and South America.
Anyway back to the restaurant, we opted for the 9 course tasting menu. I would like to write a detailed piece about all the dishes but the 9 course quickly became 16 after a flurry of amuse bouches so this would soon become a very very long blog which nobody would read so I'll just show a few pictures of some of the highs..and lows of the experience.
First up was the famous Thai explosion 2 which was a great opener.
This was a confit chicken sandwich with Thai flavours giving it a Thai green curry taste, the 'bread' of the sandwich was on one side a coconut tuille and on the other chicken skin crackling. This was truly delicious.
Next was an amaranth grain and sorrel dish, the sorrel pure was the best part of this amuse.
this was followed by a delicious squid and pear amuse but then came this...
it was a young baked potato with yeast and olive..
For me the worst dish of the lunch. The yeast puree was baffling it just tasted like raw bread really not pleasant.
However Nuno redeemed himself with the fantastic bread and butter
The bread on the right was unreal it was a bacon and raisin sough dough with hay smoked butter. incredible.
The next 6 courses showed Nuno's clear love of all things sea! with all of the containing seafood. The flavour combinations were interesting but worked, for example the scallop with liquorish was divine!
The crab and langoustine with egg yolk and rhubarb didn't however!
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| Left: Pea custard with morels and onions | Right: the not so delicious crab and egg yolk |
As I said seafood appears in many forms throughout the menu but one dish really divided the table, this was the cod tripe with onion and crispy potato. The slightly sticky texture of the tripe really put off one of the party but when coupled with the crisp potato the dish became a joy to eat.
The following dish was pigs tail with pecan mole and sweet cornbread served by Nuno himself.
This dish had great flavor combinations with the delicious sweetness of the corn bread and the bay leaf yoghurt being the perfect combination to the crackling and tender meat of the tail, I'm getting hungry just writing it now!
The last main was Dehesa Lamb with goats curd and black quinoa, the lamb and the curd were both beautiful but for me the quinoa spoiled it, just not my thing I guess.
The palate cleanser was a really refreshing dish in the form of pickled and raw cucumber with a reduced milk sorbet, I absolutely loved this the sweetness of the pickled cucumber and the crunch of the raw cucumber and the sorbet was lovely not too sweet balancing the sweetness and acidity of the rest of the dish.
Dessert was a Jerusalem artichoke and rosemary ice cream with candied artichokes and chocolate soil. An odd combination for a dessert and the candied artichokes were so hard and the rosemary too overpowering. This dish was an unnecessary experiment and not the best end to an otherwise lovely lunch.
I would recommend Viajante as we loved the meal although maybe next time 9 courses would be too many, I think I rolled all the way home.
Definatley worth a visit.
