Michelin will hold its Guide reveal event on 25 January 2021 at The Dorchester Hotel in London. The Guide is usually revealed in October but the delay will allow for a “full and comprehensive” edition to be published. Naturally the ‘reveal’ ceremony will be held in a London location and not anywhere else in the country where a worthwhile restaurant may be found occasionally.
And this will be an entirely digital edition which makes it rather historic given that for the first time I shall have no new book to place on my bookshelf since 1974. In decades to come, foodies interested in the history of dining out will ask “What happened in 2021? Why was no Guide issued? Why’s there a gap in your collection?”. And I shall sigh and think of missed lunches, a birthday dinner that never took place and the constant sloshing of alcohol not down my throat but over my hands. We won’t forget the run-up to Michelin 2021.
Chain restaurants have gone to the wall even the venerable Pizza Express (see Blog 49 is closing a large number of branches in the West Midlands which in Birmingham are in Corporation Street and The Mailbox as well as Bromsgrove, Dudley Merry Hill, Hereford, Ludlow, Moseley, Shirley, Stourbridge and Walsall.
Of course the greatest loss of this year has been the Ludlow Food Festival - the world’s original food festival - and it did not seem right to not be in Ludlow last weekend when it should have taken place. So the dog and I went any way and walked around the town, she swam in the river, and in the absence of the famed Sausage Trail she had her very own excellent sausage sandwich from the marvellous Vaughan’s sandwich shop in King Street. This little shop is a gem, wholly unpretentious but keeping up the tradition of the great English sandwich for an excellent price.
As usual we stayed at the dog-friendly Fishmore Hall where I indulged for the first time in its take on afternoon tea. This is the first time I’ve had tea which starts with an amuse bouche, a delightful piece of chorizo sausage roll with a pickled tomato jam. More sausage, and this time served on a slate! And then the savouries - 4 variants on a traditional sandwich theme - a tuna and Red Leicester melt which was very tasty and looked nice with its zigzag streaks of balsamic decorating it, a smoked Cheddar and spring onion wrap which was actually my favourite though I’d normally choose a straightforward white bread English sandwich over a piece of flatbread any day, a pleasing coronation chicken finger sandwich with extra texture and, saved till last because of its promise, but the least enjoyable, a brioche of tasty ham hock not benefitting at all from the accompanying mustard and honey.
There was a fine collection of attractive cakes and when it arrived on my table the sight of the funky looking Battenburg squeezed a “Wow!” out of me. The fruit and non-fruit scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam were very edible but I thought the outer surfaces might have been a little too crispy. The petite chocolate espresso cup with a lovely smooth chocolate mousse and white chocolate was a happy indulgence as was the lovely violet and blueberry macaron and the gold and red coloured lemon and raspberry Battenburg which had elicited the Wow! on first sight lived up to expectations.
An unusual and enjoyable twist on a traditional English tea while sitting in a sunlit conservatory with a view of Clee Hill in the distance dominating the scenery - what could be finer?
But afternoon tea is not all that’s on offer at Fishmore. Apart from the fine dining restaurant, Forelles, another part of the Hall, a splendid Georgian sitting room, is used to serve bistro food. Much of it is very good and a very pleasing sirloin steak, which I choose to eat only rarely, eaten in the ‘bistro’ made me extremely happy on my first evening at the hotel. Cooked exactly as I wanted, tender as butter and the flavour enhanced by perfect seasoning. No sauce was ordered and none was needed. A dreamily delicious portobello mushroom luxuriously cooked in butter with very fine chips and a spanking tomato accompanied the steak. There was also a bunch of leaves rich with rocket, which is one of my arch enemies, but the ferric bite from it went well with the meal though the challenge of eating all of the rocket was a challenge too great for my frail taste buds.
One of the nicest things about Fishmore is that the hotel is very dog friendly and when eating in the bistro diners can be accompanied by their dogs. It’s just the right sort of room to have a black Labrador stretched out on the floor paying close attention to the precise direction the forkfulls of sirloin are travelling in and willing that direction to be the one which leads to her mouth.
And there was Sunday lunch. Here fine dining with its neat little islands of food turns into a trencherman’s holiday. Well, perhaps that’s not true of the starter. I had a creamy cauliflower soup with curry oil and a crouton in the form of an onion bhaji which seemed like a very clever idea except that my bhaji was a little burnt and and the resulting bitterness spoiled the overall dish.
But back to trenchermen. A vastly generously sized roast pork traditional Sunday lunch was served up according to my choice. The meat was enjoyable, not completely delicious - perhaps it needed a little more seasoning - but the accompanying garden full of vegetables ensured there were several things on the plate to please. The pork’s crackling was stupendously perfect, crispy but not tooth-shatteringly crunchy, the duck fat roast potatoes were more leathery on the outside than crispy - I picked at one of them and left the other two; getting roast potatoes to the point of perfection really is an art known to just a few, and there was also spot-on red cabbage, some rather indifferent broccoli, good old swede purée, crushed carrot, pleasing cauliflower, green beans which gave little pleasure and the very necessary apple sauce and red wine gravy. I was full long before I could I had eaten everything (well the beans and roast potatoes were never going to get eaten no much how much was on the plate) and no-one should be able to claim they still felt hungry after all that.
I didn’t attend the virtual Ludlow Festival as it was broadcast - I was busy having an enjoyable weekend in reality in Ludlow itself, happily eating real food and doing my best to meet Lucy The Labrador’s sausage craving. I hope to watch some of the videos now we’re back home and plan to be in Ludlow for the next Festival among the happy, vaccinated, COVID-19 free crowds in September 2021.
