241. Back To Ludlow.

 The dog and I are off on our West Midlands gastronomic tours again and back in Shropshire in Ludlow. For the first evening it was dinner in the bistro section of Fishmore Hotel. Past experience tells me that you can have some great dishes there as well as one or two which don’t quite hit the target. Fortunately this was a great night to be indulging oneself with the dog nicely relaxed by the side of the table and the late spring evening cheerful and pleasant.

  I chose a lovely starter of smoked trout rillette with little balls of avocado, tiny cubes of sweet pickled cucumber, a nicely crunchy slice of toast and, somewhere, caviar. I did so enjoy this dish. I wanted very much to order it again but self respect prevented me from doing so.

  The main course was a lovely piece of fish described as plaice on the menu though sturdy and thick like cod, finely cooked with truly excellent crushed potatoes, peas, broad beans and pancetta and tasty scorched lettuce. This dish was so good I purred with pleasure.

And then an interesting banana-flavoured deconstructed, crème brûlée, banoffee mousse, with toffee creméux and a few too many toasted hazel nuts. Light and pleasing.

What an enjoyable meal.

  Three Birmingham restaurants were included recently in the list of the top 100 UK restaurants in the Estella Damm National Restaurant Awards. Not too surprisingly they were:-

Well done and well deserved to our restaurants making up 3% of the the list but no other Birmingham or West Midlands restaurants featured on the list which I suspect says more about the list than it does about our restaurants. Hence no Cheal’s of Henley, no Wilderness, no Upstairs, no Hampton Manor, no Le Champignon Sauvage. Plenty of London restaurants. It’s all a bit daft really isn’t it?

Follow Lucy The Labrador’s and my adventures in food in the West Midlands on Twitter @knightanddog (Dog And Dinner).