Ok, Russell thank you for meeting with us today.  My first question is:  How many menus do you run here at Sienna?

We are running three at the moment.  Lunch, dinner and a six course tasting menu, which we offer just at dinner.

And do they inter-link?  By that I mean, is your tasting menu an expression of what is on the a la carte?

Absolutely, yes.  We generally start by writing the dinner menu and then everything else, both the lunch and tasting menus are a derivative of the dinner menu.

Right.  And in terms of price – where do they sit pricewise?

Umm, very reasonable, I hope, we are fifty quid for a six course tasting menu.

Wow, that is good.  Do you do wine matching with that?

We don’t specifically but we will do it.  Eléna is very good at matching to the dishes; she knows food inside out so … we offer quite a big selection both by the glass and the decanter, so there is a good choice to match with it.

OK. And what is currently your best selling dish on your menu?

Probably the Partridge at the moment, actually.

A very seasonal dish.

Yes, very seasonal.  We have made a few menu changes recently and I have about three more to make before we are fairly set for the winter, but the Partridge we try and get in as soon as it comes into season.  It’s my favourite game bird.

What are you doing with it?

Well, we are doing it as a roast crown of Partridge; we are cooking the crown sous vide then finishing it in the pan with olive oil, butter, thyme and we are serving a ravioli of braised leg, then sweetcorn puree, fresh sweetcorn kernels, a ground roasted salted sweetcorn, some watercress – yes, a nice seasonal dish.

Yes, some very classical elements there but seasonal ones too, with the sweetcorn, lots of different textures going on there as well.

Yes, a good dish texturally and we are sitting the ravioli on some braised leek and pancetta and there is some pancetta trimmings in the sauce so you get a little bit of a smoky bacon flavour through the sauce as well.

OK.  You mentioned earlier that you have made some changes and you have some more changes coming up – what drives a menu change?  Is it driven by the seasons?

Absolutely.  It makes my job easier and it partly writes the menu for you – if you look at it and say “Right, the Partridge has just come in – what are we going to do with it?” “What’s in season to match with it?”

Yes.  And when you do a menu change, is it a complete menu change? Or do you change two or three items?

We made the mistake of changing the whole thing once and that was enough! (Laughter)  We’d had a holiday; came back after the holiday and started with a completely new menu, which I had written while I was on holiday – what a nightmare!!

I can imagine.  But they say that you learn by your mistakes, don’t they?

Yes, they do.  I definitely learnt by that.  So we now change the dishes literally as the dishes go into and out of season, so you might get one dish change in a month or you might get two or three dishes change in quick succession.

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