"We’ve been visiting WTLGI about once a year since it opened. It’s always something to look forward to, although the nature of the experience means we wouldn’t really want to be coming more often. And that’s in spite of the absolutely excellent feeling of hospitality – service is completely on the ball with everything happening just as it should. And I like the fact that staff remember your names and address you by them. And introduce themelves as well. It’s a good touch. Food continues to be by way of a tasting menu running to twelve courses, if you count snacks, bread and the like as being courses. At first glance, dishes may appear quite straightforward but look a little deeper and you see top quality ingredients, imagination and some considerable skill. This is what the menu said we had to eat, which includes produce from The Landing (their own kitchen garden built on top of the Merseyway precinct’s car park) and Yellowhammer (their own bakery) Tomato, woodruff Monkfish cheek, preserved blood orange Carlingford Oyster, orange leaf Tellowhammer bread butter Asparagus, Landing flowers Lettuce, pil-pil Cornish lobster, Tomalley Sladesdown duck Kebab on the way home Orange leaf parfait Burnt honey custard slice Woodruff chouquette As with every longish tasting menu, there are some dishes you’re going to like more than others. There was nothing we didn’t like (so that was a result in itself) but there were some stand-outs. For example, the tomato dish that kicked off the meal. Now, you might wonder how English cherry tomatoes in early June can possibly be a WOW dish. What they do is skin them and lightly dehydrate them to concentrate the flavour but not so much that it particularly affects the texture. They are served in a “tomato water” which is the absolute essence of tomato. Then there was a single oyster, served on the half shell. It had been lightly poached in a blood orange leaf sauce (Sicilian blood orange is the only citrus currently being used in the kitchen). Then there were the two duck dishes, served together. For one, the duck crown had been cooked outside on the BBQ, which is set up on the first floor landing. There was a lovely smell as you carefully climbed the uneven steps outside up to the second floor restaurant. It’s perfectly pink, with crispy skin and served with a chimichurri sauce, that was full of flavour but was, perhaps, just the wrong side of being too vinegary. And for the second there was a very long cooked ragu, made from the gizzard and heart, wrapped up in a small flatbread (just as you might get from the local kebab shop). Both dishes were just lovely in their individual ways. They come back to the use of that blood orange for the first dessert – the parfait has a perfect consistency and just the right balance between sweet and the citrus sharpness. Congrats to the pastry chef, Jess. As always, it had been an interesting and enjoyable evening."
