The other night I met up with my dear friend Laurene, who was just passing through London for the night. We met up with her friend Francois who suggested we check out New Street Wine and New Street Grill, part of the D&D chain. You can buy wine from the wine shop and bring it over for an £8 corkage fee. This is pretty good considering most places will charge you £20 and up.
Laurene's taste in wine is impeccable and hanging out with her is like taking a 101 on wine. She spoke highly of wines from Piedmont and chose a Langhe Nebbiolo 2010. The Nebbiolo grape is the same grape used in Barolo, my favorite wine. This bottle delivered strong flavor, a beautiful fragrance with a medium body, which made it easy to down before our meal.
The Grill is a fancy restaurant, unlike the casual ambiance of it's neighboring sister restaurant Fish Market. We got to sit in a lovely booth in the bar area and decided to go straight into mains, which consisted of meats and seafood.
I was on a bit of budget and I don't really eat meat, so I went for the 1/2 grilled lobster with fries for £17.50. It was delicious, but I immediately compared it to my experience at Burger & Lobster. First, there is no easy way to eat grilled lobster. If you want to REALLY get at that meat, you need to get your hands dirty. So despite all the fancy utensils I had at my disposal, it got a little messy and I felt a bit like Daryl Hannah in Splash. For basically the same price, B&L give you the whole lobster plus a bib and mallet. Just saying...
Laurene went for the Vol-au-vent with wild mushrooms and spinach, which is a puff pastry base with chicken. She said it was delicious and it looked very tempting.
And Francois chose the Devilled free-range spring chicken with crumb and mustard.
