This was our second visit to Gauthier Soho, which is an all vegan fine dining restaurant – you can read about our first visit here. There were three of us in attendance this time, with Mother HH as a non-vegan participant who was heartily impressed with the evening. Once again, we went for the eight course menu.

We got two canapes to start with. This one was crudités with lemon butter tahini and a leaf of some kind. The leaf overpowered everything else, but the after taste was quite pleasant. This wasn’t really a popular bite at our table, but we were not discouraged.

The tart pissaladiere was much better! The case was thin and crumbled away when you bit into it. It was filled with caramelised onion, tapenade, and tomato, and it was really delicious. Confidence fully restored!

I have learned that I absolutely love a bread course in a fancy restaurant, and this one was no exception. This dish has basically survived since our visit the previous year, but it has improved in that time! The brioche was now actually like a croissant, really buttery and flaky and delicious, with a nice crispy coat. I would have been happy eating it on its own, but it came with feta, pico de gallo and coriander oil, which was a really fresh and zingy combination. Overall, this course was absolutely sublime!

Next came a leek terrine. The leek was wrapped in seaweed and topped with a tapioca cracker. Alongside it we had beurre blanc with nigella seeds and an elegant scoop of seaweed caviar. The leek was really soft and quite mild – in fact, all of the flavours were quite mild, with the exception of the beurre blanc which was very rich and delicious, and the real highlight of the dish.

The heritage beetroot course may have been a bit high concept for me. It featured baked beetroot, cherry and fennel marmalade, chocolate beetroot puree, and parsley oil. I always try to have a little nibble of every element on its own at some point to see how everything tastes, and I really did not care for the individual elements here. As a whole, however, it was rich, delicious, and earthy. We all especially enjoyed the puree which started out with quite a strong chocolate flavour and ended up with the beetroot notes.

I felt like I was back on safer ground with the tomato ravioli. The ravioli were really intense with a strong flavour of tomatoes, and the basil sauce was bursting with flavour as well. We received a flute of tomato consomme as a palate cleanser, and it was really punchy and fun. I love a good tomato course in a fancy restaurant, it always works out well for me! We all found this course really tasty, though we queried its description as ravioli. This is not the correct shape for ravioli, surely?!

The fleur de courgette farcie was, as we declared (or whispered to ourselves, lest we be overheard by the lovely servers), a bit of a farce. It was all very bland. The courgette flower was stuffed with smoked tofu, but had none of that lovely smokiness to it. The saffron bouillabaisse was really bland too. There was a chunk of alleged potato and courgette rosti, which was totally soft, with none of the crispiness that you’d expect of a rosti. There’s a crouton hiding at the back of the picture which was really crusty and good, so that’s something. But the plain courgette was the most flavoursome part of the dish for all of us, which is a real shame.

Fortunately, this was followed by the potato rose, which was one of the highlights of the feast. You can’t really see, but the potato is rolled up with a rose and served with lots of delicious things like chard, girolles, beans, bacon, and jus de roti vegetal (which also included bacon and truffle). It was very savoury and very delicious!

To transition to the sweet courses, we had a Kalamata olive cheesecake, which split the crowd at our table. It had a biscuit base, cream cheese, tapenade, and a caramelised olive (we were also told it was topped with a “herb salad”, which feels a bit generous for two stems, but to be fair, that’s all the salad I care for!). It was very cheesy and very rich. The caramelised olive was too sweet for me, and a sweet olive is quite an unpleasant thought. Dr HH loved it though!

I always feel a bit cheated if my first course of dessert is some kind of sorbet, so I was pleased to get a proper treat for the strawberry course. We had strawberries with lemon verbena topped with candy floss which was blow torched at the table, giving it an incredible crunchy texture. The dish was sugary and sweet, but also light and refreshing, and I would happily eat it again.

And the dessert proper was dark chocolate, as it should be. Although it already looks quite small, it was made up of multiple layers, including: a biscuit base, cream cheese, caramel, ganache, macadamia and pecan pracline, and a chocolate shell. On top of that was a bit of crème fraiche and some gold leaf. It sounds like a lot, but it was all perfectly balanced and really delicious. It’s like a dessert made up of all the great dessert buzzwords and somehow it manages to fit together and be decadent but not too much. Quite incredible.

I didn’t really have room for any petit fours at this point, but you can’t really say no, can you? The ones on the right were peach sponge and they were disappointingly claggy. The lemon sponge on the left was much lighter.

There were a couple of misses for us in this meal, which is a shame, but the hits were proper hits, and the overall experience makes it worthwhile for me. I hope to be back again one day for another exciting culinary adventure!