The Parc Hotel
Park Place
Cardiff
CF10 3UD
Tel. No: 029 2078 5593
Email: crownsocial@thistle.co.uk
http://crownsocial.co.uk/
In many ways, writing a review of the Crown Social, housed within Cardiff's Parc Hotel, seems slightly redundant. Firstly because, as most Cardiffians with an interest in food and dining will know, the partnership between the Crown group (who also run the Michelin-starred Crown at Whitebrook and the Crown restaurant within the Celtic Manor) and the Parc is due to finish at the end of the month.
Chef Martin Blunos is to look for another Cardiff location to open a Crown restaurant within the city and the hotel is to resume running of the Social. This is, apparently, all very amicable. I had hoped that this might be the place to finally bring a coveted Michelin star to the city and it's disappointing to see a place that had that promise (and managed to acrue 2 AA rosettes so quickly) has apparently not taken off.
The excellent local food blog Corpulent Capers also last week posted a thorough review of the Crown Social and some musings on the reasons for its failure. I'm not sure how much I can add to those thoughts but I'd suggest checking out the post.
My rush to visit the Social this week was, thus, born from the fact that I was in possession of a Travel Zoo dining voucher that I wanted to cash in before the opportunity to sample the place was forever gone. The voucher offered £90 worth of food for £45 for two - including two nibbles, four starters, two mains, two sides, and two desserts. On the face of it, this sounds like incredible value but when you consider the small plate sharing ethos of the Crown Social, it becomes less of a bargain.
Nevertheless, despite the news about the imminent parting of the ways between the Parc Hotel and Crown and despite some of the less than positive reviews and comments I've read on Twitter and other blogs, my partner and I set off to try it out for ourselves.
The first thing we were suprised by was how busy it was for a Monday night. Although I've seen many people comment that the place is like a ghost town on their visits, the place was around half full when we attended. How much of this is due to Travel Zoo punters rushing to use their coupons is unclear but it did add some atmosphere to the dining room. I can easily see how a quiet evening would seriously detract from the experience of the visit.
We started with drinks - an Oriental Sparkle cocktail was surprisingly small for its £8 cost and lacked the kick of lychee and mandarin I was promised. We thus opted for a bottle of wine with our meal which was perfectly servicable (but, hey, we're on a budget!).
The sharing concept has also come in for some critique and again I can understand this. We ordered our 2 nibbles and 4 starters and agreed that these would all be brought at the same time. This allowed some sharing between the two of us but it also meant that some of the dishes were less than warm by the time we tasted them.
Cheese fondue
The cheese fondue was my favourite of the starters that we tried. I'm a massive fan of this anyway but the cheese was gooey and just strong enough. We had to order a side of bread to finish it all off but at 90p for a fairly substantial loaf (nicely presented on a bread board with a knife) it didn't break the bank.
Beer battered whiting with tartare sauce & Grilled mackerel with Russian salad
Apparently the whiting was mostly pointless, providing some nice tartare sauce but little in the way of flavour or texture. The mackerel was reported to be well cooked but uninspiring, with the Russian salad really being a tarted-up coleslaw. Not excellent on the fish nibbles/starters front at all.
Leek and potato terrine, roast garlic and toasted hazelnuts
This was another missed opportunity; cold and bland with a fairly unpleasant texture and the toasted hazelnuts didn't add anything at all to this dish. We both sincerely wished that we had ordered something else.
Welsh pork boudin and shallot piccalilli
This was tasty and, sadly, as a nibble, too small for much of a sharing experience. Nicely seasoned meat and a very pleasant mouthful.
Seared lambs liver, cauliflower and hot caper butter
This was my partner's highlight of the meal. Having never tried liver before he was impressed with the flavour and the combination of the liver with the capers and cauliflower. I hate liver but tried it and found it better than most other livers I've tasted. Well cooked and interesting, this was one of the best dishes of the night.
For the mains we went for one fish and one meat dish and ordered them with sides of a salad and chips. The chips were chunky and soft on the inside but could have done with being crispier on the outside.
Crab tortellini and crab cream sauce
The crab tortellini looked pretty but was pretty much what it said on the menu: 5 piece of pasta with a little sauce. The tortellini had a good fish flavour but my partner reported the odd bit of shell in the dish - a cardinal sin at any restaurant but especially one aiming for such high levels!
Slow cooked lamb shoulder and crisp lamb breast
My lamb dish was very good, the meat was well cooked and tender and the sauce that accompanied it was rich. Aside from the fondue, this was my favourite dish of the evening - with a slightly larger portion and some extra garnish I would happily eat this as a main course in any restaurant.
For dessert we chose the honeycomb souffle which was light and fluffy and full of delicious surprise honeycomb textures. The lime sorbet didn't really add much to it though and the flavours didn't really match up. The souffle itself more than made up for it though.
Honeycomb souffle and coconut lime sorbet
The salted caramel chocolate slice was also very good. My only critique was the presentation - no matter how you look at it, a brown smear on a plate is not attractive. It's one of my pet hates. But the slice itself was both salty and sweet and a good size for the end of a meal.
Salted caramel chocolate slice
Overall, we enjoyed the experience at the Crown Social but there were a number of flaws. We both agreed that whilst there were flashes of excellence (the fondue, liver, the lamb dish, the desserts) there was also a great deal of mediocracy (the shell in the crab dish!, the bland lifeless potato terrine, the whiting) which made the food quality very uneven. I can see how the concept of sharing such small dishes might also be off-putting to some people and how the usually high prices also seem to jar with the concept. If we hadn't used the Travel Zoo voucher the meal would have easily set us back nearly £150. At that price, it just isn't worth it.
I think the concept of 'fine dining tapas' could work if prices were lower, portions were larger, or both. I also do hope that the Crown finds a suitable location in Cardiff although I'd wager that this won't be in the city centre. The success of more 'high-end' restaurants such as Bullys, Woods and Oscars outside of the main areas suggests that punters don't always associate the city centre with this type of place. I may well be proven wrong though (and the recent buzz around the Potted Pig does offer a counterpoint) and I'm interested to see whether that is the case.
At the moment, though, the search for a restaurant to bring Cardiff its first Michelin star goes on...
Oscars and potted pig high end???
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