WOP: The taste of happy

So, a couple more excur­sions to res­taur­ants with Wel­ling­ton on a Plate menus. I’m con­sid­er­ing going to the Ware­house and buy­ing a pair of elast­ic-waisted track­pants for the rest of Wel­ling­ton on a Plate.

Most recently I paid a vis­it to Cuba Street icon Floriditas and Hip­po­pot­amus at the Museum Hotel.

Floriditas

Floriditas had a Wel­ling­ton on a Plate menu – two courses and a wine for $35, and also a Bur­ger Wel­ling­ton entry for $18 or $25 with a beer. My eye was drawn to the dessert menu this time, so I decided to go for a main and dessert.

Unlike the oth­er res­taur­ants I’ve been to this week, there were no bread rolls at Floriditas, so I was forced to fiddle with my nap­kin and – gasp – make con­ver­sa­tion as my tablem­ates with entrees enjoyed theirs.

But I did learn that the grilled hal­loumi with an olive and lem­on salad and flat­bread entree was really good. The olives in par­tic­u­lar – green and sliced length­ways – looked amaz­ing.

My main course was grilled chick­en with white bean pur­ee, radic­chio and mint slaw. The bean pur­ee was like a runny hum­mus and was maybe a little slop­pi­er than I would have liked. The grilled chick­en was great – a slightly smoky taste from the grill, but good and tender. This coupled with the vibrant top­ping of radi­chio made it all seem like quite a healthy dish, though I’m secretly hop­ing there was some but­ter hid­den away in it.

As for dessert, what caught my eye was a milk and dark chocol­ate meringue with hazel­nuts, served with orange-tof­fee sauce.

Chocol­ate, hazel­nuts, orange? Yes, go on.

It was as good as it soun­ded. A lovely crisp meringue with chocol­ate and wal­nut bits through­out it. It was also topped with what I think was mas­car­pone. This helped bal­ance out the fla­vours and sweet­ness of the meringue, as well as com­ple­ment­ing the dark chocol­ate. The orange sauce, like the white bean pur­ee, suffered from being a little runny. But maybe that’s just some­thing I don’t like.

Please note: I did not actu­ally think all this when I was eat­ing it. I was more con­cerned with get­ting it in my mouf.

My tablem­ates enjoyed their selec­tions from the menu, includ­ing the bur­ger. It was an enjoy­able lunch at Floriditas, and bonus points for them arran­ging a big table for our expand­ing-shrink­ing group.

Hippopotamus

On the third floor of the Museum Hotel, the set­ting for Hip­po­pot­amus is a little bit eccent­ric, stuffed full of art, chan­deliers and lady couches. But the man in the kit­chen, chef Laurent Loudeac, brings good French cuisine to the menu.

One unwanted side effect of going to a French res­taur­ant – the French waiters call me ‘madame’, which sig­ni­fies not just mar­riage but is used when a woman is of a cer­tain age. I want to be like an old maid going, “Non! Non! Je suis mademois­elle – and don’t you for­get it, sonny!”

I ordered the bur­ger, named the Skinny Hip’. It’s veget­ari­an and glu­ten free, con­sist­ing of gar­lic-roas­ted mush­room with toma­toes, rock­et, bal­sam­ic syr­up, a corn frit­ter, hal­loumi and a poached egg on a bun, served with fries.

But first – bread roll watch. We were offered bread rolls, with a choice of either plain or wal­nut, with slightly firm but­ter on the table. But not only that – there were roll refills. I had three. Arrgh! Why did I have three? I need an iPhone app called TableM­um to alert me say­ing “Now, you’ve already had two and you still have to have the bur­ger. Do you really think you can fit anoth­er one?”

There was a glass of wine served with all the meals – a choice of a sauvign­on blanc or a pinot noir. So bonus points for includ­ing wine with the bur­ger.

My tablem­ates enjoyed the creamy cauli­flower and blue cheese soup, with one exclaim­ing “This tastes like happy!” Also liked was the beef cheeks main, as well as the goat’s cheese croustil­lant cigar, though one per­son was slightly dis­ap­poin­ted that it was­n’t a smoke­able cigar.

Now, the bur­ger is tra­di­tion­ally a hand­held food, so it does­n’t always trans­late well to the plate. But this bur­ger was­n’t really pre­tend­ing to be a tra­di­tion­al bur­ger. The top bun was served to the side, and the bur­ger was topped with a poached egg. It was so much easi­er to cut like this.

The bur­ger had a bit of a brunch feel to it, and indeed the corn frit­ter, mush­room, poached egg and grilled hal­loumi would not be about of place on a Sat­urday morn­ing plate. But it worked togeth­er as a whole, and is eas­ily the best veg­gie bur­ger I’ve ever tasted.

As for the fries – O M G:

They were nice fat chips, crisp, golden brown, not greasy, and served good and hot with aioli. There wer­en’t a lot of them, but they were thick and sub­stan­tial and that’s when I really star­ted regret­ting all those bread rolls. These are chips to be proud of – well done, Chef Laurent and the Hippo’ staff.