I was up in Birmingham for a roundtable event and staying at the Edgbaston Park Hotel which is on the University of Birmingham campus. This is a modern conference hotel with a restaurant and a bar, as well as meeting rooms.
I had the scotch duck egg royale; this was a soft boiled duck egg wrapped in a duck and truffle mince, breadcrumbs and deep fried. It was served on top of a leek and chive velouté with some dressed leaves.
Well, there was a lot of leaves on that plate, though difficult to make out there was a scotch egg on that plate.
I really liked the idea of this scotch egg, the description sounded delicious, despite the leaves, I think the food looked good. However, the execution wasn’t as good as the description or the way it looked.
This wasn’t the best scotch egg I’ve had in a restaurant. The best thing about the dish was the egg. It was a delicious soft boiled duck’s egg. The mince wrapping was quite thin, I think too thin. As a result, not only was the crumb was quite crunchy, the duck mince was crunchy as well in places. Also, I didn’t really get any truffle flavour in the duck mince.
The flavour of the velouté was overpowered by the addition of mustard. I couldn’t taste the leek or chives.
Yes, this wasn’t the best scotch egg I’ve had, it wasn’t awful, but it could have been so much better.
