There are no fish fingers in sight. Nick goes to Michelin starred Icelandic restaurant Texture to discover Nespresso’s new coffee.
‘Come to Texture restaurant and find out what’s missing’ was the gist of Nespresso’s invitation last week and, as I have never had anything but a great meal at Texture , it was a lunch invite not to be turned down.
In a town where restaurants come and and go, often with surprising speed, Texture has hung on seemingly effortlessly. Agnar Sverrisson chef and Xavier Rousset sommelier, have stuck to their Michelin-starred guns with creative, attractive and of course textural food and not seen any reason to drop standards of service or style to meet the demands of younger, less formally inclined diners or fickle fashion.
In a small private dining room a select group (well, I would say that) ate a three course meal preceded by Texture’s usual basket of crispy fish skins and lava salt.
My starter of Scottish scallops’I hope they are hand-dived?’ asked a lady next to me, with coconut, ginger, lime leaf and lemongrass was wonderful. Cooked to caramelisation on one side and not cooked at all on the other, this was how scallops should always be cooked. Hand dived? They probably came up to the beach and surrendered willingly.
Icelandic cod, lightly salted and drizzled with bisque, top-hatted with prawns and on a bed of chewy, in a good way barley, was zapped with the electric kick of grapefruit. Delicious.
And after a dessert of Icelandic Skyr, with rye bread crumbs and apples it was, of course time for coffee.
The massed Nespresso machines chugged into action, their powerful compressors driving the water through the Grand Cru coffee pods to create what many believe to be the best expresson coffee outside of a professional coffee shop. It certainly tastes like it.
And there was the rub, asked what we thought was missing from our coffees we could think of nothing until someone ventured as a guess’caffeine?’.
And so it was, we’d just had demonstrated to us Nespresso’s new decaff line of Grand Crus and none of us had noticed the difference. Just as no one had noticed that Chef Aggi does not use cream or butter in his cooking but still manages superb flavours.
So if you’re the de caff person who always feels shortchanged, and you have a Nespresso machine or are thinking of one, it’s good news for once.
Check out the Nespresso website to discover more and read about our tasting adventure at the Nespresso Coffee Club