326. Summer Heat (4 - The Wilderness).

 

  Each new season the menu of The Wilderness does not so much evolve as stage a full scale military coup. The brains in the kitchen get together with sparks shooting down the collective neurons and new stupendous creations are born, or in one or two cases, reborn. And now it was time to be off to Alex Claridge’s restaurant to discover just what the summer had in store. I had the pleasure of being accompanied by a guest who had never had the opportunity to dine at anywhere like The Wilderness before but she was clearly ready to deal with whatever came her way.

  To start, appetisers, and Dominos - a splendid spoof pizza snack plus two others including peas and elderflower which brought us round to thinking of the onset of summer. The Parkers House bread rolls with seaweed butter were enjoyable and then a great highlight (at extra cost admittedly) - crab seasoned with shio koji and crowned with oscietra. My guest, who had never partaken of caviar before was very happy with this new experience.

  As I often bemoan, I am sometimes resentful about vegetable courses - carrots, I can take them or leave them, but the chefs at The Wilderness always rise to the occasion and this season’s Carrot 2023 raises the vegetable to that point where a carrot course can hold its head up on the menu though to be blunt the dish includes my least favourite element of the whole meal - the ‘bread pudding’ on which the carrot sits which has a texture which is not to my taste.

  For the fish course, BBQ John Dory served with a nettle sauce with bread which for all the world had the texture and flavour of pork scratchings - great stuff - and then to the main of stuffed lamb saddle which looked very elegant and made a change from a straightforward cut of meat served with wild asparagus and  with hints of wasabi. This was a meticulously prepared dish which we both appreciated.

  Dessert was the white chocolate banana, now familiar to Great British Menu viewers as the work of another West Midlands chef but certainly on the menu in Claridge’s Nocturnal Animals and The Wilderness as long ago as 2019 and possibly 2018.

  The meal concluded with a delightful collection of sweet meats - some familiar some new, at least to me. There was the white chocolate hotlips, the gorgeous burnt honey cake with a chamomile sauce and honey tuile, the wonderful fudge cow heads and a McDonald’s Brekky - a macaroon in the form of a faux miniature breakfast roll from a source which Claridge loves to mock.

  This meal felt like the high summer of summer menus. Claridge and Gedminas and their crew forge on with others in their wake.

  We had had a splendid evening, my dining companion had very much enjoyed the food and the whole atmosphere of the restaurant and Alex Claridge proved again why it is that his restaurant is one of the top ten most exciting restaurants in Britain.

Rating:- 🌞🌞