Morgan M, Highbury/Holloway

Morgan M is an upmarket French restaurant in a downmarket area. It's to be found at the very northern end of Liverpool Road so well away from Angel and Highbury until you're nearly half way up Holloway Road (ie. in the midst of pound shops and kebab outlets). We were:

Linz
Sam
Pete
Vicki

I arrived first at about 7pm even though the table had been booked for 7.30. They graciuosly allowed me to be seated early, as well they should because apart from one couple in the corner the place was stone cold empty. Vicki arrived about 10 minutes later and we found ourselves whispering our conversation about Heroes Season 2 lest the surly French waiters tut at our C2DE conversation topic.

The restaurant is run by chef patron Morgan Meunier (hence the name you see?). He is reported to be one the best French chefs around. You may not have heard of him because he doesn't do much TV. I hadn't heard about him either but he did come over to the tables at the end of the evening to ask what we thought and what, in particular, we'd enjoyed.

Enough about him, onto the restaurant....: their first error was a failure to provide any bread, even though we'd been sitting there for about 40 minutes. It's not as if they thought we were scumbag wasters - we'd already ordered some of their pricey wine! There were other basic errors throughout the night (notably the early wine grab and the early plate removal) but the food, to be fair, was mostly very good.

£36 for 3 courses is not half bad for a restaurant of this quality. Plus a couple of amuse bouches added into the mix actually made a pretty good value for money evening (leaving out the wine of course).

We started with a beetroot and roquefort dish served in "nice bowls", followed by our starters. Vicki was initially planning on going for a un-PC dowble header by choosing fois gras followed by veal. She eventually bottled it and we both went for the snail ravioli while Linz went for the tuna. Both good. Sam's broad bean starter wasn't so great and she left most of it (a fact she gleefully revealed to Morgan himself later in the evening). For mains we had pigeon, veal and sea bass and there were no complaints there but it certainly wasn't as good as something you'd get in somewhere truly extravagent.

A second amuse bouche (can't remember - sorry!) was followed by deserts. My rhubarb tarte was excellent and Vicki's chocolate fondant was very rich. Sam wanted the cheese but that needed a £7.50 supplement on the 3-course deal. True to form Sam was onto them asking why it was so much. They didn't have a good answer and were (perhaps deliberately) stingy with her accompanying bread and coulis.

Ho hum. That's all for now. We wandered back to our respective tube stations (having missed the last Victoria Line train - thanks a lot TfL!) debating the merits of Morgan M. Was it worth it? £36 is a good deal no doubt. Service was poor though and location is a hassle so unless you're already in the area I wouldn't be rushing back.