Date of visit: June 2021
Trinity is located in the lovely Clapham Old Town and is one of only 4 Michelin starred restaurants south of the river in London. I brought a friend here for a belated birthday meal and we had the 4 course menu for £75. They also do a tasting menu for £95. When the restaurant called to confirm a few days earlier they asked if we wanted to reserve the tarte tatin, which we did and which you should do as well! More on that later.
We started with a cocktail each, which was delicious and better than I’ve found in many restaurants. We then had a decent bottle of Sauvignon blanc with the meal. The wine list is quite long and there are plenty of affordable options with a few around the £40 mark.
The Bread and Butter
We were served individual sourdough buns that might have been fried or at least brushed with oil. They were great and had an amazing thin crispy crust. This did leave my fingers quite oily to then pick up cutlery, however.
The Menu
We had a little amuse bouche to start, which was a salmon and pea tart. The flavours of both the pea and salmon came through really clearly and was a nice start to the meal.
For the first course we both went for monkfish ceviche, which was nice but not particularly big on flavours. I’ve had a few similar dishes recently (see my Murano and Angler reviews) and this didn’t quite live up to those. I actually really liked the crunch of the almonds in the ceviche though.
For my second course I chose the rabbit lasagne, perhaps largely out of curiosity! It was essentially two pieces of lamb terrine between sheets of pasta, with a wild garlic emulsion. This was really tasty and the pasta was cooked perfectly. The emulsion was probably the best bit.
For the main course I had the lamb, which was served as a cutlet with a slow cooked piece of lamb neck, a potato tart and spring vegetables. The potato tart was delicious but the rest of the dish had some problems. The cutlet had a good lamb flavour but was a bit chewy. The vegetables were unfortunately really over cooked to the point that when I tried to pick up the carrot my fork just sliced through mush on the way up and the carrot collapsed under its own weight. The turnip was just as bad. The vegetables also seemed waterlogged and the sauce ended up quite watery by the end.
As mentioned earlier, I had preordered the tarte tatin for pudding, which is a speciality of the restaurant and they only have a limited number available each night. This was easily the best course of the night - it was delicious and absolutely massive. We thought we would probably take half of it home as it could easily feed 4. We ate the whole thing though, it was so good! It was with ice cream and cream, and the pastry was perfect, the apple was perfect, the caramel was perfect. It had just the right level of bitterness from the caramel, which you can tell from how dark it is. Just delicious.
The Service
The service wasn’t quite as impressive as I’ve had in some other restaurants in terms of the sheer number of staff serving you, but it was attentive and friendly. The restaurant itself is beautiful on a summer evening looking out onto the terraced area; one of the prettiest spots I’ve eaten at in a while!
Scoring
Bread and butter: 4/5
A really good bread, solidly a 4.
Food: 3/5
The tarte tatin was really excellent but other courses were just okay and the lamb had some issues. The meal was perfectly nice, but not perfectly perfect.
Service: 4/5
Beautiful restaurant and friendly service gets a 4 here!
Value for money: 3.5/5
The value was pretty good, cheaper than other similar restaurants but obviously a lot for Clapham.
Overall score: 3.4/5
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