Restaurant Review: Hotel du Vin, Thames Street, Poole (From Bournemouth Echo)

Restaurant Review: Hotel du Vin, Thames Street, Poole

11:00am Friday 23rd July 2010 in

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HOTEL du Vin is a tremendous asset to Poole. Smart but in a completely relaxed and friendly way, it proved the perfect fit for the town’s former Mansion House and even though its primary focus is providing accommodation, there’s plenty of opportunity for locals to enjoy it.

The welcome is always warm and the service unfailingly smiling and extremely well-mannered.

We’ve visited for cocktails, coffee and afternoon tea before but this was our first foray into the bistro.

We devoured the menus while sitting on squashy sofas in the bar, which manages the difficult trick of feeling cosy in the winter and airy in the summer thanks to open doors leading onto a deck.

The menu makes for interesting reading. There are plenty of classics on offer as well as some innovative dishes - salt cod ‘scotch egg’ stood out – and a selection for vegetarians.

It was lunchtime, so our party of four was attracted to the lighter menu which offers two courses for £10. This is great value as although the dishes are simpler than those on the usual menu, standards are the same and it’s a good way to try out what the kitchen can do. There’s a choice of three starters, mains and puddings to choose the two courses from each day.

Our chosen starter, mushrooms and blue cheese on brioche, was an absolute winner. The brioche was piled generously high with mushrooms and surrounded by plenty of creamy sauce, tangy with blue cheese. Not a morsel was left.

Three of us chose the vegetarian main, watercress and broccoli linguine, while the other had pea and smoked salmon omelette, which was served with a copper cone of perfect, crispy skinny chips and dressed salad.

The linguine, enhanced by baby capers and shaved parmesan, was delicious, with the watercress giving an iron-y hit to the silky pasta.

The sweet-toothed member of the party chose to have a pudding rather than a starter, and opted for white and dark chocolate mousse. This was prettily presented as a scoop of each with raspberry sauce and fresh berries. The plate was scraped clean.

Our lunch for four, including a pre-lunch cocktail and drinks, a carafe of house wine, a couple of coffees and service, came to just under £80.

Well worth it.