I caught up with Su Yin and Kelly at Orrery tonight. Orrery is another in the stable of the D&D restaurants and sits on top of a Conran shop on Marylebone High Street. Its probably a surprise to see that there is this restaurant upstairs – I almost didn’t see the entrance! Orrery serves “French inspired” and tonight’s experience proves why some of the best service you’ll ever find will be in a French restaurant.

But let’s start with the food. We were taking advantage of a set menu offer – £30 for 3 courses and a glass of bellini. As is the trend with many of the posher restaurants these days we also got a few little extras – which was good because the food portions were, I guess rather typically, small!

(I think we spent more time taking photos than eating our dishes!)

Our meals were started with an amuse bouche of Parsnip soup and mushroom foam. It was very cute and intensely flavoured. We followed this with a starter of seafood tortelinni, lobster bisque which I was pleased to see came with a giant prawn (thankfully peeled) on top. Delicious but I could have done with at least two more portions of it. Heh heh.

For mains I stayed with my seafood theme with Sea bass, truffle mousseline, champagne veloute. Beautifully presented even if I do object to the foams and smears of “sauce”. I was expecting stronger flavours but as usual the truffle essence is lost on me. The sea bass was quite fresh.

Food at this stage was coming out really quite quickly and when combined with the fact the portions weren’t too huge I thought we’d be in and out of the restaurant in half an hour! However, there was a slight delay on our desserts. Whilst waiting for our dessert we were surprised by a pre-dessert of vanilla foam (more foam!) and pear and apple crumble which was very delicious. I would have been happy to get a full dessert of it that’s for sure.

The delay was soon explained by this:

I had opted for the pear frangipane and vanilla ice cream but I wasn’t expecting the silver candles and the Happy Birthday written on the plate! I was wondering why I got the place but could only track it back to when halfway through our main meal Su Yin had suddenly said “Happy Birthday” to me. She said it quietly but our hovering waiter must have overhead! I was well impressed that the waiter did something about such a subtle hint! It was so funny because even the guys next to us chipped in wishing me a happy birthday … my birthday isn’t until later in the year by the way! But see what I mean about French service.

Because we were having such a nice time in the restaurant we finished our meals with some tea. Stepping right up to the task Orrery delivered with some delicious petit fours, which our waiter was more than happy to top up:

The waiters were really lovely and their presence was exactly spot on: there when we wanted them and not there when we didn’t need them although I did note that the later the night got the more harried they seemed.

Orrery was a truly enjoyable experience with fine food, fine food, and fine atmosphere. It may have been a little on the pricey side for the amount of food we got on our plates but you do get quite a few extras and the ingredients are pretty high quality.