Birthday at The Ledbury

Today is J's birthday, and he requested that we go to dinner at The Ledbury, a restaurant in Notting Hill. Sounds easy enough but for the fact that I had to make this reservation 2 1/2 months in advance! It's a two Michelin-starred French fusion place that known for good food and a service staff that chased off looters with rolling pins and kitchen knives during the London riots (true story).

Anyway, we were supposed to go last year for J's birthday, but work got in the way and we ended up cancelling. It was looking like J may have to cancel again, but he managed to escape for a few hours.

The restaurant is quite small and newly refurbished so it's cosy and modern. The staff was very attentive, but not invasively so while we enjoyed our three courses apiece. It's funny how these fancy places always have a three course menu or a tasting menu. In any case, it's never just three courses because they always bring out random things like an amuse bouche or a pre-dessert, not that I'm complaining or anything. =) They were also very generous with the bread - not only did a plate of warm, delicious bread arrive at our table, but a server walked around offering bacon and onion rolls or malted bread out of a basket. 

The food was quite interesting and there was stuff like foamed hay on my plate, and it tasted just like hay. Strange, but not bad. It was all interestingly great, nothing predictable at all. At the end of the meal, they brought out a little extra dessert for J since it was his birthday, and he was pretty happy when we got even more dessert in the form of petit fours. I'm not quite sure why they brought that out, but that brought the total number of desserts up to 4 for the two of us.

We were stuffed by the end of the night, and the hostess offered to ring up a cab to pick us up. What a nice little touch! In any case, we demolished the rest of the petit fours while we waited and complained about how tight our waistbands were feeling. Now we're home and in elasticized clothes so we're much, much happier.