Galvin at Windows, London Mayfair

I really like French restaurants. I like the fact that there are always table cloths on the tables, the waiters are (usually) oh so oh-la-la and the food is (mostly) excellent.

Galvin at Windows falls into all of those categories, and I know that this place has been blogged to death but wait till you see the last photo, I promise to put a caffine induced smile on your face. 

Also, another thing I've been doing lately is observing the quality of the cutlery at every eating establishment. Yes, I know it's weird when the girl next to you picks up her knife and fork and starts weighing and tapping them but ever since I bought my flat I've been furniture obsessed, with kitchen stuff at the top of the list. 

 Galvin at Windows had good sturdy forks. I approve.

Booking in advance pretty essential here. I booked with my boyfriend for about a month later for lunch, and we used a LivingSocial deal which was £40 for two courses from a set menu and 2 glasses of wine. Pretty brilliant I'd say! We got some coffees and drinks and with service it came to about £30 a head which for a Michelin star restaurant is great value.

Plus the view...oh the view, c'est magnifique!

(See first photo)

We started with complimentary bread and butter. And a postcard with the view from the window (not really sure what we were supposed to do with that - post it to them? "Hi! We just had lunch here! I know you're probably standing at the exact spot where the photo was taken but we wish you were here....even though you already are!")

The sommelier came and explained the wine, and I'm no wine expert by any means but we chose a South African red of some grape...variety...

Going straight to the main, this was braised beef cheek with pomme puree. And an single onion wedge, too! 

(Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of the menu, so I'm improvising.)

The sauce of brown stuff was nice (red wine jus perhaps?), but we could have done with more. By the end of the dish, we were scraping at dry beef with no yummy brown looking sauce.

The waiter came over to ask how our meal was, and we said that it was great, but a bit dry. In which he promptly hummed and nodded and went away and we didn't really know what that meant, BUT....

He served us an extra pre-dessert, compliments of the chef. How lovely of these guys =)

This was gingerbread (still warm, resting on a bed of coca nibs), and vanilla panacotta with blueberry compote. We both actually came away from the meal thinking this was the best dish.

So then our actual ordered dessert came. It was an mango sorbet pineapple and coconut cake affair, with something like looked and tasted a bit like a Snack-a-Jack. Aside from the rice kispies the rest was excellent.

Lemon and lime (I think() marshmallows. We were quite stuffed at this point as we also got coffees and petit fours, but the jar was cute so we ate some.

And then we made smiley faces in our coffee. Improvising with coca nibs from our pre-dessert...just er, like the Galvin brothers would have done.

Hey, the little chef inside me can dream, right?

Galvin at Windows

22 Park Lane

London

http://www.galvinatwindows.com/