Aubaine

Excellent breakfast. The healthy egg option with avocado was very tasty

Quite disappointing evening here last night. We were mostly let down by the rather arrogant and very awkward server. We were a group of 4, very chatty, and often interrupted by our server, in a way that made us feel very rushed and uncomfortable. They were pretty empty, so perhaps he was bored? Or trying to be funny or charming? Whatever his intentions, we weren’t impressed.
Décor was nice, though not many tables in on a Saturday night, which isn’t a great thing to see! Not bad prices for the quality of food, but nothing mind blowing, and to be honest, the service was such a let down that I won’t be rushing back.

I came here for dinner with a friend, originally booked on the set menu which is an incredible bargain. However we were swayed by the a la carte menu offerings and went for them instead, with some success– though perhaps not quite enough to warrant the prices on this occasion.
Starters of blue cheese salad and soup were excellent as was the bread. However my main of mussels was disappointing. I asked whether the sauce was white wine assuming that meant the usual cream, white wine, shallot concoction, so I suppose it was partly my fault that the watery ‘broth’ the mussels arrived in was no good for dunking fries in and therefore saddened me. The mussels themselves were small and not the greatest. I would not order it again especially not at £15.50 which really is quite extortionate for that particular dish. My friend’s lamb however was excellent.
Quite an expensive wine selection but the house was fine. It wasn’t great for gluten free choices but my friend ate well nonetheless. The restaurant itself had a great atmosphere, it felt refined but not stuffy and the staff were friendly but professional. We lingered for a long time and weren’t hurried. I would go back and order from the set menu or try the other meat dishes.

Just over a week ago, I was alerted to a new cronut copy on the market by @Wilkes888. Aubaine (@Aubaine_UK) is a collection of restaurants/​cafes in some of the posher parts of West London and serves up modern French fare all day. I’ve yet to try it out (although the food I did see on a later visit looked quite tasty) but more the point I was here for their cro-​dough. In short, the cro-​dough is rich and flaky, comes in two tasty flavours, and represents good value for money which puts it in a solid 3^rd place in the London offerings. As a disclaimer, I got these cro-​doughs for free as I turned up on the launch day to find they weren’t ready yet although the PR company had assured me they would be.
Aubaine has two flavours of cro-​dough on offer: nutella and cinnamon. Both feature the same cro-​dough pastry with the nutella boasting a generous piped topping of hazelnut chocolate goodness while the cinnamon one has been tossed in a heavy coating of cinnamon sugar.
The cro-​dough itself is fairly large and roughly the size of a flattened softball. It has sharply defined layers (a good sign of a well made laminated pastry) that peel apart with gentle pressure. It has a rich butter taste and is slightly oily to the point it leaves a sheen on your fingers but not so much that it becomes greasy. Toppings-​wise, although I love the flavor of Aubaine’s nutella, it’s a messy proposition with the hot cro-​dough causing the nutella to melt and smear. It’s good fun to eat — just make sure to have a napkin on hand to clean up! The cinnamon sugar is more evenly distributed which does tip the scales slightly in its favour when I took a straw poll among my friends.
Ah, worth noting that the cro-​doughs are only available starting around 8.30−9am each day as the kitchen starts up at 7 and it takes at least an hour to warm up the oil and do the final fry for the cro-​doughs.
The Aubaine cro-​dough retails for £2.50 if you take it to go or £3.50 if you choose to eat in.