THE GALLERY, FORTNUM & MASON

A few weeks ago I met up with the community manager of food review site Zomato to talk all things food, pop ups and blogs. This was followed with them sending me a voucher for food at Fortnum and Mason, and having never actually eaten at the restaurant there, I took them up on the offer.

The Gallery is situated at the back of the ground floor of Fortnum and Mason. I booked for Mother's Day and invited a girlfriend to join me. We both love Fortnums so were interested to find out more about their food. Fortnum and Mason has the most wonderful food hall serving all sorts of sweet, savoury and alcoholic treats, so expectations for lunch were high.

Being Mother's Day it was super busy in the restaurant but despite a small queue of waiting diners forming, they whisked me through to the table while I waited for Julie to peel herself away from the shopping delights of another floor of the department store and join me, which she did very soon after I was seated. The restaurant was serving the normal menu, plus a fixed Mother's Day menu that was £25.50 for 2 courses, or £29.50 for 3. This menu was made up of 3 options per course and included the dishes we already had our eye on, so we went for that. We both chose the same for starter and main.

For starters we couldn't resist the Fortnum and Mason smoked salmon, served with homemade soda bread and a herby sauce. The salmon was some of the best I've tried - delicious without being too oily and cut to a perfect thickness - I find smoked salmon can be cut too thin sometimes and you can barely taste it. The herbs complimented the smoked fish wonderfully and our glass of Chablis was ideal to drink with the starter.

Our choice of main course was a no brainer. We'd seen plates of roast beef being brought out to other tables and it looked so good. Huge Yorkshire puddings, rare roast Glenarm salt aged beef, steaming gravy, fresh vegetables, cauliflower cheese and crunchy-on-the-outside / soft-in-the-middle roast potatoes. It really was the perfect Sunday roast. And the portions were so big that it gave us time for a proper catch up while we soldiered our way through the food.

By the time we ordered puddings it was very late lunchtime and they'd run out of one of the options on the fixed menu, so said we could choose any pudding we wanted from the main menu. This was really great of them, and made up for the slightly haphazard and awkward service throughout the meal - drinks orders were taken twice, plates were nearly dropped, teapots chipped and a general sense of too many diners and not enough staff prevailed.

Julie chose the rhubarb crumble for pudding. A scrumptious crumble with a slightly tart fruit filling served with thick vanilla custard, that looked a bit of a mess but tasted good.

I went for the creamy blood orange cheesecake, which was a lot prettier than the crumble and equally as tasty, though it nearly defeated me after all that food.

A quick coffee and some tea to finish our meal while we sorted the bill (£110 in total) before a wander round the store, discovering that it may now be so touristy that visual merchandising seems to have gone out the window - particularly on the top floor which was reminiscent of a posh jumble sale.... So sad to see but hopefully a blip rather than a sign of things to come for F&M. Having said that, it didn't change the fact that the food we had was delicious and a really nice way to pass a Sunday afternoon. I think The Gallery is a great place to treat a loved one, it's classic and traditional and serves fantastic food.