For this day we were waiting for a long time. We booked the tickets to Royal Festival Hall back in May to hear Beethoven’s 9th Symphony live, so there had to be a nice dinner before that.

Raymond’s place got picked shortly after he popped in to Dinings a while ago, the fact that his restaurant is a walking distance from the RFH mattered too.

Very, very pleasant place. Florek picked a bottle of Pinot Noir, for a starter we shared a steak tartare, very bravely seasoned, lots of mustard and capers, have to try it at Mum’s! With a baguette it was great. For the mains Florek had a hake, I went for the grilled scallops on a truffle mash.There was some baked fennel as well, not my thing though, it tasted like a bottle of perfume. Scallops though- fantastic. Maybe even second most awesome scallops dish ever, after those that Goemon made for us in Dinings last time, when we went with Moka. Goemon’s scallops sat in the truffle soy sauce and had some crispy parma ham on top, the only problem with them was the amount- 3 scallops for the 3 of us.Anyway, those today were spot on.

For dessert we went for Baked Alaska, something I’ve seen on Masterchef plenty of times, but never tried. It was nice, I love grand marnier and our waiter presented it in a nice way. He was so cool, that we invited him to share it with us, which he enthusiastically did.

Good thing is, that there is Brasserie Blanc in Cheltenham as well. 🙂