Fabulous dinner at Fulham Wine Rooms

Fulham Wine Rooms entrance.
The beautifully decorated back room.
All photos by Angela Lansbury.Copyright.2016.

Problems
We went there, a group of just under twenty for a wine group's annual Christmas dinner. The decor was delightful. The only problems with this place were the timing of the potatoes, and the pudding which could have improved, but everything else was so wonderful that I will remember my meal for years to come. It was that good? Yes. But! You have to choose the right menu, or share food with somebody else who orders different dishes to be sure to get the top notch tasty nosh. So what do I recommend? I've tell you the whole story in complete detail.

Answer
We had the back room because we were a private party which seats up to about twenty for a Christmas party, birthday or other celebration. Very convivial.

If you are a small group of, say, four, in the main restaurant I think you might like the alcove at the back of the room on the right, though if the left hand room is busier and you like a crowd go for that area where you can catch the eye of the staff at the bar and wander over to the drink machines and choose a glass of wine from the dispensers.



Starters
I can't comment on the scallops which I didn't try because I am allergic to shellfish. I had the artichoke soup. Highly recommended.

Soup
I and my dining companion were ecstatic about it. I shall look for recipes on line. The soup was flavoursome. But what really made it was the slivers of wafer thin brown almost crispy intense flavour artichoke. How did they do that? Exquisite. Just right. Flavour of the year. But that wasn't the only one.

Bread
We don't like to fill up on bread and the group organiser hadn't ordered any but one person asked for bread. Up it came, with butter, fruit bread. I love fruit bread. Not quite as good as the multi-seed loaf with is six stars, but a top of the ratings five star bread.

Next, main courses. Here's the blip. The venison is perfectly presented. It arrives with sprouts, a carrot, a parsnip, and a spread of mash.

Story
My companion on my other side says his venison tastes like steak. He tells me a story about his father-in-law who was a butcher. In a restaurant they are served what is described on the menu as chicken and looks like chicken. You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can't fall all of the people all of the time. His father-in-law knows immediately that the texture is wrong. He calls over the waiter and says, "This is not chicken. This is rabbit!"

Tips
1 Order the artichoke soup. Or, if it's not offered, request it.

2 Make sure you get all your vegetables, notably the potatoes. If potatoes don't appear with your main course, ask for them immediately.

My delicious turkey roulade was slices from a rolled up meat with an intensely flavoured wrap of wafer thin smokey bacon, contrasting with some kind of stuffing, a mixture of three flavours. Wonderful. What looks like a puree of pretty orange parsnip is interesting - but where's the second vegetable, the potato?

The person diagonally across from me immediately asks the waiter for potato. Not to be outdone, I do the same. The waiter nods and hardly any delay, up come two large portions of new potatoes in butter, half sliced, fried, very tasty, a big bowl for each of us, enough to share with others. I have just finished my food when up come more bowls of potatoes for everybody else. The timing of the potatoes was all wrong. What happened?

3 Order the creme brûlée for dessert.
Creme brûlée was the last brilliant course, the dessert. My dining companion and have made a point of ordering different food. We always do. Especially if you are having two or more Christmas dinners in successive nights or even the same week. We have ordered one Christmas pudding, my choice, and one creme brûlée, his choice.

We had already had what we thought was the world's most wonderful dessert in Umbria, Italy, at the truffle producers. (See my other posts on Umbria.) But here's another, and one which anybody can try, much more easily, creme brûlée, the thickened cream served not in a small deep bowl but a large flat dish, with a scattering of embedded contrasting colour dark black berries.

The only problem is, looking back at TripAdvisor and comparing last year's dinner with this year's it's a different menu. This is a second dish I shall try to emulate.

If you can't get this dish, try to make it yourself. If you go to a restaurant where you can ask for a dish, ask them to make this. If you go to Fulham Wine rooms, check their menu.

Christmas Pudding
Christmas pudding is traditional for Christmas dinners in England. The Americans call it plum pudding, although as far as I know it's made with dried fruits nowadays, currants and sultanas and chopped candied peel. Check the ingredients on packaging.

I've seen plum pudding in American supermarkets all year, including summer. In England Christmas pudding is seasonal like everything else with the word Christmas. Christmas Pudding appears in British supermarkets around November. The leftover stocks are half price after Christmas in January. Then it disappears. Any supermarket can sell you a delicious Christmas pudding which takes a minute or two or three (depending on portion size) to reheat in a microwave.

4 Avoid the Christmas pudding at Fulham Wine Rooms. This was the last blip. I hate to criticise. I worry that I may be ruining the day for some trainee chef who has tried really hard. I hate to say this. But I and three other people thought the Christmas pudding was lacking. It was too pale, lacking the rich fruit, no great flavour, 'dry as dust' said one person, not relieved by the moistening of the custard. The custard looks ample in the photo but by the time I was half way throuth the pudding I had run out of the white custard.

I'm British. I was brought up on yellow custard. Yellow custard is yummy. Yellow custard is to the English what pasta is to the Italians. I expect yellow custard. It's absurd, you may think. I concede that it's unreasonable of me. Yes, yellow custard looks like school dinners. The yellow colour is not necessary. It's probably a nasty colour additive. Fresh or dried custard powder or imitation egg may upset people who are allergic to egg yolks. But I want thick yellow custard on my Christmas pudding - and lots of it!

To sum up, try artichoke soup, venison and creme brûlée at Fulham Wine Rooms. Just thinking about it makes me smile.

We didn't want to leave. We were so happy. But the last train was going. Luckily you can now get all night buses in London. But we didn't want to risk missing the last train. Why spoil a perfect evening?

Fulham Wine Rooms
871 – 873 Fulham Road,
London
SW6 5HP
Telephone:
+44 207 042 9440
www.winerooms.london/fulham
Hours
2.30pm – midnight, Monday to Friday.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d2142592-Reviews-The_Fulham_Wine_Rooms-London_England

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
You can read more by and about Angela Lansbury, the author, on other blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. Books by Angela Lansbury are on Amazon and Lulu.com
Please like my pages and share. Comments welcome.