Agent Triple P was in St James Street, the other week, looking for a restaurant and there, across the road was the far from budget L'Oranger. It's rare that Triple P eats out in the West End in the evening and even rarer in and around Picadilly.
Still, L'Oranger was a very attractive looking restaurant; although quite aggressively French, which is not our usual choice. The food, by Dordogne-trained chef Laurent Michel (previously Chef de Partie at the Three Michelin Star restaurant Taillevent), is elegantly presented but traditional seasonal French (with a Provencal twist) cooking and none the worse for that. Service is by traditionally uniformed French waiters; something of a rarity in London.
What more traditional thing to have in a traditional French restaurant than Tournedos Rossini. In fact, this was the very first main course Triple P had when he first took a young lady out to dinner, at the restaurant La Sorbonne in Oxford, where the chef was one Raymond Blanc who has now gone on to stratospheric heights. So, as ever, when partaking of this particular and, today, increasingly politically incorrect, dish we thought about K and indeed, the subsequent enormous fight with C with whom we were also supposed to be going to this particular restaurant first. Fortunately, both parties literally kissed and made up with each other as well, as Triple P.
L'Oranger got into the press late last year when a Latvian gentleman was arrested after trying to escape without paying his £1.000 bill (yes, running up a bill like that (for two, in this case) at L'Oranger is quite feasible!).
The Martini itself was, very classic. Stirred and with one olive (hooray) but in an unchilled glass (boo). Not cold enough for Triple P's liking but nice and strong so scores 6/10.
