Review by Pips from London
Have now been to Trinity in Clapham twice. My first visit was a grown-up lunch for six at the tail-end of the summer. On that occasion, the food was very good, but the kitchen service patchy: as an example, we had a duck salad turn up at the table sans duck. Pretty feeble in a restaurant not even half full.
My second trip to Trinity was a few weeks ago and was a family gathering of four children and five adults for Sunday lunch. Although there were other children in the restaurant, I wouldn't recommend bringing them here. It's not an oppressive anti-child environment by any means, on the contrary, all of the waiting staff were very good with them, but the menu is incredibly fussy with gastronomic terms overused for the sake of gravitas. It's also the kind of place where they will be bored.
So, the food. Where to begin? The starters were fairly well received. Most of us had goujons of plaice with tartar sauce, which were enjoyed. I began with a baby beetroot, duck egg and goats cheese salad, which was ok - reasonable looking but not a taste sensation by any stretch of the imagination.
We all had the roast rib of Anglian beef, which had to be pre-ordered and we were charged a £2 supplement per person for. I'm not much fussed whether it was Anglian, Australian, or Arabian, it was a very fatty cut and the meat, once dished up onto plates, looked to be very small in portion size. This is true also of the vegetables that came with the main course: roast potatoes, roast parsnips and boiled carrots. We had one bowl of each to pass around a table of nine. By the time we'd served everything onto plates, the meat had turned cold.
As far as I'm concerned, the first rule of a roast dinner is that you can never have too many roast potatoes. There should always be plenty because everyone loves them, don't they? Trinity didn't seem to understand this. Most of us got two potatoes and three of us had only one. One measly potato! Really, really disappointing, but then so were the roast parsnips, which only looked roasted. Inside, they were rock solid and fibrous, as well as cold.
There was no good reason not serve the veg in the kitchen and had this been done, perhaps the fact that the portions were pitiful would have been noticed and could have been rectified? Perhaps also, the Yorkshire puddings could have been placed onto the plates rather than arriving 10 minutes after everything else, when most of the food had already been eaten?
Dessert:
My dessert was, quite frankly, appalling. It was supposed to be a plum and almond crumble, but hadn't been cooked for long enough. The plums hadn't softened and remained almost entirely uncooked. The "crumble" topping was slushy, akin to batter mix, and not in the least bit crumbly.
My verdict? All needlessly disappointing. Trinity's vegetarian options need a great deal of work. There are barely any choices for non-meat eaters and the choices that they do have are spectacularly dull. Whilst I am aware that a number of chefs can't be bothered with vegetarians, they really should bear in mind that unless they're working in a steak restaurant, vegetarians *do* help pay their wages.
Trinity's cooking timings need to be improved. Dishes need to be checked for all ingredients as stated on the menu and to make sure that they are cooked through and fit for consumption.
Roast dinners, if they're intended to feed any more than 4, should be served in the kitchen, otherwise they become unwieldy.
It's Clapham and better Sunday lunch options are available elsewhere and for far less money. If you're prepared to spend around £25 a head with absolutely no reduction in cost for kids, and not including service or drinks, don't bother with Trinity. For that price, you could probably even buy the raw ingredients yourself and pay for someone to cater in your home. Actually, for that price, I'll do it *and* I'll under-cut Trinity.