Expensive meals are best served with champagne, like dinner at Bob Bob Ricard!

I have a cousin in Europe that highly recommended that my Wife and I go and have dinner at Bob Bob Ricard. It serves a mix of Russian and British inspired cuisine, and it comes with an atmosphere to match! Reminiscent of a dinner train car, the dimly lit basement interior sports dark word and red upholstery with marble and wood grain tables that sport ice buckets for that champagne I mentioned.

Speaking of which, these tables come with a “Press for Champagne” button! If you order a glass of champagne with your dinner and just so happen to run out (which is entirely possible at this restaurant), simply press the button. Waiters will drop what they’re doing to fill your glass up with champagne once more. Had you ordered a bottle, you would not have to lift a finger as the staff will rush to fill your glass!

The Appetizer

We started with the Pickled Beetroot for starters. The flavors on this dish complement each other very well! The beetroot itself is a little tart, a little savory, and with some champagne, a little sweet! The cheese is soft and spreadable, while the nuts provide a nice textural respite from the soft elements of the dish. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the cheese was sitting on a raspberry-esque sauce that I found myself smothering most things on the plate with.

The Main Course

For the main course, we tried the dry aged Beef Wellington for two medium-rare, having Truffle Fries on the side. Our waiter asked if it was okay for the staff to cut up a nice slice at their station prior to serving, and gave us some au jus in a little gravy pot for the rest of our dish, pouring some on before he left!

I have not had such a consistently cooked beef like this before. Tender and juicy, each bite almost requires you to savor the moment. The crust was buttery and very flaky, but was ultimately my enemy – I was getting full! The Beef Wellington For Two is a lot more food than it looks! I left some of the crust on the plate at the end and focused on the beef, the star of the meal.

The Dessert

I’m glad the staff gave us some time after the meal to figure out if we wanted dessert or not. My wife already had her heart set on their Crème Brulee, herself being a big fan of that dessert.

I was just simply too full, I wanted a digestif, like a dessert wine. Lo and behold, the table already had a recommendation card that describes Two Legendary Sweet Wines. I figured I would save the Chateau d’Yquem for another day. After all, they say it’s “The world’s most famous and most highly prized sweet wine”, and it did not fit our occasion. So I went for the Vin de Constance.

The Vin de Constance

I can see why the Vin de Constance is truly a legendary wine. I’ve had sweet wines from wineries in Australia and the US, and they simply were just too sweet, even with the tiniest sips. This Constantia wine from Africa was appropriately sweet, tasting like raisins and orange marmalade as the description says. It smells like so many different fruits! Pears and pineapples definitely came to the forefront. However, I also got passion fruit and grapes as well. The wine itself is beautiful, it was a clear deep gold under the lights of the table. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought it was a whisky on first glance! The Vin de Constance is easily the best dessert wine I’ve had. No wonder Napoleon asked only for a glass of this on his deathbed.

The Verdict

Of course, all of this decadence does not come cheap. In all, I paid over £200 for this meal, about £50 of which were things like taxes, fees, service charges, etc. As I have weighed some of my other posts, is it worth it? Perhaps once! The service at Bob Bob Ricard was excellent, the champagne button in itself is a quirky experience, and the food was on point. I have nothing negative to say about my dinner there. Would I go back? Probably not. There are plenty of other expensive dinners to enjoy in London, but if you’re on the hunt for a subtle theme and excellent food, consider Bob Bob Ricard!