Salt

As part of Restaurant Week, four of us had dinner last night at Salt in Butcher’s Hill. I have heard loads of great things about this place, but have never managed to visit.

We started with some drinks, the men had beers and I had a strawberry mojito, and an order of Salt’s famous Duck Fat French Fries with a trio of aioli – malted vinegar, truffle and smoked pepper. We all preferred the truffle and the fries were gone in a flash.

Since they just seemed to be offering the Restaurant Week menu, that’s what we ordered from. I started with a fabulous salad of bibb lettuce, watermelon, feta and a balsamic reduction. Julie had a seafood chowder and Mike had fajitas.

For our mains, I had the Grilled Giant Prawns with roasted chickpeas, lemon, olive oil, garlic brioche, which I thought was the least successful of the four dishes. It was very hard to eat the prawns and there was very little meat in them. They had HUGE long legs that stuck out everywhere. I thought the chickpeas, lemon and olive oil would be more like hummus, and less like three separate ingredients.

Julie had a Fresh Pasta with Corn, Asparagus, Chiles, Sweet corn butter, fresh thyme, shaved Pecorino Romano, and proclaimed it a hit.

Mike had a pork shank with peanut Udon noodles, which he liked more than the pork, which was falling off the bone.

Joe had Grilled Lamb Shank with a Curried carrot fritter, watercress and bean salad, feta vinaigrette and he ate every speck of it, so it was apparently a success.

For dessert, we each had something different. I had a creme brulee, Julie had mini-donuts with lavender honey and salt, and coffee-chocolate chip ice cream, Mike had lemon sorbet and Joe had a biscuit with fresh whipped cream and berries.

The pictures above all have a very strong green cast to them due to the lighting in Salt, which you can see in the top image. I don’t think that colour does either their patrons or their food any favours.

Otherwise, we though the food and service were both excellent.