Before I lose the power of all recall of the event - time takes a toll on my faculty of memory - I have to recall my evening of great pleasure passed at the opening public evening of Andrew Sheridan’s 8 or possibly Around 8 - the precise name isn’t clear in my mind. The date was 8 October 2020, I have a dated, signed menu to prove it. The setting - the bar area of the Craft Dining Rooms, now divided from the main dining area and sparkling and cleverly lit. Just eight diners; there will be 16 when the need for social distancing is over. All strangers and socially distanced but soon, and keeping to the appropriate degree of separation, chatting pleasantly in this immaculate relaxed environment.
The evening started at 7PM, brought forward by an hour due to the then 10PM curfew. It was of course meant to start at 8PM to fit in with the theme but there you have it, the best laid plans of mice and men and so on. It took a little while for me to realise that the positioning of the plates had been precisely calculated to enable the diner to photograph their food to perfection and Chef and his staff chatted to the Lucky 8 about the food, the concept, the restaurant, the whole story. What nice people they all are. Andrew Sheridan said that a couple of evenings before, his very first service of 8 was to distinguished local chefs including Paul Foster of Salt in Stratford upon Avon and apparently and not surprisingly had gone down pretty well. But we were the Few, the Happy Few, to be there at the first service to the public.
The menu in eight parts had dishes with variants of eight in its name and each course had relevance to the progress of Sheridan’s culinary career. I shall not enlarge on that mainly because I didn’t hear everything that was said and for much of the time I was staring enraptured at the sight of each new dish as it came along. The menu didn’t reveal too much so the serving of the food brought gasps and purrs of pleasure.
There was a tear and share bread of great pleasure which as I was a single diner I did not have to share at all and had some left over to savour at the next day’s breakfast (too good to waste even a crumb), then V8, a sweet tomato tart with fabulous pastry and a clear sweet accompanying vegetable liquor. To paraphrase The Tempest, “Such things are dreams made on...” Exquisite.
Then the remarkable Oxidised, a remarkable beef carpaccio with cep and beef fat truffle, cheese and thinly sliced brioche. Palpitating pleasure. Just look at it:-
Square root of 8 Smoky celeriac with the clearest vegetable broth and then Lucky 8, a special bacon and cheese sandwich if you wish to think of it that way. Not my favourite dish that evening though others would disagree.
And now we’re into a full gallop and Eight Days A Week brings with it a fabulous scallop, apple and sorrel dish. Luxurious, delicious and exceptional.
And then to a gourmand’s fondest dream, Resurrection. A mind bogglingly beautiful venison Wellington, good in so many ways that it must be a dish served to those who have been saints in their earthly lives at the refectory tables of Heaven, utterly perfectly cooked and delicious venison stuffed with the right amount of foie gras surrounded by earthy mushroom duxelles and magnificently wonderful buttery pastry. It must have taken months if not years of practice to achieve such a fabulous faultless dish. Such things are dreams made on, oh I’ve said that already but I don't apologise for repeating it.
Feeling pretty full by now but the joy continues. 8 - 10 - 2006 - warm deconstructed carrot cake served for two to share but being only one I get enough to enable me to take half home with me to enjoy the next day. As the title of one of Delia Smith’s books told us, “One is fun”. The dish was accompanied by an orange carrot jam, so gorgeously delicious that it is more often, I should think, fed to the immortals in their palaces on Olympus and a lustrous sweet light cream.
And so the fat old bloke prepares soon to sing as 8.01 comes to the table to appropriately bring the After Eight combination of mint and chocolate. We chatter, still appropriately socially distanced, but 10 AM approaches. We all speak in glowing terms of the pleasure of 8, inwardly self-congratulatory I suspect, of being the First of The Few The Happy Few (to combine Churchill and Shakespeare) - come to think about it, the meal was pretty much that combination - gastronomic poetry and drama with a pugnacious Englishness at a time when a war is raging outside on the street as COVID-19 continues to marshal its forces. As the hands on the clock hurry towards 10 we grab our coats and get our hats and head off for the taxis before the crowds pouring out of the pubs can beat us to it, showering our delighted thanks on Andrew Sheridan and everyone who has made this a magnificent evening of gastronomic marvels here in Birmingham.
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