Lady Helen Restaurant at the Mount Juliet Estate

My sister was back from Australia for a few days to help with family matters recently and I booked us a night away at Mount Juliet. The estate itself is beautiful and we had no complaints about the stay. We were very disappointed in our meal at The Lady Helen though. I love food and treat myself to Michelin restaurants as often as I can and had been really looking forward to our meal. We had a lovely bottle of wine but the meal just wasn’t to the level I am used to when you’re paying quite a lot for an experience. I don’t know if it was an off day, or the overall flavor profiles of the dishes, which were also very small but nothing tasted amazing. We didn’t enjoy any of them and wouldn’t want to order any of them again. I’ve had some outstanding dishes as part of tasting menus in Rome and Paris that I would fly back for, just to eat that dish again, that I still remember to this day and unfortunately I couldn’t say that about anything we ate here. The presentation of the dishes was beautiful and the service was excellent. It was really just the flavours I think in that nothing stood out and a couple of the dishes including the mackerel and veal were surprisingly unpleasant. There was a weird off putting texture to the mushroom dish too. The chocolate dessert was nice but not remarkable. I was hoping to have found somewhere special closer to home that I could return to with others and with excitement, but that was not the case. Ultimately, I wouldn’t be compelled to return and only if I wasn’t paying for it myself.