“Chef, does this mean you will be coming back to serving the public?”, not a smile but a fleetingly temporary lightening of facial expression and, “Ask me that at midnight”. Of course, I wasn’t round late when service ended at Le Petit Bois to ask former Michelin star holder Richard Turner, now bearded and shaven headed, whether midnight had provided him with the answer to the question I had raised but I rather hoped that the answer that had come to him was, “Yes”. Time dulls memory and one forgets just how special are some chefs but the food he cooked that evening during his collaboration with Ben Taylor, Chef Patron of Moseley’s Le Petit Bois, brought happy memories flooding back and showed just why Turner had achieved such recognition during his time as Chef Patron of Turner’s in Harborne.
This collaborative event brought, I think it’s fair to see, a not entirely satisfactory combination of deeply rustic Gallic dishes alternating with fine modern British, very much of the moment. This is not to say that the dishes were not enjoyable - indeed, some were very fine and delicious with admirable complexity of flavours. But the meal did jolt a little too much from one style to another.
As is often the case, the appetisers were lovely - a wonderfully cheesy ‘gouger’ served in a bowl hiding under a lid on which sat the simplest but most perfectly cooked Jersey Royal topped with crème fraiche and caviar. Then, served by Turner, was a red mullet soup with bottarga (salted, cured grey mullet roe pouch) alongside a tapenade chou - a highly delicious dish. From modern British sophistication to a more robust French peasant’s fare x a chou farci, stuffed cabbage - this was tasty but the cabbage was not adequately tender for me.
A fine piece of meaty ‘swordfish au poivre’ was next served - again from the rustic side of the menu - the little bursts of pepper were exhilarating and the accompanying ratatouille complemented it all. Richard Turner weighed in with the meat course - finely cooked and tasty hogget with fresh wild garlic (which, he joked, he had been out picking in Cannon Hill Park at 6.30 that morning, though perhaps he was not joking), morels (ideally complementing the hogget), asparagus and Jersey Royal purée (which may have been the only error - both I and the couple at the next table felt that the small potatoes would have been more enjoyable if served whole (perhaps it was because we had already had the vegetable served that way as appetiser and no repeat was wished for or perhaps Turner felt he needed to be cheffy). Regardless, a near immaculate dish.
Turner’s final contribution was actually the absolute highlight - the summary of ‘sheep’s yogurt, rhubarb, blood orange’ (frozen and scattered overall) hardly did justice to one of the most excitingly delicious desserts I have eaten for a while. And then he accompanied it with a delightful little beignet and choirs of angels sang out.
Ben Taylor’s dessert was brimming with the flavour of bananas - there was a chocolate cake charged with banana and a fine hazelnut ice cream on a bed of crushed hazelnuts alongside a nicely caramelised chunk of banana. The helping was too generously sized for me and I hate wasting good food, being brought up as a child of those who experienced the vicious rationing of Attlee’s Age of Austerity, but there you have it, you can only eat what your gastric organ will allow you to eat. I took the charming mignardises, including a charming little Madeleine freshly cooked, home with me and they gave me much pleasure.
So is Richard Turner planning to return to full-time ‘active service’? Given what he produced at Le Petit Bois, the West Midlands diner can only hope so.
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