Texture

First lunch out of the New Year and we chose Texture home to Agnar Sverrinson, recent recipient of a Michelin star. Agnar, an Icelandic chef ex of Petrus and Le Manoir au Quatre Saisons avoids butter, cream and sugar wherever possible and out cooks the annoying and meaningless description "Modern European" attached to his venture.

Highlights included quail, sweetcorn and bacon popcorn, this last ingredient an unlikely but successful match to the perfectly cooked bird. New season lamb, rich with mint was served with a broth on the side that had spent so ling simmering it practically moo'd. A chocolate grenache, milk ice cream and parsnip looked great, ate well but left me unconvinced that roots should share a plate with chocolate even if the natural bitterness of both offers some flavour matching. Service was friendly and the right side of formal, food is light, well presented and does indeed offer a mixture of textures and inventiveness that largely hit the mark.

A pleasant sommelier guided us to a Nebbiolo with firm tannins, good acidity and plenty of cherry fruit that matched our meal well.

The prompt for this trip was the FT lunch offer, one of the more enlightened annual restaurant deals. It halves the food bill and charges you a fiver for whoever you eat with as a result of which the patron doesn't make a loss and is more disposed to treat you as a real customer rather than a freeloader.

Years after the event I still have memories of a meal offer in a well regarded restaurant for which we received a "special menu" that was as free of protein as the staff were of charm when they sighted our voucher. The risotto we were served was so stodgy, I stomped home in a fit of disgust, pausing only to consult a cookbook in a local shop en route so I could teach myself how to cook one properly (17 minutes, Pernod, don't hurry the process and give it a two minute rest at the end with some Parmesan and butter).

January then is a quiet time of year for restauranters as we all look to our waistline and current accounts so it was a real pleasure to obtain a fair discount for lunch. I may not have learnt how to cook a new dish as a result of eating there but we enjoyed ourselves immensely and are booked to return at the end of the month.