Coombeshead Farm, Cornwall

There's no way I'm going to make it through to the end of this post without being elaborately, embarrassingly gushing about my stay at Coombeshead Farm, so I may as well just get it over with straight away. This idyllic spot deep in the east Cornish countryside makes for as close to an ideal weekend away as it’s possible to imagine; an exquisite combination of luxurious country retreat and cutting-edge modern British restaurant, the fruits of artisanal animal husbandry and organic horticulture presented by a kitchen team at the absolute top of their game. It’s a wonderful place, and you should go as soon as you possibly can.

With that out of the way, let’s look at some of the details. Every inch of the Coombeshead Farm experience is magnificently polished or notable in some way, from the grand comfort of the downstairs living rooms with their well-stocked honesty bars and cookbook libraries, to the bedrooms themselves, softened with thick carpets, absent of ugly 21st century technology (though supplied with WiFi, thank God) and with views of the rolling emerald green countryside from every low-beamed window.

It may be a working farm, and though it feels brutal to point it out, a successful business, but where it counts it has all the securities of a five-star hotel, only a five-star hotel where staff fade in and out of focus enough to make you feel you have the place to yourself, and where you don’t need to lock your bedroom door.

Even the practical, working farm side of things are beautiful, though. The symbols of the place are of course the mangalitza pigs; these magnificent beasts with their thick covering of wire-wool hair trot happily around their enclosure (for at least as long as their services aren’t, er, “required” anyway) and is the image you wake up to in the west-facing bedrooms.

Other rooms look out over the sheep paddock and what has become a much-Instagrammed symbol of the farm - a grand row of tall trees at the top of a grass meadow, framed by hedgerows and resembling an impressionist painting.

So yes, the place is knockout stunning beautiful, but never mind about that now, we have pigs to eat. Alongside drinks in the farmhouse living rooms, the first snacks appear, beginning with a selection of house charcuterie including duck I think as well as the all-important cured mangalitza shoulder blade and sausage. All incredible quality, as you might expect.

With the charcuterie, nasturtium bud capers, punchy and addictive, and wild garlic “sauerkraut” so vibrant and intensely flavoured they were, for the few seconds before I tried the next thing to arrive, my favourite new thing in the world.

These crackers were made from waste breadcrumbs, soaked, spread out like porridge and then fried with honey, whey and thyme. They cracked delicately in the mouth, releasing a sweet, oaty flavour.

Leaves of lettuce that had been growing in the kitchen garden greenhouses moments earlier were spread with “walnut miso”, which complimented the hot, almost bitter lettuce stems for an interesting asian-tinged effect.

Snacks done, and rehoused in the test kitchen/bakery/dining room, our tables were soon laid with bowls of pickles, plates of tastefully dressed garden vegetables, and home-baked sourdough with homemade butter. This just above is a plate of grilled white beetroot with cultured cream and parsnip, a heavenly blend of dairy and earthy veg which satisfied on every level.

And this is kohlrabi (which we’d spotted in the kitchen garden earlier, elongated purple limbs holding themselves above the soil like weird alien invaders) dressed in walnut paste and various interesting dry spices.

Onions came in a stock made out of bread sauce (there’s a certain waste-free philosophy at Coombeshead, though just like the extraordinary Where The Light Gets In in Stockport, nothing is repetitive - ingredients are just teased into ever more interesting new directions), and buttermilk.

Chard and mint had an unbelievable depth of flavour for what is essentially some shredded salad. And look at the colour of it - so vivid they almost glowed in the dark. Cries of “oh my God have you tried the chard” went up every few minutes during the evening.

Once Tom Adams and his team had us sufficiently bowled over by the fruits of their kitchen garden, it was time to move onto the protein. Translucent-thin slices of cured belly came draped over what my menu here tells me was ramson (wild garlic by another name) and gherkins although I’m convinced there was lovage somewhere in the mix too because, well, I hate lovage and can sniff it out at a thousand paces. For that reason, this one didn’t bowl me over but a friend on the same table said it was her favourite thing overall, so I’d go with her if I were you.

Finally, it was time for the Main Event. A thick, medium-rare steak of mangalitza pork, with a flavour profile every bit as complex and rewarding as the finest slab of Jamón ibérico secreta, next to a lively puck of mangalitza sausage and a blob of sharp blueberry chutney. All at once it made perfect sense to hinge an entire restaurant-farm and foodie weekend around a single product - this was world class stuff, nothing like any pork I’d had before. Beautiful.

Dessert was various locally foraged summer berries, blitzed into a kind of chunky sorbet and laced with sorrel. Maybe. Look, we’d had quite a bit to drink by this point (wines are advised by Zeren Wilson, so were obviously a) rare and unusual and b) brilliant, particularly a sparkling Crémant de Limoux) and my notes have started including quite a bit of odd punctuation. We enjoyed it, is all that matters.

After dinner, we wobbled back to the farmhouse and got stuck into the honesty bar. At the risk of sounding like I’ve lost all touch with reality, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than when sat in the cosy library at Coombeshead knocking back an Auchentoshan Three Wood, revisiting every course of the dinner that we’d just eaten with similarly intoxicated (in all senses of the word) pals. But that’s what Coombeshead does to you - it is an escape from reality so comprehensive and so powerful that you enter a kind of altered state of consciousness where you convince yourself you can stay here in this beautiful place forever, tending to pigs and weeding the artichoke beds in return for food and board. I can make it work, you say. Just give me that chance.

Breakfast the next day consisted of cheese and broccoli tartlets (straight out of the oven), lardy cakes (ditto), pots of kefir, homemade granola, various freshly squeezed grape juices, and - what else - glorious slabs of glazed mangalitza belly bacon. The thought of heading back onto the M4 and revisiting the real world became a deeply depressing proposition. We left, eventually - slowly, reluctantly, a final wave to the sheep and the chickens, a final couple of photos of the garden softened with morning dew - vowing to return as soon as circumstances will allow. And if circumstances didn’t allow, we’d go back anyway, dammit.

Coombeshead the restaurant alone is a phenomenon - a rare example of the kind of magic that happens when only the finest ingredients, treated in sympathetic and intelligent ways, are presented in exactly the environment they belong, a perfect harmony of hospitality, invention and flavour. But as you may have noticed from reading this far, Coombeshead Farm is way more than a restaurant. It’s a holistic foodie nirvana, a shining example of how a partnership between the land and the table should work when good people put their heart and souls into making it happen. And it exists right now, in 2017, in Cornwall. So what on earth are you waiting for?

10/10

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Where The Light Gets In, Stockport

Let's not start this post with a paragraph about how unlikely it is that any modern British independent restaurant, never mind one as stunningly realised as Where The Light Gets In, should have surfaced in Stockport. If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that good food can happen anywhere, from the Faroe islands to Folkstone, from Southend to Land's End, and feigning aloof "surprise" when somewhere in Not London somehow gets their act together enough to run a decent restaurant is not only patronising but completely unmerited by virtue of the facts. Most of the best meals I've eaten over the last twelve months have been in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cornwall; the British food renaissance has reached all parts of the UK, not just the bits with access to the tube.

Indeed, it's not only unremarkable that Where The Light Gets In should set up shop in Stockport but, once you settle into the dining room perched above the magnificent red-brick industrial landscape of this northern town, it feels almost inevitable that someone would want to run a restaurant here. It's the perfect eating space - bright, airy and spacious thanks to soaring high ceilings and well-spaced tables, and with views over the warehouse rooftops towards the Robinsons brewery. The kitchens are just an extension of the dining space, with gleaming stainless steel stations manned by serene, youthful chefs (including owner Sam Buckley), and service managed by elfin Emma Underwood, formerly of Burnt Truffle in Heswall. The whole operation hums with joy and energy. You're ready to have the time of your life before you even take your first bite.

It helps, then, that the food is a parade of colour, flavour and invention that more than lives up to the promise of the surroundings. Even the nibbles that come with your first drink display a determination to impress - home made potato chips, greaseless and warm, are presented with an assortment of flavoured powders with interesting names like 'Lava' and 'Cod sack'. Cod sack, by the way, is literally that - the membrane that surrounds cod's roe, dried and powdered, and packing an incredibly intense punch of seafood flavour. WTLGI are determined, as far as possible, to be a "waste free" restaurant - vegetables are used in their entirety, and elements from the same animal crop up in various forms in different courses. It's a philosophy that a cynic may say benefits their bottom line just as much as it helps the survival of the planet, but is nevertheless very impressive.

First of the twelve or so elements of the tasting menu (there's no choice, and they've only recently started doing a pescatarian option) is a crab "taco" made with cabbage leaves. It's a good idea, but one that works or otherwise based on the quality of the main ingredient, and fortunately the crab here - stunning quality, with chunks of rich white meat seasoned with some kind of clever dried herb - was something approaching perfect. In fact, I can't remember when I've eaten better crab anywhere.

Next, a radish - a giant, bright red spherical radish looking like Rudolph the Reindeer's nose, in a bed of cod's roe. The radish itself was plump and gently peppery, with a great crunch, and had clearly had been plucked out of the ground only in the very recent past. But the cod's roe was extraordinary - silky smooth and spiked with I think what they said was "rhubarb vinegar", which provided a delicate, sweet, floral note. All the infusions and vinegars used at WTLGI can be seen on shelves at the back of the kitchen area, quietly fermenting away, a rainbow of kilner jars.

Kolhrabi ate as good as it looked, and as you can see, it looked very good indeed. Five neat balls of kohlrabi, each gently pickled I think, sat in a clear consommé of what we were told was "apple and whey", and topped with wisps of fennel. Despite being an entirely vegan dish (as far as I can tell)* [see edit], it was richly flavoured and deeply rewarding, a perfect balancing act of sweet/pickle/vegetal that I never wanted to end.

At the risk of sounding like a bit of a pleb, I do usually prefer my langoustines to be cooked. There's something about the gelatinous, spongy texture of raw langoustine (and prawn, for that matter, and don't get me started on scallops) that I find slightly offputting, and even Simon Rogan, via a dish at Fera a couple of years back, couldn't convince me they're better raw than otherwise. That said, if WTLGI are determined to serve raw langoustine, and that's entirely their prerogative, you can probably do so no better than like this, pressed into a ceviche-style flat disc and scattered with powdered rose, plum and lavender. It also probably helps that the langoustine itself was extremely good quality, sweet and fresh.

I think it was about this time the bread arrived, and it turns out that, not content with being annoyingly brilliant at everything else, someone in the WTLGI kitchen is some kind of baker genius as well. Because they've managed to make a loaf with a perfect moist, bouncy crumb and a delicate, dark crust like the finest French pastry. I'm well aware I've already exceeded my quota of superlatives in this post but just like the crab taco, and the radish and the kohlrabi and everything else, I doubt the sourdough could be improved upon at all - it was a supreme version of its kind.

These mussels, vibrantly coloured and so much more intensely flavoured than your average bivalve, were apparently hand-picked in Cornwall. Which makes sense, as most of the country's best ingredients come from down that way. They came in a fermented peach, horserading and hawthorn flower broth which had that same umami richness of the kohlrabi but with an added note of countryside hedgerows. Joyful.

While it's true to say that I and lovage don't always get on (they had a particular fondness for it at Noma I seem to recall; it even found its way into the desserts), here the trademark metallic tang was tempered by a judicious use of foraged wild herbs (thyme and marjoram) - and the "no waste" philosophy meant all of the plant was used, from the leaves and flowers to the thicker stalks which had a bit of a celery crunch. Presumably another vegan dish, this was every bit as satisfying and richly textured as the kohlrabi - you felt healthier with every mouthful.

But while their way with vegetables is deeply impressive, WTLGI know what they're doing with a bit of pig, too. Homemade charcuterie - cured belly I think - was salty and soft with a good hit of pork flavour. And a separate cup of pork broth was bewilderingly intense - an almost overwhelmingly farmy aroma but with a smooth, rich taste of excellent pork. I don't know whether it was just that I was enjoying myself so much but all of the ingredients at WTLGI, everything from the foraged vegetables to the meat and seafood, seemed just that bit more vibrant and intensely flavoured than anything else I'd ever eaten of that kind. It was a masterclass in sourcing.

And so it was with the pigeon, which somehow conspired to be more powerfully "pigeon-y" than any other of the same species I can remember eating in the past. Neatly separated into claw and breast fillets, it tasted of summer flowers and wild meadows, and of a healthy, happy life - until recently, at any rate. I knawed at that leg bone until it was completely clean.

Desserts began with a dish made from dried, candied peach skins and a cream made with peach stone kernels. Clever, wasteless stuff but crucially it also tasted great - these were, needless to say, excellent peaches.

The rest of the peach turned up in the next course, simply presented with some good, chunky frozen yoghurt. In the bottom of the bowl was a lovely peach "soup" of some kind, clear and clean tasting with a gentle sweetness. And I know I keep mentioning the waste-less thing, but I'm sure that the success of WTLGI is literally because of their attitude to making the most of every ingredient, not despite it. While the same raw ingredients crop up in various dishes (apple in the crab taco and the kohlrabi, peach in the mussels and desserts), nothing feels repetitive or samey; their myriad of techniques and skills ensures that every dish dazzles in a different way to the last. It really is marvellously exciting stuff.

But, sadly, so sadly, we were nearly done. Fermented berry and buttermilk tart was a pretty little thing, a delicate base containing a layer of soft buttermilk cream and topped with gently fizzy berries. It was a final hurrah from a pastry section proving they could turn their hand to classical patisserie techniques when required.

Petits fours were miniature treacle tarts - warm, comforting - and clever little sugar losenges that exploded into a hit of Buckfast (of all things) in the mouth.

When a restaurant you have little hope for turns out to be good, there's a tendency to exaggerate the positives and gloss over the negatives. I've been guilty of this in the past on this blog, perhaps being kind to anywhere I was expecting to not be great and that turned out to not be dreadful. That's human nature, I suppose.

But when a restaurant you expect to be brilliant, thanks to the pedigree of the people involved, turns out to be even better than that, well, clearly something very special is going on. Where The Light Gets In is, using any conceivable measure, a triumph - a perfect marriage of meticulous sourcing, stunning technique and glittering service that holds you rapt from the moment you step into that gallery-like dining room and for many days after you leave. The waste-less philosophy, which could so easily be a gimmick, or a muzzle on a creative kitchen team, is in fact the ideal way to make the very most of the very best ingredients, and - thrillingly - a guarantee that hardly any two meals will ever be the same. The idea that this relatively new restaurant can only grow and improve from here is exhilarating; just imagine where they'll be years from now.

So I won't waste any more of your time writing about it when you could be up in that lovely room in Stockport enjoying it. Already a towering achievement, its reputation will only grow from here; if you have the means, you should do everything in your power to get yourself a table. Whatever the weather in this notoriously inclement part of the country, the future is bright, and the sun will always be shining, for Where The Light Gets In.

10/10

EDIT: As has been pointed out, whey isn't vegan. My mistake.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

The Forest Side, Grasmere

It was a single meal - a multi-course, expressionist dance of harmony and colour and flavour served at L'Enclume in Cartmel in 2012 which convinced me that modern foraged British food was the future of dining out, and that Simon Rogan was one of the most inventive and exciting chefs working today. And nothing since has changed my mind. Further experiences at the French in Manchester and Fera at Claridge's have merely replaced that initial swooning shock with a kind of awestruck reverie; nothing in five or six meals across those locations has been less than interesting and the the best of it is transcendental, tying together strict seasonality, a botanist's knowledge of the local environment, and - let's not forget this one - a library of classical French techniques to frame those wonderful ingredients with sticky reduced jus and crisp skins and pinpoint-accurate seasoning.

It may have felt revolutionary in 2012 to eat at L'Enclume, but Rogan learned his craft working for people like Marco Pierre White and Jean-Christophe Novelli, who in turn- oh, I can't be bothered to start with the Rock Family Tree; the point is, each chef is part of a chain of talent that stretches back way back when, and each individual uses the tools they were taught to make their own great leap forward once they start out alone in their own kitchens, where before long they become the "establishment" and various young chefs who have toiled 16-hour days podding peas in those kitchens start having some ideas of their own and fly the nest.

So we're getting to the stage now where Simon Rogan, once the hot young revolutionary of the British dining scene, is most definitely the New Establishment (I mean, his restaurant is in Claridge's; there's nowhere more establishment than that), and so for the next leap forward in British food the country looks towards ex- L'Enclume alumni such as Mark Birchall (soon to open Moor Hall near Ormskirk) and Kevin Tickle, who has landed a head chef role in the stunning gothic mansion hotel-restaurant Forest Side in Grasmere.

Much is resting on the success of the Forest Side; if, and it's a big if, Simon Rogan's influence can live outside his own kitchens and inform a new generation of restaurants across the country, then this will be the first great test - a high-end modern British menu, making use of foraged ingredients, nestled in the lush Cumbrian countryside and serving the best the area has to offer, but with Kevin Tickle in charge; related to l'Enclume, but a different blood line. Everything was possible, and it was all very exciting. You can see why I jumped at the chance to travel to Grasmere.

After a couple of "forager's cocktails" and nibbles in the bar (all very plush and impressive; no expense spared on décor that we could tell, and the drinks were all nice twists on classics using local plants), we were moved through to the main restaurant for the show to begin. Snacks appeared, chickpea wafer topped with peas & herbs, a crunchy new potato skin containing onion ash, and a "critter fritter", a deep-fried breadcrumbed cube of squirrel meat (and other bits and pieces I imagine), all nice enough as an introduction. Pretty, clever... but more impressive than enjoyable.

The next amuse was a bowl of fudgey slow-cooked yolk on top of some broad beans and topped with some slivers of "hen of the woods", a mushroom that credulous foodies will try and tell you tastes like chicken but actually tastes quite a bit more like mushroom. Again, it was a clever demonstration of a variety of techniques missing a certain balance (there was a lot of gooey yolk and not enough of anything else) and wasn't hugely memorable.

Bread (wholemeal loaf, fine but I won't judge them too harshly as it seems the bread offering is the last thing to evolve to its final form in a new restaurant) came with fennel butter, a weird enough idea and an oddly divisive flavour to force upon every paying guest, even if it had been seasoned properly. Which it wasn't. So we muched through half a slice each of bland, vaguely aniseedy bread before deciding that we'd much prefer some nice normal salted butter. Even adding salt to the fennel butter would have been nice, but not possible, as there wasn't any on the table.

The next course, heritage tomatoes cooked in elderflower with goat's curd and caviar, came paired with cucumber-flavour soda water made in Hackney. I have various issues with this, which may be easier to express in bullet form:

• I do not like cucumber soda
• Even if I did like cucumber soda, I would much prefer my tomato consommé (hardly the world's most unco-operative set of flavours) to be matched with a nice white wine, say a Riesling or something, than just another vegetable ingredient that, if the chef really thought the tomato needed it, would have surely been better off as part of the dish?
• The soda, presumably constructed by adding cucumber juice to soda water, had been shipped up from a company in Hackney. Maybe I'm unaware of every potential issue surrounding the adding of cucumber to sparkling water, but it seems odd that Forest Side can make their own bread but not their own flavoured water?

All of which would have been less annoying if the consommé had tasted of much, but I'm afraid I didn't think much of the slightly sweet and insipid liquid that coated the bottom of the bowl. Even the caviar seemed subdued.

The next course, in its own way, had just as many issues. Venison "pastrami" wasn't anything of the sort, just slices of cold roast venison with no hint of the bouncy, briney hit of proper pastrami, sat on some pickled veg, blobs of curd-y yoghurt and a few bits of shaved parmesan-style cheese. So far, so meh. But it was "paired" with a gin and tonic elaborately built tableside using more Hackney soda ("Artemesia", your guess is as good as mine), a Hackney*[see edit] gin called "Forest" (Lakeside gin is made a few miles away but isn't good enough apparently) and a sea buckthorne jelly to garnish. Needless to say, the gin & tonic completely battered any flavour in the venison (which wasn't much) into oblivion but actually the sea buckthorne jelly was really lovely, so I'll give them that.

I've only ever been disappointed with one dish in all my visits to Fera, and it involved langoustine, so perhaps there's something about West Coast langoustine that doesn't sit well with me. But I think I mainly didn't like it because it was a strange blobby texture and offputtingly transluscent from being undercooked, and I didn't like any of the rest of the dish either, from the slab of unseasoned "charred" cucumber that didn't look or taste like it had been anywhere near a direct heat, to the chewy strip of home made guanciale on top. My friend, who doesn't eat seafood, had exactly the same dish but with the langoustine and the guanciale(?) removed, so had to made do with a slice of cold cucumber for this course. Oh, and both were paired with an IPA - local, at least, but I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever see another glass of wine.

Courgette was presumably "scorched" in the same way the cucumber in the langoustine dish was "charred", i.e. not very much. And I don't care how much of a fan of vegetables you are, cold courgette is never a nice thing to eat, not even topped with a kind of pumpernickle cracker and surrounded by dots of mint sauce. I can't remember what this was paired with but it sure as hell wasn't wine.

And then just as we were thinking perhaps we should cut our losses and leap on the next train back to Euston, Forest Side went all... well, normal. Nice, even. My fish course was a fabulously cooked slice of halibut, bright white and flaking into clean, defined chunks, with a gorgeous golden brown crust. Served with the good bits of razor clams (no weirdness) and a lovely herby chutney which brought to mind the coriander dressing Trishna serve with their Haryali Sea Bream dish (this is a Good Thing), it was a balanced, complete, mature and hugely enjoyable dish. And - joy of joys - it was paired with a white wine (it'll never catch on), a natural Chablis-style from Burgundy, which complimented the fish perfectly. My seafood-hating friend similarly enjoyed her local hoggett, beautifully pink and rich in aged flavour, paired with a Syrah blend red. Were they messing with us?

Middlewhite pork proved the halibut and hoggett were no fluke. Beautifully moist squares of pig, surrounded by colourful local herbs and flowers, with a couple of sweet and tender artichoke hearts and all bound by that classic Rogan touch, a savoury custard. And on top of all that, it had been dressed with one of those lovely reduced stock sauces, thick and strong like porky honey, which I attempted to scoop every last bit of from my plate before realising I was making a bit of a scene. This dish was paired with a Radikon wine from Slovenia, light and interesting and just what we wanted. Seven courses into a ten-course tasting menu, they were hitting their stride.

Now we were on to desserts. Pre-dessert was a bowl of frozen bits and pieces of summer fruits, colourful and vibrant and great fun. I can't begin to describe half the things that went into it (not least because, as a pre-dessert, it wasn't listed on the menu) but I'm sure it was all lovely and seasonal. I think this came paired with a sparkling saké, which I'm only mentioning out of completeness because it didn't really do much for the food.

The first proper dessert was this strawberry mousse thing, which had the most beautiful flavour thanks I think to the use of wild strawberries from the kitchen garden at Forest Side. There were plenty of interesting techniques in play here too, from the crispy meringue-style coating to the cakey crumbs underneath which made it into a kind of deconstructed cheesecake. It was paired with a Sauternes, which brought out the fruity flavours very well. Only joking, it actually came with a strawberry cocktail, which was as pointless as it was annoying.

"Gooseberry, buttermilk and sweet cicely" had an extremely clever "floaty" texture, very difficult to describe but imagine a cross between a foam and a jelly, but smooth and almost impossibly light. The gooseberries packed a punch, like they often do, and buttermilk underneath added a nice dairy richness. This was paired with some non-alcoholic fruit cocktail of some kind I don't even care any more.

Partly because the cheeses from this part of the world are right up there with the best of them, and partly because we needed something to go with the glass of wine we were so craving, we went for the extra cheeseboard. And, unsurprisingly, it was brilliant, a not too large or too small selection of the finest British cheeses, kept perfectly and served generously, from a fresh citrussy goat's to a surprisingly chalky St James which nevertheless had the usual fine flavour. We asked for the red that came with the pork as we'd enjoyed it so much. "Yes, we have a sweet Banyuls to go with the cheese" came the reply, either through misunderstanding or sheer stubbornness. It was OK, but would have gone better with the desserts.

Petits fours, taken in the bar just so we could finally order a normal drink without anyone trying to force a honey-peanut butter stout or sparkling cabbage water on us, were a couple of Turkish delight things using some weird fruit, and a couple of frozen summer berry "rocks" that I remember from all those years ago at L'Enclume. I ate them, very nice (particularly the berry rock which must be a very difficult technique to master), then enjoyed a brandy and tried to work out what the hell just happened over the last few hours.

Some of the reasons I didn't enjoy everything we were given at Forest Side, were maybe just matters of taste, and nobody's fault. I'd rather have wine than sparkline saké, I don't much like cucumber water, and I don't like cold venison (it was 13th August, where was the grouse?), and maybe there are millions of people out there who do. OK fine, fair enough. But even if half of the first few courses just weren't my thing that still leaves half that could have been if they'd have just been treated a bit more carefully, or seasoned a bit better - particularly the fennel butter but also the tomato consommé and the cucumber/langoustine and courgette dishes which a bit of salt may have at least distracted from the reality of eating slabs of cold vegetable.

But on top of all of that we have the fact that when Forest Side put aside cold foraged plankton and matching pansy-water, the results can be very impressive. If I'd have turned up, had the halibut as a starter, the pork as a main then that strawberry dessert, I would have left a very happy chappy indeed. They know how to treat fish and pig, can make a nice reduced sauce, and the pastry section is spot-on. But this isn't a neighbourhood bistro serving 3 courses for £25, it's a £80/head tasting menu that for most people will require a pretty major journey to get to, and there aren't many people going to be happy waiting for 7-courses in before anything more than "OK" hits the table. And I wonder how many of those would be happy paying £60 extra for a bizarre selection of flavoured sodas, beers and juices instead of some nice wines?

I should probably point out that the hotel itself, the vast rooms, the luxurious bathrooms with their rain showers and baths the size of Bournemouth, the stunning location nestled amongst woodland within walking distance of Grasmere, you may consider all these things making the journey for even if you're not a fan of the food detailed above. And I know for a fact Forest Side has plenty of fans; my rather grumpy reaction to it is very much in the minority according to various press reviews I've read. But all I can do is all I ever do, go somewhere once, make a snap judgment and then carry on with my life. And so it is here. My love affair with modern British foraged food remains unshaken; but if I want it, I'll go to Fera.

5/10

I was invited to Forest Side. *EDIT: I swear our waiter said the gin was from London but it is in fact from Macclesfield Forest, so apologies to them!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad