We really enjoyed ourselves here. The restaurant was formal but the staff were very friendly and chatty throughout the evening, helping to tone the formality down a few notches. It was a Monday night so the restaurant wasn’t full, and as it was also the night of the The World’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2013 announcement in London I’m not sure if Brett Graham was actually in the kitchen. Nevertheless, the food was brilliant.

Here’s what we ate:

From the bread basket I chose the brioche with bacon and onion. I had to restrain myself from having more than one as the last thing I wanted was to fill up on bread, no matter how good it was!

We started with two amuse bouches: poppy seed tart with goat’s curd and freeze dried olives …

… and a cold zucchini soup.

For my first course I had salad of spring vegetables (asparagus, peas, radish) with pumpernickel emulsion and a warm pheasant egg.

D had the ceviche of hand dived scallops with kohlrabi, seaweed oil and frozen/freeze dried horseradish. He said they were perhaps the best scallops he’d ever eaten, and the dish had a very Japanese feel.

For my next course, I had the ‘risotto’ of celeriac with parsley. Despite the name, there wasn’t a grain of actual rice in sight – the risotto was made from the celeriac. It’s a shame you can’t really see it in the photo.

D had the flame grilled mackerel with pickled cucumber, Celtic mustard and shiso. Perfectly cooked fish without even a hint of burnt taste.

For the next course, we had the same thing: creamed jersey royals with morels (a delicious kind of mushroom) cooked in Earl Grey tea, bacon and wild herbs. Superb.

I then had the Hampshire buffalo milk curd with Saint-Nectaire (cheese), Iberian ham on toast and a grilled onion broth. HELLO! This was my favourite course, until the pork jowl came out. There was so much flavour in that broth. Wow. Just wow.

D had Cornish sea bass with asparagus, peas, mousserons and smoked eel milk. Eel is not something D gets to taste often, but he always enjoys it when he does, and this was no exception.

The next course was pork jowl, which had been slow cooked for eight hours in a number of spices – star anise and cinnamon were among them, I’m sure. They brought the whole thing out to the table for us to see and to smell. I was somewhat disappointed when what re-appeared was so small in comparison, but only because this dish was the highlight of the night for me. I could’ve eaten the whole piece of jowl if they had let me! It came with walnuts, parsnip and pear. So. Damn. Good.

The final savoury course was haunch of muntjac (venison/deer) with red vegetables and leaves, bone marrow (not for me) and rhubarb. Venison is something neither of us really order – too many bad experiences, but when it is put down in front of you like this, you give it go. Easily, it was the best venison we’ve ever had. Surprisingly good.

We then had a palate cleanser but I can’t remember what it was. Based on the picture, citrus-y granita and curd with meringue!

Dessert was a brown sugar tart with poached grapes and stem ginger ice cream. So delicate and creamy.

I’d mentioned that we were there celebrating my birthday a few days early, so we also received an extra birthday dessert that was a nice touch. It was a pavé of chocolate with lovage ice cream. I’ve linked to an article on lovage because its taste is quite hard to explain. It was only the second time I’d had it, and I didn’t like it in this form either.

One thing that we both loved about The Ledbury was the plating of the food – not just the look of the food, but also the actual plates and bowls used.

As we’re pretty spoilt for choice for restaurants in Melbourne, each time we visit a new place, we always ask “would you come back?”. Even more so, for those restaurants with two or three hats or that are overseas, because the meal probably isn’t going to be cheap in any sense of the word, nor will an opportunity to visit come up very often.

As for the The Ledbury, would we go back? Yes. In a heartbeat.

We arrived for dinner, and were quite surprised at how formal the service was. Given I’ve watched a lot of Heston on TV and would describe his shows quite simply as ‘fun’, I wasn’t quite expecting the level of formality we were greeted with by the staff. Not to say they weren’t nice or helpful, but there was a stuffiness and business-like attitude that we weren’t quite expecting.

As for the food, it was incredibly good. There is no option to do a degustation at Dinner; there’s simply three courses on the menu, and you have the option later to add a second dessert, Heston’s famous liquid nitrogen ice cream.

For entree I had the meat fruit while D had Earl Gray Tea cured salmon. The meat fruit was a foie gras and chicken liver parfait, encased in a mandarin jelly. I’m not an offal eater, so this was a bit of an unusual choice for me, but I’d seen Heston make the meat fruit on an episode of Heston’s Feasts and was keen to try it. It was butter smooth and soft and actually quite delicious. My only complaint is that it came with such a small piece of bread – there is quite a lot of parfait there!

The salmon came with a salad, and smoked roe. D says salmon and caviar are always a great combination, and this was no exception; smooth, light flesh with pops of salty tang. And some greens to round out the flavours.

For main I had the powdered duck breast with fennel while D had cod in cider. The duck also came with umbles, which they told me was heart, but I requested not to have it. The duck was, quite simply, the best cooked duck I’ve ever had. It was tender, flavoursome and not drowning in sauce, so you actually got to enjoy the duck flavour. The fennel it came with was nice enough, but I’m a fennel in small doses kind of person, so I didn’t really enjoy it as the only side. Thankfully we also ordered a serve of the mashed potato and fries. Warning: the mashed potato is really just butter, cream, more butter, more cream … and some potato. Maybe. Tip: if you order both the mashed potato and fries, try dipping the fries in the mashed potato for some delicious carb on carb goodness!

The cod was accompanied by chard and mussels for D’s second seafood-with-seafood combination of the night. He thought the sauce was a little heavy; the fish and mussels were cooked perfectly though, and this was a fantastic dish.

For dessert I had the tipsy cake, which I was instructed to order at the beginning because it takes 40 minutes to cook. It was a baked brioche that was incredibly light and fluffy and custard like on the bottom. It was served with the juiciest caramelised pineapple I’ve ever had. The pineapple is cooked slowly on a rotisserie that we could see from where we were sitting.

D had the Bohemian cake, and when his dessert arrived, I was reminded of the making of the Black Forest Gateau and the super-fun chocolate spray gun! Citrus and chocolate flavours, with honey ice-cream; light and tasty.

At this point in the night things got a little more fun with the wheeling out of the ice cream cart to our table. They made a vanilla bean ice cream that was as smooth as the meat fruit. In fact, the whole ice cream was the texture of the slightly melted ice cream you get on the edges of an ice-cream cone. We had the choice of a few toppings to get it coated in – I chose the apple pop rocks while D chose freeze dried raspberries.