Jenny has been living in her current home with her boyfriend for I think over a year now but I haven’t yet had the chance to visit here … she lives all the way in Harlow which is in Essex! Its miles away so Jenny thought it would be good to have an overnight stay.

We spent Friday night at Goose Fat and Garlic in Sawbridgeworth (along the way we drove by Beckingham Palace – heh heh), had a gorgeously long sleep in on Saturday morning, a lovely cooked breakfast by Sean, when we had some deliciously sinful butter on lovely fresh bread, followed finally by some shopping Lakeside. Phew!

Goose Fat and Garlic is a bar/restaurant which I’d put on my “to eat at” list ages ago when Jenny first told me about it. I love eating with Jenny because she gets so excited when we go out for a meal. I’ve probably mentioned it before but the game we like to play is to “guess the other person’s meals choice” for the evening. Sure you may think it takes a bit of the surprise element out of it but we usually spend quite some time poring over the menu before hand just for fun!

Goose Fat and Garlic offer an a la carte (predominantly European) menu plus a tapas menu. The two didn’t seem to really go hand in hand but its clearly something that works well for them if they continue to offer it. The restaurant area of Goose Fat and Garlic seemed quite posh with the wood polished floors and white cotton tablecloths. Service was efficient and friendly though I’m not convinced our waitress new the menu very well. Jenny asked her about one of the sauces and she appeared to just make up something on the spot! Still, she nearly redeemed herself when she came back later to say that she saw someone else has ordered that dish and she could tell us exactly what was in the sauce …

For our starters we both opted for seafood options – Pan fried spiced king scallops served with an aubergine purée for Jenny and King prawns in crisp ale batter, served with garlic mayonnaise and sweet chilli salsa. Jenny was quite pleased with her scallop and my tempura prawn wasn’t too bad though the sweet chilli salsa did appear to be the kind that came out of a bottle.

For mains Jenny continued on with her seafood theme going for a Pan seared cod fillet with a pea and bacon velouté and roasted fondant potato whereas I decided to go a bit carnivore and went for the Pan fried fillet of Hereford beef served with rosti potato, Mediterranean vegetables and Café de Paris butter.

Both dishes weren’t too bad though I think Jenny thought her velouté was a touch salty and my rosti potato was a bit dry and over deep-fried. The Mediterranean vegetables were cubed bits of carrot and not exactly generous. It could have been a slightly more balanced dish. The winner at mains though was our side of creamed cabbage. Really really good!

Finally, even though we were really really full already, we had some dessert. A strawberry millefeuille served with crushed fresh strawberries for Jenny and a delicious Ginger crème brulée served with coconut shortbread for me. Loved my dessert but hard to go too wrong with crème brulée.