"The Hart & Fuggle" Experience

Irene is particularly peculiar about food and trying out with her this popup restaurant we heard so much about was surely going to be... an experience. Our first dining experience with her and Stefanos, her fiancé, was in Rome where we went on a carb-devouring frenzy for a few days and had her cringe in horror at the sights of Roman classics like Trippa alla Romana and Rigatoni con Pajata (a dish with small intestines of suckling lamb and ewe's milk cheese at Checchino dal 1887). But we digress..

We went to The Hart & Fuggle on Thursday, Nov 8 (they had a separate menu every day apparently), the venue this time was the Workshop Cafe in Farringdon. We arrived slightly late and in a state of distress which quickly evaporated when we were served a very refreshing variation of gin & tonic, with a stick of fresh rosemary in it, a nice touch.

The starter, a panzanella, was simple yet elegant and oozed freshness. The main, cider braised ham hock with pearl barley, roast pumpkin and savoy was simply excellent. The ham hock was juicy, smooth, exceptionally tasty; the barley was done just right and the bitter savoy contrasting the sweet pumpkin made our taste buds work overtime to deliver a fully rounded dish that left us totally satisfied. The dish came with some kind of bitter pesto, which got mixed reviews from our table: two of us found it a bit redundant, the other two were looking for more of it to spread on those succulent ham pieces.  The dessert, meringues with poached vanilla quinces, was slightly overpowering, yet I'd challenge anyone to stop eating it after two bites! The quince with cream reminded us of our grandmas in Greece and reduced us to four little kids high on sugar which was only topped by the second, surprise dessert, a blood orange & orange blossom lolly. Apart from it being a great pallet cleanser, it certainly sparked myriads of jokes.

Overall an amazing experience, which was topped off with a small bottle of salted caramel to take home and have something to show how good the food really is. We'd recommend it to everyone: http://www.thehartandfuggle.com/. To everyone's amazement, so would Irene, who licked the food off the plates; and that was the final test for this fabulous popup.

PS: But, we do wish they had given us an option of decaf, 'cause we were still up at 2am keeping notes for this post!

menu (from their website)

/starter 

-autumnal panzanella
/main
-cider-braised ham hock with pearl barley & roast pumpkin
/dessert 

-muscovado meringues with poached vanilla quinces