Roux at Parliament Square

Parliament Square has been hitting the headlines this week, for all the wrong reasons. The day after my visit to Roux at Parliament Square, hoards of disgruntled students descended upon the square to protest against Government plans to raise tuition fees. The result? A hostile protest ending in 150 arrests.

My excursion to Westminster was mercifully drama free, save for a touch of slipping and sliding along icy paths to get there. I arrived wind-slapped and with grit-filled boots, but was soon swept from the icy outdoors into the warm, beige bosom of the restaurant, which is housed in the premises of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

The evening began with a glass of the exceptional Nyetimber 2005 in the restaurant bar – a strange, grape-hued space stuffed with law books either side of a shrine to proprietor Michel Roux Jr, whose face beams out of multiple covers of his latest cookbook. Son of Albert and nephew of Michel Roux Snr, Michel Jr can usually be found heading up Le Gavroche or grilling contestants in MasterChef: the Professionals, and is widely regarded as London's pre-eminent classical chef.

Alas, Roux is decidedly absent from Parliament Square. And so is his protégé Daniel Cox – who left just 10 weeks after the restaurant opened in May. Toby Stuart from Galvin at Windows has since taken the helm. The spacious main dining room is somewhat lacking in character. A paean to purple and greige, the lighting is too bright, and the conversation too hushed. The private dining room however (pictured), has far more charm, from its stained-glass windows, sculpted chairs and art deco mirror, to the curious old menus furnishing the walls.

The main room may be dull, but the food is certainly not. Perhaps the bland decor is a deliberate device to allow the food to take centre stage. My dining partner - eminent London food critic Douglas Blyde, and I opted for the seven course tasting menu, priced at £65 per head, with an additional £40 charge for the matching wines – incredibly good value compared to the £55 three course á la carte.

There were so many highlights worthy of mention, and overall I found the food – served predominantly on circular black slates – well considered, well executed and extremely elegant. We began with a creamy, comforting parsnip soup amuse bouche, followed by a warm salad of Cheltenham beetroot (who would have thought), goat's curd, orange and pine nut. Delicate, fresh and exquisitely put together, the edible forest married well with the accompanying Alsation Pinot Blanc, which brought out the orange in the dish.

The following lasagne of Cornish crab and leek with Avruga caviar in a Champagne velouté was my standout dish of the evening. Soft, creamy and rich, the meaty crab, spliced with layers of crunchy leek, was lifted and fresh – a navigable island within a Champagne bubble bath, and worked well with the crisp, limey Rheingau Riesling. Next we were presented with a crunchy, textured, foie gras, pomegranate and radish salad with hazelnut crumble, which was bursting with flavour, but slightly overpowered by the honey heavy Château du Levant Sauternes.

We were then treated to a bite-sized chunk of silky soft, slow-cooked North Atlantic Halibut served with a mussel mousse and doll sized, mushroom strewn pancakes, which was matched with a closed and astringent white Rhône. The succeeding rump of beef with a croustillant salt brisket in a bone marrow sauce shone. The coin-sized circles of beef were tender, juicy and moreish, as was the salty, crunchy brisket, which harmonized well with the juicy, rum and raisin fuelled Thesaurum Corvina Cabernet Sauvignon 2006.

A duo of puddings rounded off the night, one of which succeed and one failed. The tiny cube of lemon tart was zingy and refreshing, while the chocolate mousse and peanut parfait with caramelised banana was sickly sweet and cloying, but redeemed by the peanuts. The final wine pairing was an opulent, heady, black fruited Dom. Lafage Maury from the Languedoc – an exciting discovery. Despite the disappointing final course, I found it hard to find fault with the food. Beautiful, precise, and packed with harmonious flavours, this is classic cooking at its best. I only wish the decor tried harder to stir the soul.

English wine tasting

We all know about the merits of English sparkling wine – Ridgeview Estate's Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs 2006 recently won the UK Sparkling Over £10 Regional Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards, making it a contender for the Sparkling Over £10 International Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards ceremony dinner on 1 September, where it will be competing on a level playing field with heavyweight vintage Champagnes.

Sparkling wines aside, when my flatmate Jimmy Smith, who runs the West London Wine School in Fulham, mentioned he was hosting a Best of British wine tasting, I was the first to sign up, excited about trying the still wines on offer.

A modest and manageable eight wines were on show – four whites, one red and three sparklers. We seem to be experiencing something of a wine boom in England – planting is at an all time high. The 2009 figures show 1,215 hectares under vine, with Champagne grapes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay being the most widely planted, followed by trendy grape Bacchus, named, of course, after the Roman god of wine.

A whopping 75% of England's vineyards are in the south, clustered around Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Although winemaking in England dates back to AD43, when the Romans brought vines to Britain, it's only over the past 20 years that we've started to be taken seriously as a quality wine producing country. And things are on the up, with both foreign and local investment, a surge of skilled winemakers coming up through the ranks, and the effects of Global Warming, England is emerging as a serious player in the wine world.

There are currently 381 vineyards in England, stretching as far north as Yorkshire, and 116 wineries producing around 2.2m bottles a year, and a record 3.2m in 2009. Jimmy's tasting began with Stanlake Park Regatta White 2007, a blend of Ortega (named after the Spanish liberal philosopher José Ortega), Madeleine Angevine and Schonburger. The stunning, sprawling Stanlake Park manor house wouldn't look out of place on the Left Bank. The wine however, failed to impress. It had some attractive green fruit and crisp acidity, but was too light bodied to get me excited.

On to wine 2; Denbies Flint Valley NV from the Surrey-based winery boasting the biggest single vineyard in the UK. I have to admit to being both proud and nostalgic about tasting this wine. I was born ten minutes from the vineyard in Godstone a year before it was founded in 1984. There is something wonderful about trying a wine from where you were born. I felt the same pride (albeit disproportional) as natives of Bordeaux and Champagne do about their wines. A blend of Reichensteiner, Seyval Blanc and Chardonnay, it had a slightly oily texture, with a flinty, mineral core and sharp green apple and citrus notes.

Two Chapel Down wines were on show – Bacchus 2009 and Brut Sparkling NV. With 19 vineyards scattered across Kent, Chapel Down has won a slew of awards over the past few years. Along with Ortega, Bacchus is making a name for itself as an exciting variety to watch. The pronounced nose showed passionfruit, nettle and lime, while the sharp palate was filled with puckering lime and gooseberry - we just might have found England's answer to Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

The only red of the night, Bolney Estate Dark Harvest 2008, came from Bookers in Sussex. Made from the early ripening Rondo grape, with a small amount of inky Dornfelder thrown in, it was liquid proof of how far we've got to go with our reds. It tasted like a church – dusty and musty, but there were faint, pleasurable hints of Pinot Noir through its smoke, spice and soft red fruit.

We ended with a trio of sparklers – Chapel Down (as previously mentioned), Somborne Valley Rosé 2006 and, for the grand finale, Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2005. Sharing Champagne's clement climate and limestone and chalk soils, England has the perfect terroir for sparkling wine – production is set to double in 2010, from 3m to 7m bottles a year. The Somborne had an odd, almost cheesy nose, but a wonderfully elegant palate of apples, strawberries and raspberries, with a creamy, lemony mousse. But the Nyetimber 2005 stood out like a diamond in the dirt. A rich golden hue, if I were to get this in a blind tasting, it would be almost impossible not to place it in Champagne. The nose sang of rich autolytic notes - biscuit, toasted almonds and brioche. The palate was rich and creamy, like a plate of hot buttered croissants.

The tasting has given me a lot to think about. Not only are we now making sparkling wines that can hold their own against the best vintage Champagnes, we seem to have found our own homegrown version of super seller Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in Bacchus, and a rising star in Ortega. There is so much to celebrate in English wine right now - the future's bright.