Herve Deville is a French-born chef with high end restaurant experience, including most recently as Executive chef at London’s Sketch restaurant. Deville has teamed up with the UK’s leading meal kit distributor Finish & Feast, which is where I came across him.  I ordered Deville’s “Crab, Lobster, Cheesecake” make-away at a reasonable £69 plus delivery (which I got for free, as part of Finish & Feast’s loyalty programme).

The courier company made an error and this box was delivered six hours late, even with the helpful intervention of Finish & Feast’s Ross.  As ever, all the elements were sealed and packed into bags clearly labelled ‘starter’ ‘main course’ and ‘dessert’, and there was the useful and attractively laid-out booklet containing heating/plating instructions and background information on chef Herve Deville.

This meal kit didn’t include bread or canapés , so it was straight to the starter, which was simply called “Dorset crab meat”.  I took a whisky tumbler and spooned some cauliflower bavarois into it.  On top of that was spooned the crab meat, which had been mixed with a bergamot dressing (mayo). Then I added cucumber and green apple cubes, pickled ginger and finally pea shoots, herbs and flowers.  This was a most delicious starter!  It looked very pretty and all of the components worked well together; I especially liked the addition of the pickled ginger and the apple and cucumber cubes, to foil the richness of the crab and cauliflower elements. 9/10. It would have been a 10 if there’d been a crunchy texture element.  I also think it would have looked even better of there had been a clearer delineation between the cauliflower and the crab in the glass. As it was, it was hard to see where one ended and the other began.

For the main course, called “Half lobster Thermidor”, I placed two reasonably sized lobster halves in the oven for 20 minutes. Roasted broccoli with a parmesan and tarragon crumb, and dulse seaweed mashed potato went into the oven for 15 minutes.  Simple.

This was a confusing dish!  The Thermidor sauce was not from the standard recipe (I couldn’t detect any mustard, and the sauce was thick, gelatinous, like a mousse) but it tasted “OK”. The mashed potato was good, but it would have benefitted from more seaweed. The broccoli was rather soggy in texture and I really don’t know what it was doing on the plate; a brassica would never be my first choice of an accompaniment to lobster! The lobster itself was a decent size, but a little chewy. 5 minutes less in the oven might have been better. 6.5/10

Dessert had a more elaborate name than its predecessors; “Flores Island organic vanilla cheesecake tart”, but again no cooking was required by me. The cheesecake tart was rather pleasant, but its pastry was made a little soggy by the “Tulameen raspberry coulis” it was sitting on.  Said coulis was very sharp and acidic and it contained hundreds of raspberry seeds, which always play havoc with my teeth.  There was also a “Passion fruit caramel” which carried all the sharpness of the passion fruit and very little of the sweetness of caramel.  Consequently I ate all of the tart, but not all of the acidic accompaniments. 6.5/10.  The dish would be improved by passing the raspberries through a sieve to remove the seeds, and having less of it.

Overall I have mixed thoughts about this make-away kit.  The starter was excellent, the main somewhat disappointing, and the dessert a mixture of the two.  I won’t re-order in a hurry. 7/10