Sunday 13 January 2013

Blenheim Palace - Oxford


It's not often you get an invite to Blenheim Palace for breakfast. Normally you have to pay just to walk the grounds. This time, someone else was paying. Don't worry, the Marlbroughs weren't dishing it out for free.

My sceptical side says that meals like this are mediocre to average, with the grandiose setting blinding you from the food on the plate. This, however, was good. Very good. The coffee was decent, the orange juice fresh, the food delivered hot - no mean feat when fifty people are dining simultaneously.
But the one thing that elevated this meal from the good to the very good was the plate. A single white round plate. No squares, no smorgasbord of an itemised breakfast, this was a single plate with everything (bar toast) rubbing shoulders with everything else.

The absence of a round plate for something as simple of breakfast sickens me. It's fiddling for the sake of fiddling. Possibly a distraction tactic. If the chef has one moment to think about the plate, then I would expect the meal to be perfect. If not, then that one moment was wasted.

No comments:

Post a Comment