Röski, Liverpool

Though it may be a city of cultural trailblazers in many ways - music, sport, fashion (sort of) - it's fair to say that when it comes to eating out, Liverpool has always been in the shadow not only of the capital but even other regional cities such as Manchester or Birmingham. Perhaps the lack of flagship food markets is to blame - the famous Bury market has been supplying Manchester with black pudding and much else besides for hundreds of years, and Birminham's Bull Ring indoor market has been doing the same for lucky Brummies. Liverpool has some excellent producers, such as the award-winning Edge Butchers and of course the peerless Baltic Bakehouse, and you can occasionally catch the odd farmers market in Woolton Village if you're lucky, but is it the lack of a single, centralised market, to champion local produce and act as a catalyst for a vibrant food culture, that has held Liverpool back?

Well, whatever the reason, Liverpool has been left with quite a bit of catching up to do, and it was really only with the opening of Lunya, which capitalised on the city's ever-growing links with Spain (thank you Ryanair) and more recently Gary Usher's Wreckfish, that the shoots of a genuine, grown-up dining culture have emerged. Obviously we can't really call it a foodie's paradise until we have a few more healthy mid-range bistros and wood-fired pizza specialists (or even a decent Chinese - the world's oldest Chinatown and not a single decent Chinese restaurant? Something's not adding up there) but look, it's a start, and we've all got to start somewhere.

So it was Liverpool's fledgling interest in good food that Masterchef: The Professionals winner Anton Piotrowski and friends hoped to tap into to fund their kickstarter project back in 2017. If it worked for Gary Usher (and it did, five times now and counting) for his mid-range bistros, surely there would be enough Scousers with the desire and the money to see a real high-end, seasonal, British, tasting menu restaurant set up shop in town? Well, sadly (at the time) despite plenty of eager backers (not least yours truly) they didn't quite reach their target, but it seems enough of a potential market was proved to attract backing from elsewhere, and now, in one of those gorgeous Georgian buildings that Liverpool does so well (and Rodney Street does in particular) is Röski. And it's great. And you should go immediately.

OK, I suppose you'll be wanting to know the reasons why it's great, won't you? Well how about this, a homemade crumpet, its dark, crunchy base rising to fluffy white, topped with curried Southport potted shrimp and a sprig of woodruff. I'm always going to enjoy a shrimp crumpet, but soaking it in beef fat instead of the usual butter was a touch of perverted genius, and a cracking way to kick off a tasting menu.

The next course was apparently a deconstructed "Scouse" (lamb stew) involving a treacly morsel of slow-cooked lamb, caramelised carrots, and a generous topping of summer black truffle. Alongside one of those glossy reduced sauces the best restaurants do so well, it was an absolute joy to eat, certainly more notable than any "authentic" Scouse dish you may have tried, which is generally a thin mystery meat stew (here's Paul O'Grady's version with Oxo cubes and Worcester sauce). "Authentic" Scouse probably doesn't deserve to stand as shorthand for an entire city. This dish certainly does.

Next, another off-menu extra, a "tribute", we were told, to the late-night noodle shop. Now, all sorts of alarm bells usually start ringing when fine dining restaurants ironically re-imagine low-budget Asian dishes, but by virtue of the fact this tasted absolutely nothing like ramen, or anything even vaguely Asian, it was hugely enjoyable - a kind of thick, rich lamb noodle soup studded with summer herbs and a poached quails egg.

That a dish called simply "radishes" would turn out to be the highlight of a 14-course tasting menu is partly testament to the quality of the main product, cutely grabbed from the chef's dad's allotment, but also because said radishes, plump and pretty though they were, were coated in a ludicrously rich and glossy sauce made from lamb fat. And I love radish, but I also love lamb fat. Anyway these were fantastic, and topped with a few springs of mint flower turned it into a kind of mini Sunday roast.

Next was a kind of truffled custard thing and though in the past I have fallen in love with various combinations of truffle and custard (I'm thinking particularly of Simon Rogan's crisp roast salad at Fera) there was something not quite right about this one. Perhaps it was a little too lukewarm, or maybe not enough flavour in the custard, but it left me a little cold. However my friend loved it, so maybe this was just me.

Curried crab was superb - bags of flavour in the crab mixture, and with three delicate slivers of puffed wheat and "poppadum" providing a nice texture contrast. One of the criticisms of Röski that have filtered into my conscience over the last few months (I try and avoid reading reviews of places I haven't been to yet, not so much to keep my judgement clear but so I don't accidentally start re-using phrases and people accuse me of plagiarism; I don't have much of an imagination) is that the dishes are fussy and over-complicated. Well, there wasn't a bit of that going on in this meal - most dishes consisted of one main ingredient and two or three accompaniments to provide colour or texture, and all of it clear, concise and precise.

"Chip shop" was - inevitably - a miniaturised fish supper, with a teeny portion of battered haddock, a single bronzed, slow-cooked slice of potato, a dollop of pea purée and - the clever bit - a dusting of vinegar powder. It was ultimately more technically impressive than massively rewarding but hey, if Röski want to show off their skills then who am I to stop them? Also - again - my friend said this was one of his favourite courses so there's subjectivity playing a part too.

The next course boasted a lovely bit of guinea fowl, tender and powerfully flavoured, topped with neat scales of miniature courgette and a little dollop of what I think was more pea purée. Oh, and another beautiful glossy sauce which would have been worth the price of admission alone.

"Meat & Tatties" was a cute little pie of what I think was sticky beef shin, topped with potato foam (at least I assume that's how the 'tatties' were involved) and an intriguing slice of smoked eel. Like everything that had come before it was pretty as a picture, and although there was perhaps a bit more going on here than in the other courses, still boasted a clean, satisfyingly straighforward set of (great) surf & turf flavours that flattered the palate.

More colourful and precise cooking followed with this slab of bright pink Welsh wagyu beef, sat in yet another wonderful sauce and with a little bit of braised mushroom and some kind of summer berry chutney (I think). The beef was obviously the main event, with a gentle crust from some very accurate timing and bags of beefy flavour, but again the accompaniments were masterful, with one of those bright green oils (parsley?) with which Simon Rogan made his name.

The transition from savoury to sweet courses began with this beetroot cake, warm from the oven, topped with shaved cheddar. These half-and-half dishes often run the risk of being a bit disconcerting, but this was genuinely impressive, and the generous mound of decent cheese made me feel a little less guilty about not paying the £10 cheeseboard supplement (which I'm sure would have been lovely).

"Builders tea ice cream" came topped with candy floss, because why not, and had a nice smooth texture. I realise that when you pony up this amount of money (£75 plus service) for dinner you'd expect quite a high standard of product in return, but it was still a delight to note the mastery of all these different techniques and textures, put to such impressive use. It's not easy, half the stuff Röski are doing here, but like so many great restaurants they make it all seem so effortless.

There was one final flourish - strawberries, strawberry ice cream and honeycomb, presented while a bowl of dry ice mixed with summer herbs turned the table into a fragrant bubbling cloud - but, once every last drop of strawberry liqueur and crumb of warm madeleine had disappeared, we were done.

A few years ago, the idea of anywhere in the center of Liverpool being ranked amongst the best restaurants in the country seemed absurd. And yes, it's frustrating that it's taken so long because, judging not only by the response to the only-just-missed Kickstarter but the fact that every single table was taken at Röski on the night I visited, the people of Liverpool love a good Modern British tasting menu as much as anywhere else in the country. But in stark contrast to the bizarre Art School just around the corner, which could have been parachuted into any major city to chase the accolade of "X's first Michelin star", Röski really feels like it belongs here. Not just because you look out over the gorgeous terraces of Rodney street, but because the menu feels - is - local, and service is both charmingly Scouse and also supremely efficient, something that has barely ever happened before in the history of the city.

So yes, all of the above twaddle serves to reinforce that one simple point I made earlier; Röski is great and you should go immediately. If you like anything about eating out in this country - seasonal, sensitively constructed tasting menus of local produce, sparkling service, interesting wines - then this place will charm your socks off. Already within nudging distance of perfection, by the time I return - and I fully intend to do exactly that, as soon as possible - it will probably be even better, this modest spot on Rodney Street showing the world exactly how it's done. Food as the latest great Merseyside cultural export. Why the hell not?

9/10

We paid for the food but whether due to a belated Kickstarter thank-you or general blogger privilege, the wines were unexpectedly comped. Which was nice of them.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

The Man Behind the Curtain, Leeds

I think it's possible to acknowledge the importance of fiercely experimental, bleeding-edge restaurant culture whilst at the same time retaining a healthy scepticism about the reality of it. When I think about the most groundbreaking meals I've had over the time I've been writing this blog (ten years now, incredibly) and the most enjoyable, well, the crossover area in the Venn diagram is fairly small. For every l'Enclume, which took modern British cuisine into new directions while still remaining enjoyable, there's an El Bulli, shock-effect food that never asked itself "just because we can, do we really think we should?".

From a distance, The Man Behind The Curtain seems like the kind of self-consciously "edgy" concept that should trigger alarm bells. Not just the ugly-cool website, the street-art décor, the location on the top floor of a clothes shop in the centre of Leeds like some kind of Primark speakeasy, but all of these things combined does suggest an operation focussing rather more on image and provocative PR than the food on the table. What a relief, then, and a delight, that nothing could be further than the truth - behind the ultra-hip exterior is a kitchen that knows exactly what it's doing, serving food that is that rarest of things - genuinely unlike anything else anywhere in the country.

The innovation started with the very first snack. This kumamoto oyster was dressed with strawberry kimchi, something completely new to me, and I suspect new to planet earth, although I reserve the right to be wrong on that. It was great, the strawberry pickle working really well with the briny oyster and the chilli kicking in as the sweetness dissipated.

There was, of course, the odd bit of wacky tableware. This silver tree had little spoons of raw langoustine in some kind of lime oil nestled amongst its branches, and I enjoyed it very much, although I should say that a friend on the same table got a spoon that had lost its silver plating and couldn't taste much other than an unpleasant fizz of metal. It's all very well using this arty tableware, but you need to know how to keep it...

This bright red mini-burger contained veal sweetbread in XO sauce, with mint, basil and kimchi mayo. The bun was one of those bao-style fluffy rice flour types, perfectly formed and lighter than air, and the Asian flavours within were balanced and distinct. As to why it was bright red, well, I'm not sure, but MBTC's use of unusual colours and textures to subvert expectations of ingredients is something that returned throughout the lunch. I've known chefs who work with a palette of techniques and flavour profiles but never known anyone with an actual palette of colours - Michael O'Hare seems to work a lot with bright reds and greys, colours which don't often exist in nature and therefore somewhat counter-intuitive to feature so prominently in a tasting menu. As I say though, despite all that, it was never less than enjoyable.

This was wagyu beef - pretty high-grade judging by the remarkably light colour (mmm, fatty) - with gordal olives, and topped with transluscent sheets of potato starch. The olive flavour was the perfect foil to the beef, and though it seems obvious now, the more I think about it the more I'm sure I've never had quite this combination before, demonstrating that even the less outré courses were subtly inventive.

More bright reds and greys and 80s pop-art stylings in this next course of spider crab, wonton skin and iberico lardo 'lasagne'. Hiding under a 'Sriracha cracker' (which, perhaps fortunately, didn't taste too much of the garlic-chilli sauce) was an indugently rich mixture of fresh seafood and iberico pork fat, and it either contained some dairy or the 'lasagne' was just a clever nod to the fact that it really tasted like it did. It was - like everything that had come before it - lovely.

I imagine there aren't many chefs who have ever thought to themselves, "I wonder what will happen if I spray-paint some prawns gold?" never mind having the confidence to serve them to paying guests but - incredibly - it didn't feel forced or unsettling at all, in fact they just ended up being the most straightforward element of the dish. Far more notable was the heady malt vinegar 'powder' which seasoned this fillet of cod in squid ink, the matchstick fries turning it all into a mini trip to the chip shop. As I'm sure was deliberate. Many fine dining chefs feel the need to riff on a famous regional dish, and I've had a number of versions of "fish and chips" served in various forms. Sometimes - like the "trip to the chip shop" hot dog invented by the Fat Duck and served at Bubbledogs, it's disgusting. But here there was no heavy-handed use of batter, just a confident bit of fish cooking, lifted with vinegar.

On this strange bit of tableware, resembling somthing from a Salvador Dali painting, were positioned some bitesize chunks of beef shortrib and a selection of three dipping sauces - mustard, coriander and black truffle. I think of all the dishes this was the one that did least for me - the beef was decent but not spectacular, the sauces (especially the truffle) good but they didn't make much sense of the beef, or indeed vice versa. Still, it was hardly a failure, and we all ate it without complaint.

Last of the savoury courses was some chunks of Iberico pork, packing the kind of depth of flavour common to only the very greatest pigs in the world, with something called "charcoal shavings" (which actually didn't taste bitter or burned at all, strangely - more like cereal) and a little pickled boquerone anchovy. My only complaint here, which perhaps carries back through the previous courses as well, is that there wasn't quite enough of it...

...because with no bread to fill up on, and portion sizes barely above a mouthful per dish, I'm afraid to say by the time we were taking receipt of this, the only dessert course, we were all still pretty hungry. This spectacular thing, of course, was fantastic in of itself - white chocolate spray-painted silver (well, why not), hiding a shocking purple lavender ice cream, a kind of cinnamon mousse and something called "potato custard" (just normal custard as far as I could tell, although a very nice custard), all as unusual and imaginative and arty as everything that had come before. There just wasn't quite enough of it all.

So that's why I have to deny the Man Behind The Curtain my very top mark. Perhaps having guests leave wanting more is entirely deliberate - I wouldn't put it past being some aspect of their food-as-art-project approach, some kind of comment on the shortcomings of globalisation and the western liberal model - but I would have liked some bread. Or at least a second dessert course.

That said, the fact remains there is nowhere doing anything remotely like this anywhere in the country, and it was undoubtedly a theatrical and exciting way to spend a few hours of a Saturday. I hesitate to say there's nothing like it in the world, because more well-travelled friends have noted that certain of O'Hare's techniques owe a certain debt to the fine dining scene in the Basque areas of spain - restaurants such as Arzak or Azurmendi who have a similar visual approach. But, well, it's certainly new to me. And I've been around a little while.

At just over £110 a head, as well, for plenty of booze and a couple of clever petits fours (a "cupcake" with edible paper and a liquid-citrus centre, and a salted caramel chocolate with caraway seeds), it is undoubtedly still great value. This perhaps accounts for the fact it took us a full ten months to secure a table (this lunch was booked in May 2016) but full marks to them for not raising their prices, which they surely could have done by now. And I can grumble all I like about portion sizes, but the fact is, the moment it was over I wanted to go and do it all over again. Which is probably all you really need to know. It is, after all said and done, a groundbreaking and uniquely visual restaurant serving futuristic fine dining on the top floor of a clothes shop in Leeds. And you may as well do all you can to get there, because there's certainly never going to be another like it any time soon.

9/10

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Adam Reid at the French, Manchester

Some days it's all I can do to stop this blog becoming a single-issue publication for rants about Michelin. I know I shouldn't let them wind me up as much as they do, but really, is there any more insidious influence on our nation's dining habits than these people, trolling miserably around the country marking up anywhere conforming to their decrepit idea of what a meal should be (French, apparently, only French from about 30 years ago). My opinion of them was bad enough, too, before they launched their Twitter account, which seems to be written by a frustrated middle-manager in their mid-50s who seems to hate every aspect of his/her job and spends nearly all of their time complaining about service and sneering at provincial plating techniques. And I'm not just saying that because they had a go at me once.

Anyway, Michelin have an awful lot to answer for, not least the way chefs bend over backwards to get a star often at the expense of their other guests' enjoyment, and their own sanity. Famously, as documented in the TV series Restaurant Wars, both Aiden Byrne and Simon Rogan both set up shop in Manchester at the same time with the intention of winning the city's first star, something which, if Michelin hadn't been a miserable bunch of gout-ridden gastronomic dinosaurs (which they are), they would both have achieved almost instantly; Manchester House is a wonderful way to blow a fortune on lunch, and The French was, under Rogan, a triumph of colourful, seasonal cooking. If they didn't deserve a star, then nobody did. It was - and is - madness.

Fast-forward to 2017, though, and with Rogan's name taken off the operation at the Midland Hotel it's left in the capable hands of Adam Reid to serve beautiful food, in this beautiful room, to the beautiful people of the North West (and me). Nibbles on the "terrace" (just a curtained-off section of the lobby, really, but a clever idea to make you feel that the restaurant is separate somehow from the otherwise rather ordinary Midland décor) consisted of a powerful cod's roe and pine nut oil mousse - fresh and salty and full of ocean flavour - with (a Rogan technique I'm sure) delicate, pitch black squid ink crackers.

Reseated inside the lovely Art Deco dining room, the first proper snack was "prawn cracker", raw prawn and some vaguely Asian flavours encased in a little rice cracker. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of raw prawn so probably would never have given this full marks, but my friend enjoyed it very much so clearly they're doing something right.

The little bowl of pebbles used to present the prawn cracker was cleverly re-used for the next snack, a raw scallop on an attractive modernist spoon, with pickled spruce tip and caviar. Again, I'm more of a fan of cooked scallop than raw, so I'll refer you again to my friend who declared this mouthful of seafood the single best thing she'd eaten so far all year. Which is I'm sure a compliment they'll take.

The next course was much more my kind of thing, a delicately tempura'd broccoli shoot, in a densely truffle-y cheese mousse. The batter really was supremely light - just enough to provide a quiet crunch - but still carried a surprising amount of nutty flavour. The kind of thing that reminds you why you eat out.

The next dish, a steamed bun in the "bao" style stuffed with pork and pickled onion, didn't quite work for me. I think it was because the pickled onion flavour was overwhelming and quite distracting, tasting like Monster Munch crisps, and the chunks of pork were a bit lost. Still, some interesting techniques on display and it's good to see experiments like this occasionally even if they don't always come good.

If it's even possible to make a bad smoked eel dish, I haven't found one yet. Artichoke pieces - cooked to a firm bite - and a few pretty leaves of endive surrounded bouncy chunks of sweet-glazed eel, each a bitesize package of meaty, smoky flavour and irresistibly moreish. It was just as good as the smoked eel pasta at Padella, and as anyone who's ever tried that will tell you, that's praise indeed.

Hot smoked bacon with squid is an idea I unequivocally support; unfortunately the bacon itself was incredibly salty and rather dry, which made the dish hard to enjoy overall. The broth at the bottom of the bowl was good, though, as was the ribboned squid slowly poaching in it. Perhaps they just need to work on their bacon-making technique a little bit.

Bread came next, bread-as-a-course seemingly being a trend that's not going anywhere any time soon. And why not, because the art of a good loaf is worth celebrating just as much as any other bit of cheffery. These were apparently made by a local bakery to a recipe from the French, both sourdoughs I think though one had stout in it. The traffic light of butters were impossible to overfeed on, particularly one which had some kind of meat or offal element which was like spreadable foie gras.

This also arrived with the breads, a dense shot of meaty soup, a bit like a gourmet version of Heinz Oxtail. It was great.

I'll forgive the pretentious renaming of red mullet as "rouget" as the dish in question was so good - a beautiful fillet of fish, bright white flesh and orange skin shining like a Christmas decoration, with a charred piece of baby gem lettuce and an intriguing prawn/tomato mayo. A simple dish in essence, perhaps, but so easy to enjoy.

I'm afraid the duck element of this next dish was a little on the dry side, which is a shame because the concept and execution of the secondary elements - the delicate slivers of beetroot, the sharp pickled cherry sauce - was spot-on. Perhaps a seared fillet of duck breast would have worked better than whatever bit of the animal this was (rolled leg? Bit hard to tell) but I'm sure they had their reasons. Just as I have mine for not liking it very much.

Desserts, though, were cracking. Literally, in the case of the "clementine", which involved smashing a delicate sugar casing spiked with clementine zest to reveal a smooth white chocolate mousse within. It was an unbeatable combination of stunning to look at and to eat, the super-concentrated clementine flavour being particularly notable.

And this "custard tart", surely more than a nod to the version from Gregg's only (understandably) refined and reworked, with a delicate thin pastry, a smooth custard filling and a nice thick layer of shaved nutmeg. The rhubarb and ginger compote on the side didn't do much for me - rather bitter and lifeless - but the malt ice cream was great, and the effect of the custard and nutmeg took me right back to childhood, as I'm sure was the intention. Clearly someone in the pastry section at the French is having a ball.

There was the option to go for Adam's Great British Menu dessert "Golden Empire", but by this point we were stuffed and more than a little drunk thanks to a series of genuinely interesting and geographically diverse wines, from all over the world and various nooks and crannies in Eastern Europe. Apologies for not listing them, but you know what I'm like with wine.

As you will have hopefully realised by now from the above, despite the odd misstep and wobbly technique this is a mature and confident kitchen, aided by friendly and efficient front of staff, blessed with one of the more beautiful dining spaces in town. Reid himself spends service stood behind a kind of plating and dessert bar at one end of the room; guests ordering the Golden Empire special decamp here to watch it all being made up close. It's a lovely bit of theatre, and is a great way of showing guests his command over proceedings given the lack of an open kitchen.

So, the team at the French under its new head chef have already settled very nicely into the space and are turning out fine dining very much worth the fine dining prices they're asking for it. I'd like to say it's easily worthy of a star, but I don't want to give the impression I place any currency in stars at all, or imply that they - or anyone for that matter - should be aiming for them. It's a good restaurant, is all you need to know, and that's that. Who the hell knows what Michelin will make of it. Who the hell even cares.

7/10

The French's PR organised our booking, hence us getting nine courses for the price of six, and a slightly cheaper matching wine option.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad