Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Throwing some daylight on Blueprint Cafe

Today I got to see something I haven't seen for several years, Blueprint Café in the day. My last nine visits I think have been to the ever so lively cookbook club evenings presided over by the ebullient raconteur Jeremy Lee and the guest cookbook author of the evening. And as fantastic the evenings are I was curious to see how they performed on a normal lunch service.

And the answer is very well indeed! I can't boast many places where everyone seems to know my name, well maybe a couple of purveyors of fine sparkly things but not restaurants (I don't hang about in Cheers bar for example!) and it was really welcoming. Blueprint is a modern, serene restaurant which has an amazing view over the Thames. Normally I'd bemoaning that the ambient lighting was playing its usual havoc with my food blogging shots but it's light and I can see so I can take 'proper' pictures of the delicious food and it looks appetizing!

It was suggested that we started with a refreshing glass of blood orange juice and since becoming strangely addicted to Jeremy's fabulous dish of baked salisfy in filo pastry and lavishly sprinkled with Parmesan I had to suggest sharing a plate with another J. And she agreed that it may look deceptively simple but is dangerously moreish. We could have easily polished off some more but we had the main to come.

We selected the day’s two specials, another J tucked into the Lowestoff kipper, warm potato salad and a poached egg and seemed extremely delighted with her choice and I ummed and aahed at various options (I'm not used to having a choice at the Blueprint Café as cookbook nights have a set menu) before plumping for the baked Middlewhite pork with a mustard and parsley crust with purple sprouting broccoli and roast potatoes to accompany. There was plenty from the menu I would have liked to try, all seasonable and a pleasing nod to Jeremy's Scottish roots.

The pork was very tasty, very moist and succulent. The mustard in the crust was really feisty and was eye-wateringly good. I had a little taste of the kipper as well, another example of excellent sourcing. I am not sure I could have coped with all the bones though but another J seemed to dispatch them efficiently.

Ever though another J isn’t a dessert fan I convinced her that a spoonful or two of St Emillion au chocolat would round off our lunch perfectly and it did. And my, what a kick that Brandy in the scrumptious chocolate creation had, a good job neither of us planned to operate heavy machinery. Jeremy wasn’t in the kitchen today, he was back in Scotland but his touch is always prevalent in the Blueprint Café as is all the better for it. We really enjoyed our meal at Blueprint Café, if we hadn't had to go back to work I'm sure we would have been very happy to linger basking in the sunshine admiring the magnificent view being extraordinarily well fed and well looked after by Richard and his team.
I'm going to up my rating for Blueprint Café to three stylish and well lit forks, the highest accolade.

1 comment:

Linda said...

i need a bite of the cake this very moment --- happy bday!