109. Forelles.

  If the Lurgy had not escaped from Wuhan and ripped its way through the world, the dog and I would certainly have visited Ludlow and stayed at the lovely Fishmore Hall sometime in the spring of this year. It was not to be.

  Therefore this was only the first time this year that I have been able to dine at the hotel’s Michelin plated restaurant, Forelles. The time away from work has not been wasted by Chef Joe Gould. On my first evening I dined from the à la carte menu and was delighted with the dishes which came my way.

  Let’s get the bread out of the way. Last year a very oniony bread and dull grilled sourdough were served - edible but the flavour of the onion in the first bread was excessive and stayed with you for the next one or two dishes and the grilled bread just seemed very unspecial. The new normal is a considerable improvement. The onion bread is less overwhelming, the sourdough is soft and tasty and there is a third charcoal lemon bread which is very good and tastes rather fine with the newly added seaweed butter (probably I wouldn’t have that butter with any of the other breads) as well as the familiar marmite butter and ordinary butter which both work well.

  And then a frivolous little amuse bouche of potato foam with horseradish and tiny cubes of apple. So light you wouldn’t know you’d had it but definitely amusing.

  My starter was excellent. A gorgeously golden raviolo filled with the wild flavour of rabbit meat, little shreds of napa cabbage, a swirl of BBQ aubergine in an arc on the side of the dish (at first I thought it was the dish’s pattern) and a little moat of delicious minestrone sauce poured around it all. Top marks for flavour. Thoughts come flooding in - is this a new era of Italian? and has Joe Gould now arrived in the big league. Perhaps the main course would tell. 

  Without hesitation, on to the main of very nicely cooked and handsome-looking salmon and a real star which was partnering it - a wondrously-flavoured mussel agnolotti given texture by sitting on a bed of strips of pickled mooli and the plate made to entertain with blobs of courgette purée as well as more of the same shaped like the thermometer that might measure one’s temperature at this COVID time with a band of buttermilk running down it and blobs of paprika gel giving a hint of the heat that COVID might give you! Another great dish. This is proving to be a great meal.

  The pre-dessert - unchanged from last time I visited but very good and doing its job perfectly. A celery mousse with a lemon jelly and a some crunch from a bit of walnut perched on top.

  Not for the first time I couldn’t resist the joy of Gould’s Baked Alaska for dessert. Arctic roll surrounded in white chocolate with the sponge at the base in the form of a lovely green and tasty pistachio and the soft meringue looking for all the world like an edible hedgehog. Alongside, and perfectly matched, a lovely slice of peach beautifully garnished.

This was good stuff. I was glad to be back in Ludlow.