May was a quiet time for restaurants. There were three bank holidays, one associated with the coronation weekend, and this seemed to discourage diners from turning out to eat at upmarket restaurants and probably the downmarket variety too. Chefs were tweeting messages full of anxiety, intimating that the end was in sight, restaurants everywhere were about to fold, that something needed to be done about the taxes the hospitality sector had to pay.
I visited Folium on one of those May Friday evenings. The weather was being generous and the Jewellery Quarter was looking pleasant and placid. Certainly the restaurant had not managed to fill all its tables; as I say, this was Friday evening.
Chef Ben Tesh was busy in the kitchen but even though I was able to watch his activity the restaurant had a serenity to it. It’s such a nice place. I hope it does well and carries on doing what it is doing the way it is doing it. The amuse gueule was familiar and none the worse for that - a roasted onion flavoured pipe with a soupçon of deliciously full bodied chicken liver parfait. So elegant. After Tesh’s own bread and cultured butter, on to a visually and gustatory gorgeous dish of Winterbourne char (I discovered the geographical location of Winterbourne - not the one in Edgbaston by the way, of course) with English wasabi and chive flowers. Then a magnificent spear of Wye Valley asparagus with a little mound of Exmoor caviar and white asparagus and a vibrant espuma.
Fish was very much the theme of this meal. Lordly Cornish turbot cooked as finely as a master draftsman might draw up the designs for an exquisitely sensitive instrument, with an espuma accurately laced with yuzu and a splendid miniature beignet rather ungraciously represented as “fried bread”.
To the pre-dessert. Iced horseradish with sorrel. Quite brilliant - it brought to mind the Tesh that gave us the sensational potato porridge with coffee grinds and toasted yeast in his pop up days in Church Street. Some may find some of his dishes - I do sometimes - but they are no less outstanding for that. What a star then and what a star now.
For dessert, toasted hay ice cream with miso and buckwheat which did exactly what it said on the packet and made for a lovely light way to end a fine and elegant meal. The full stop was a precise mignardise in the form of a happy little fudge.
Rating:- 🌞🌞.
No comments:
Post a Comment