The room is comfy but spare: simple tables, white walls, no decorations. But that’s fine with me. The clatter of eating and smells of cooking are sufficient. I started with a shaved asparagus and pennywort salad with caerphilly cheese. This was incredible: like spring on a plate.
Dan had a “rabbit brawn,” which turned out to be a sort of terrine of rabbit pieces in aspic, and this was so amazing—served with a hot, grainy mustard—that I made him switch plates with me. For our main, we shared a whole roasted chicken with garlic sauce and had some onion rings on the side (as well as chips, which came with):
All perfectly, exquisitely cooked. We were leaning back, stuffed and happy at having found a favorite new place, when the waiter came to remove our plates. Because we had a huge half chicken left on its platter, I asked to take it away. With the garlic sauce. The waiter piled all this up on his arm, then put our plates on top of the chicken, which we thought was perhaps a bit odd and unsanitary, but whatever. Then we watched him walk away and dump it all in the trash. When he came back, I said, you know, I wanted to take that chicken. He said he thought I was joking, because they don’t do that. What??
Oh, this is unacceptable, I told him. Really outrageous. Think of the waste. And the best restaurant in New York will pack up anything in the world that you want (though I didn’t say that). I made quite a stink and took out my little notebook and began taking furious notes in order to register my displeasure.
The owner came over and said he’d heard about our problem and if we didn’t mind waiting 45 minutes (which is how long it takes for the chicken entrée to get to you), he’d cook up another half for us to take home. He also placated us with some of his chocolate truffles, made from this special Venezuelan chocolate that he has access to. And Dan chatted with him about how this chicken reminded him of the whole roasted chicken we had at L'Ami Louis in Paris (but the British chicken was better, which is why I was so sorry to see it go).
So, in the end, we had a wonderful experience at Hix. What could have been a customer service disaster was saved by quick thinking and competence, for once. (Earlier in the day, we’d had a difficult time at Staples, trying to buy some computer paper, an idea which seemed to completely overwhelm the staff there.)
And the food at Hix was some of the best British cooking I’ve had in London. (A few of the recipes are revealed here, if you want to try some at home, and you can watch one of the chef’s videos here—worth listening to just to discover we're having a "mutton renaissance.")
So, we’ll have to go back to Hix and try to order something less imposing, or at least try to eat it all at once.
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7 comments:
The first and only time I asked a restaurant in London to wrap up leftovers, the servers seemed to think about it for a while and then came back with what looked like a lump of tinfoil. I remember feeling pretty weird walking around with a warm, tinfoil lump in my hands and I didn't want to put it in my handbag. In contrast, I remember at Daniel Boulud's "Daniel" restaurant that when I told our waiter I couldn't eat anymore, he offered to wrap up the beautiful petits fours at the end of our meal. He couldn't have been more gracious.
Anyway, thanks for your post, and because Smithfield is so close by my neighborhood, I'll look forward to trying out Hix soon.
Hmm, interesting thing about the whole notion of doggy bags in restaurants... look at this blog here: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2008/02/to_go_or_not_to_go_that_is_the.html
When I used to travel the world, I found that none of the restaurants outside of the states even offered doggy bags. Having worked in some pretty posh NY restaurants, we in the kitchen used to watch the plates go out and come back in and if a meal was half eaten, wondered what we did wrong that the customer didn't want to take it home. 9/10 times, the patron was a European, they never even had the thought to do so. Maybe the 'leftover' thing is a leftover 'puritan' frugal thing.
Wow: thanks for the blog link, Juli. That explains why American in London and I had such a tough time with leftovers! (And I, too, was thinking of Daniel—and how gracious they are about packing up—when I was confronted with my leftover problem the other night. And what about Bouley?—they give you muffins to take home for breakfast!)
If you can't see Juli's blog link above, try this.
A short note on pricing:
L'Ami Louis chicken: 75 euros, no sides, no sauces
Hix chicken: 28 pounds, with fries and a divine garlic sauce
For those of you on the left side of the Atlantic, that's $116 vs $55. Striking difference (and a striking price for chicken, no matter what the currency).
I went this week - I shouldn't have had lunch (or even breakfast!) but all so good! See my review here http://eatmeter.blogspot.com/2009/04/hix-oyster-chop-house.html
Hi Eat Meter! Nice review over at your site. I look forward to reading more from you.
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