Formal Review – Christ’s

Christ’s has a reputation for skid mark quality formal food, so our hopes were not high when we donned our gowns. Despite this, I wanted to be pleasantly surprised. Cheers for letting me down, Christ’s.

Menu: Mystery soup; roast pork with vegetables; panacotta with fresh fruit.

Starter: The only vaguely edible course of the whole meal. The soup was tasty and well-seasoned, but nothing special: for all we knew it could have come from Sainsbury’s. As we weren’t provided with a menu, we aren’t actually sure what was in it. The person sitting next to me did ask the waiter, but he came back with details of every course except the starter, so we remain clueless. Judging by its  somewhat vivid orange colour, it would seem fair to assume it was a variety of root vegetable.

Christ’s soup. Taste the difference, I think not.

Main: By far the most disappointing course: roast pork belly served with brussel sprouts, carrots and new potatoes, with a gunge purporting to be stuffing. Ostensibly quite nice, but the stuffing let the whole thing down: think Paxo Sage & Onion stuffing mix, that hadn’t been mixed with enough water, then left on the side to clot. It took two pieces of cutlery to serve: one to spoon it up with, another to scrape if off. Although the pork was actually cooked quite nicely, the fact that it was served about fifteen minutes after the vegetables meant the overwhelming impression of this course was that it was mainly cold, and disturbingly congealed.

Grinning and bearing it

Dessert: At this somewhat dismal point in the evening, we needed the dessert to be spectacular. Unfortunately, a selection of “fresh fruit” and panacotta did not deliver. The “fresh fruit” was finely chopped red and green apples, nothing else, and the panacotta appeared to have structural faults; it was a thoroughly unappetizing, jellified slop next to our slowly browning “fresh fruit”.

Price: Guest tickets are normally £10 for three courses and coffee, with a £1 corkage fee on wine.

Lowlight of the evening: We forgot to buy wine…

If only…

Highlight of the meal: Definitely watching those who were lucky enough to remember to bring wine. We chuckled as a determined inebriate on our table tried to convince the waitress, with his shameless flirting, to sneak into the room where the fellows were dining and procure him chocolates. He was, unfortunately, unsuccessful, but his prolonged attempt at persuasion (nudging on five minutes) deserved full marks for effort. We also enjoyed sharing the table with some people who were equally as snotty about food as us, perhaps more so. Girls from Kings, you made our meal so much more entertaining – thank you!

Christ’s reputation for substandard grub remains secure. Perhaps with a few glasses of cheap chardonnay, we might not have noticed how bad the food was…