Birthday dinner

It was my birthday yesterday, and I really wanted to go to Latium. Not only is it my favouritest place in London, I went there a few birthdays ago, and without telling them, they managed to figure out it was my birthday, and came out with some free petit fours with 'Happy Birthday' written in chocolate across the plate. But alas! It was Easter weekend, and they were closed.

So we ended up at Morgan M on Liverpool Road N1. I fear this is a deeply underrated place - maybe it's because a bit out of the way (the nearest tube is Highbury & Islington, and that's a good 15 minute walk away). I've been there twice before to eat their 6-course taster menus, which is offered with matching wines to ensure you don't really remember the last 3 courses, and both times, the highlight has been their red mullet with citrus sauce. However, Dave was feeling a bit ropey, so we opted for their 3 course menu instead.

But, it soon turned out that even if you order 3 courses, you actually get 5 (really not bad for the £39 price tag!). To start, an amuse bouche of gazpacho with a tomato confit - that tomato confit is just genius, very flavourful:

My starter proper was by far the best thing we ordered all night - a ravioli of snails with roasted garlic and red wine sauce. The pasta was impossibly thin, the simple filling of snails with root vegetables earthy and delicious. The thing I wonder most about though is the garlic - the texture was still quite hard, yet it was very mild. How on earth did they get it that mild without turning it into mush?

I had the most trouble choosing the mains, with 2 fish choices (John Dory and wild sea bass) and 3 meat dishes (duck, rabbit, and fillet of beef). I really wanted something light, but went for the duck, mainly because it arrived at the next table looking rather delicious. It was duck two ways - first a simply pan fried duck breast, second the duck leg braised until it had fallen apart, accompanied by lots of lovely spring vegetables:

Dave's John Dory was also very good, came in a lovely light saffron broth.

We normally never eat pud, but this time we ended up having two each! There was a pre-dessert of vanilla rice pudding with an almond tuile biscuit - very pretty, but rather unexpected, no picture unfortunately. And the puds at Morgan M are rather special. We'd tried their raspberry souffle before, and it was just as good as we remembered. Look how high it rose!

Personally I think they ruin it slightly by pouring coulis into the souffle, making it a bit oversweet. The other pud we tried was their chocolate moelleux, which had a choice of being made with milk or dark chocolate. I went for the dark:

As you can see, it comes with a shot-glass of something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was kind of like a homemade Bailey's, but I was so full by this stage I found it wholly unnecessary.

Overall, as much as I love this place, there is sometimes way too much going on on the plate. And the man still has a bit of an obsession with sorbets. Another minor minor point is that I felt that the service was a wee bit intrusive this time - they did seem to want to come and fiddle with our table every 5 minutes or so. Nevertheless, a fab dinner. And don't forget that they match wines with every dish for you, and you can buy a different glass with each course!