Special offer from Le Poussin for  Ladies Who Lunch in Hampshire site regulars!  Mention the site when you book & you can have the same deal as The Times Dine Out offer, 2 courses for £10 plus a free glass of wine!  This is for a limited time only so check the terms & conditions when you book.

Visited January 2006  

This restaurant is so tucked away that you wouldn’t know it was there and we visited after friends, who’d discovered it through The Times Dine Out scheme, recommended it. What a find!

The restaurant is very small, probably only 8 tables in the main part with a further 3 in the conservatory, and is approached through a courtyard behind a row of shops in the centre of Brockenhurst. It really is a shrinking violet of a restaurant without even a menu or a signboard on the main road but it was still full on a Tuesday lunchtime (possibly due to the success of the Times scheme but I have since found out that it is very well known locally). The décor is very restful and understated, comfortable without being intimidating, and nothing distracts your attention from the food.

Every day there is a short menu with two courses for £10 and this changes several times a week. We chose the Chicken Liver Parfait with Hazelnut dressing and Toasted Foccacia and their ‘signature’ dish, the Twice Baked Cheese Soufflé with a Glazed Cheese Crust. Both were delicious and the Parfait ranks as "historic" in my book! For main courses we had the Pot Roast Pork with Creamy Savoy Cabbage and the Pan Fried Tuna with Crushed New Potatoes, Fevs and Beurre Blanc. Again, both were fabulous, full of flavour and beautifully presented. And the Dine Out scheme included a glass of wine with lunch so I ordered white and was given a superb Sauvignon Blanc which has to be one of the best I’ve tasted in a long time. 

Like the short menu, the main menu is unpretentious and concentrates on quality ingredients. Starters include a classic Bouillabaisse and Sticky Belly Pork served with potato puree, black pudding and apple rocket salad. Mains might include Sea Bass spiked with ginger cooked en-papillotte with oriental vegetables, or Rare Fillet of Beef served on flat cap mushroom with horseradish sabayon red wine sauce and glazed vegetables.

We were terribly good and didn’t order puds but Alex, Le Patron, specially recommended the Passion Fruit Soufflé, another of their signature dishes which sounds particularly exciting since he described it as “a light soufflé filled with hot passion fruit sauce so that it erupts like a volcano.” Wow! It might be worth depriving yourself of one of the other wonderful courses just to have that!

It turns out that Alex is not only the owner of Simply Poussin but, with his wife Caroline, they also own Whiteley Ridge Hotel near Brockenhurst and Le Poussin at Parkhill in Lyndhurst (currently being refurbished). And their restaurant, Le Poussin at Whiteley Ridge, has just been awarded a Michelin star. If our experience is anything to go by, it is richly deserved. Congratulations Alex! 

Cost:  daily menu £10, normal menu £££££

Rating: 9/10

Guest Review by CS of Romsey