Erynn's Travel and Food Blog: Mere - Monica Galetti’s London restaurant

I have been a Monica Galetti fan since watching her on the TV programme Amazing Hotels. I enjoyed her honest and human approach to things and then one day I saw that she was wearing a pounamu necklace (NZ greenstone). A quick google revealed that she is one of ours, Monica is Samoan and grew up in NZ. She has also been a judge on the BBC Masterchef show.

So it is no surprise that we made a booking at her London based restaurant months ago.

Mere is Monica’s mother’s name and also the French word mother so it was a perfect choice for her and her husband’s South Pacific French style cuisine.

On arrival we were invited into the lounge for a drinks and an opportunity to peruse the menu. The wine list was not offered at that time so I chose a blueberry fusion with gin, blueberry syrup and champagne foam. It was delicious but at £17 one would have to suffice. Lance had a beer which he seemed to enjoy. These were served with a small bowl of marmite popcorn.

We chose the A la carte menu as it had scallops and lobster, both of which are favourites of Lance.

Bread and marmite butter were served and the marmite butter was really delicious, sweet and salty at the same time.

A couple of aperitifs arrived by surprise. The first were some ham and cheese balls with truffle oil. I could smell the truffle oil immediately and passed mine to Lance, as I don’t like truffle oil, who said they were nice.

Then a couple of little spinach cones with a filling of some sort of chopped nut in the tip and a delicious foam that tasted of lemon and basil.

These went down a treat, although a small seed of doubt formed in my head that they were serving us the tasting menu by mistake. But not to worry, our starters arrived, along with my New Zealand Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir.

I chose the veal cheek pasta in a peanut and elderflower foam and pear purée. Surprisingly the pasta was like a sausage shaped ravioli with the foam in the centre. It was outstanding.

Lance of course chose the hand dived scallops with shimeji mushroom, clementines and a mushroom veloute. I was a bit surprised because Lance detests mushrooms.

The scallops arrived and the waiter was just about to pour the mushroom veloute when Lance finally clicked that is was mushroom. Fortunately he managed to stop him before he poured what was probably the most delicious mushroom veloute all over his scallops.

The scallops were served without their roe which appears to be the norm everywhere except New Zealand. And the teeny tiny mushrooms sat among the citrus like they were scattered in a garden. Lance said it was all lovely and the tiny mushrooms did not taste like mushrooms. He had got over excited when he saw scallops on the menu and failed to register the inclusion of his nemesis, the dreaded mushroom.

When choosing my main I decided to be adventurous and have something that I had never tried before, Anjou pigeon.

The pigeon was served three ways. the breast was very much like duck and Cooked nicely on the rare side. I was surprised to see how red the meat was rather than white like chicken. The skin had been rendered until it was perfectly crispy and a surprisingly hearty pigeon broth was poured around the pigeon breast and beetroot.

On a seperate dish came the tempura leg that resembled an apple with a stalk and leaf. The stalk was actually the leg bone and a little ball of meaty thigh was in cased in a crispy bread coating. The cabbage was a ‘hispi’ cabbage which is a pointed cabbage and funnily we had some the night before. Layered between the cabbage was shredded pigeon and it more of a gamey taste.

All in all I have found that I do like pigeon as all of this was delicious.

Lance’s lobster was a Scottish lobster served with black garlic, mango and puntarelle. We had to ask the waiter about the puntarelle as it was new to us, and he explained that it is a pointy leaf vegetable that is similar to chickory.

Lance orders lobster or crayfish every chance he gets and he said that this lobster was delicately undercooked which is just how he likes it. If we hadn’t been out at a posh place I think that he may have licked the plate.

The mango that was served with the lobster was served separately in a tart shell and the pastry was incredibly light and adorned with garlic flowers to add a burst of savoury.

I just could not fit desert in, but did manage a glass of New Zealand Pegasus Bay late harvest riesling which slid down nicely.

Lance had the Hokey Pokey which was described as ‘a take on a kiwi treat’.

Manjeri cremeaux, salted toffee and honeycombed ice cream. The little drops of honeycombe were unexpectedly chewy and not the crisp Hokey Pokey that we have at home. But it was delicious.

And lastly a couple of little monogrammed chocolates, but by this time we were bulging!