Layered flavours topped with elegance: It’s French cuisine at Kingsbury
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Inspired pairing: Rock Lobster tail and tenderloin of beef
From pop-up supper clubs to food markets, food plays a sizeable role in Colombo’s social setting. Kingsbury Hotel’s French food promotion at the Grill, is a recent addition to the city’s food scene and brings in the layered flavours and elegance of French cuisine to Colombo.
For Chef Eric Beriggaud, who helms the food promotion with the hotel’s team, French food simmers down to two ingredients – luxury and quality.And it’s these two aspects of French cuisine that the French chef underscores for the ongoing French food promotion.
Working both with fresh local produce and imported ingredients, the menu skips across all regions of France and settles down on a few focused dishes from different regions paired with an extensive wine list. We start our meal with Le saumon marine – salmon marinated with dill and olive oil served with sour cream and yeasted pancakes – a simple appetizer. Our main for the night was a tasting plate of the Dijon herb crusted Australian lamb served with roast potatoes and stuffed tomatoes with a flavour packed rosemary jus on the side. For dessert, we opted for profiteroles with ice-cream and chocolate sauce,and slivers of pineapples marinated in basil and lemon sherbet.
The cornerstones of French cuisine , creating layers of flavours, shone largely in the marinated pineapple – a bright, tangy dessert exploding with notes of citrus. Razor thin slivers of pineapple are marinated with basil, pepper and star anise and are topped with lemon sherbet and garnished with basil springs. A sweetened coconut biscuit adds a much-needed hint of sweetness to balance the sour.
Chef Eric Beriggaud working his magic
The menu for the French food promotion is a focused one with meat and poultry taking centre stage. A new addition to the Kingsbury Hotel in June last year, the Grill was introduced as a fine dining addition to the list of restaurants at the hotel and stays true to its name with gourmet grills as the focal point. The restaurant was once part of the outdoor dining promenade at the hotel and is now an enclosed dining area with a front seat view of the Port City construction. After sunset it transforms into a dimly lit and intimate dining area, well suited for an evening meal.
French and Mediterranean influences tinge Beriggaud’s cooking and this shows in the menu.The rest of the French food promotion menu features mains such as a French variation of shepherd’s pie made with duck, aged grain-fed tenderloin of beef with rock lobster tail served with mashed potatoes, sautéed spinach and wild mushroom and grilled prime rib beef (a hefty 1.4kg prime rib dish which can serve up to four people). The menu takes care to point out the dishes grilled in the restaurant’s Josper oven – an oven-grill hybrid hailed as one of the hottest indoor barbeques and a familiar fixture in steak houses, brasseries and tapas bars. Dessert features French favourites such as mille-feuille and crepes while the appetizers take on carpaccio, salads and a cold-cuts platter with French, Italian and Spanish cured meats. Service for the night was swift and the staff, extremely attentive.
The Brittany-born Frenchman behind the menu speaks passionately about French food and the discipline required to master the cuisine. He smilingly explains that the style of eating is a discipline unto itself and a vital part of the entire experience of French cuisine.
Chef Eric Beriggaud’s French food menu will be available till July 19 at The Grill, Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo. Beriggaud will also be curating tapas menus at The Honey Beach Club.
-A.I.