Entropy, Leicester

A couple weekends ago, I went up to Leicester to visit my brother (a very overdue visit) and apart from the bad timing of the trip (it coincided with very scary protests by the EDL), I had a fun time. The first thing we did as soon as I got there was eat, of course, and he took me to Entropy, a restaurant considered one of the best in the Midlands, for a belated birthday dinner. He’d found a very good deal for the restaurant on Groupon and we were there to make use of the heavy discount.

The little restaurant is headed by Tom Cockerill, who had cooked at the Fat Duck for a spell, and from what I’ve read, the menu at Entropy used to reflect this. Today, though, the menu reads more traditionally but it’s not at all boring as we found it difficult to narrow down our choices. And, oh boy, did we feast that night – portions were very generous (and the prices fair)! I actually wasn’t hungry for the rest of the weekend.

Just because we could, we ordered three starters between the two of us. The Grilled chilli marinated ox heart, fried potatoes, red chard (£7.00) was delicious and the ox heart wonderfully tender.

The Salmon poached in olive oil, peas “Bonne Femme” (£8.00) was another fantastic starter with the fish fallling apart at the touch of a fork.

However, the Deep fried Gloucester Old Spot cheeks, gribiche (£5.50) had a tough breadcrumb coating and the cheeks themselves were mainly fat. The piquancy of the sauce gribiche helped to cut through some of that grease but overall, the dish could have been better and the cheeks more tender.

For mains, my brother had the 8oz Longhorn rump (£20.00), served with hand cut french fries, watercress & green peppercorn sauce. The mound of French fries was humongous and almost visually overwhelmed the steak on the plate (strangely, the photo doesn’t show it); luckily, both were very good: the fries crisp and the steak delicious. I’m not sure what the grilled tomatoes and mushrooms added to the dish though.

I went for the Roast rack & confit shoulder of Leicestershire lamb, crushed new potatoes, green beans & olives (£18.50). It turned out that crushed new potatoes were just mash and the olives were in a very strongly flavoured sauce that overpowered the extremely rare lamb. I don’t know what else to say other than the dish was only ok – the lamb was tender, as were the green beans, but the combination left a bit to be desired.

And again because we could, three desserts! The Duck egg creme brulee, peanut butter cookies (£6.00) was insanely rich and I’m not sure it even needed the side of the cookies. We couldn’t finish the cookies and so I wrapped one up in a napkin and shoved it in my handbag. I only remembered it two days later and by that time it had softened and was better than fresh!

The Caramelised lemon tart, strawberry sherbet (£6.00) went down a treat but honestly, I don’t remember much about it as I was slipping into a food coma at this point. I do remember my brother going on about how wonderful the sherbet was.

I think this was the dessert that did me in – the Chilled strawberry soup (£5.00) as it was placed directly in front of me and I felt the need to finish it. It was refreshing and very simple – just pureed and sweetened strawberries – and to me, this was the dessert that required some kind of biscuit on the side rather than the creme brulee.

We were a little surprised when they presented us with our bill soon after we’d finished our desserts as we hadn’t asked for it yet. We were pretty much the last ones there and it turned out that they had to close up at 11pm, even though it was a Friday night (they were apologetic about it). We paid up (one dessert and one large bottle of water – both not covered by our prepaid deal) and rolled out, both quite content with the meal. Though there were a couple things that may not have worked, the meal overall was still wonderful (service was very friendly) and there’s no denying that Leicester needs more restaurants like this one. Thank you very much again to my lovely brother for the dinner!

Entropy
42 Hinckley Road
Leicester LE3 0RB

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