Once more to the Jewellery Quarter, this time with an old school friend whom I have seen again only recently for the first time in almost sixty years (the world was very different then, Wilson had recently been elected as prime minister ushering in a new socialist, liberal, licentious age for British society, Lyndon Johnson was President leading the USA’s fight in the Vietnam War, Twiggy was the face of Britain, William Hartnell was Dr Who,The Beatles were gods of music, you’d have to search far and wide to locate a Chinese or Indian takeaway or restaurant, pizza restaurants were - to the best of my memory - non-existent, and the Ploughman’s lunch had only recently been invented by those charged with marketing cheese; dining out was a world away from where it is now.
And so, with pleasant anticipation, to Folium, where dining out is effectively the antithesis of what it was in the sixties when, as a boy, I had last seen my old school friend. Folium is a restaurant where one feels one can dine without anxiety, it is smart and chic in an understated way. At Friday lunchtime it was a two person act - Ben Tesh calmly and precisely working away in the open kitchen and Lucy Hanlon equally calmly and charmingly delivering the fine fare to the diners. This is a very fine restaurant - none of the fireworks of some other upmarket city centre/Jewellery Quarter restaurants but possibly all the better for that. It’s possible to sit back and really enjoy the food there without having to shout over the music to engage one’s dining companion. Sometimes a peaceful meal is a blessing we should all be glad of. The ambience, like the food, of Folium is now finely honed. I like it.
I chose the shorter five course menu for us. Given the quality of the food this was very good value for £80. We launched into our lunch with a familiar amuse gueule - in this case familiarity did not breed contempt. This little savoury - a smidgin of exquisite and deeply flavoured chicken liver parfait nestling in an elegant swirling burnt onion crisp summed up Ben Tesh’s cooking perfectly - accurately executed, attractive, even beautiful, but not flashy, deeply flavoursome, frequently gorgeous.
As usual, the in-house baked bread and cultured butter were delicious and then on to a great seasonally flavoured starter of warm savoury custard with roast chicken dashi and black winter truffle. The truffle gave everything it needed to but the dashi and the savoury custard were not beaten back by it, indeed they were enhanced. The custard had a lovely texture and the total made for a memorable dish.
Then there was a fish course or maybe the first of two fish main courses. This dish featured some perfectly cooked turbot with Arbroath smokies. This was the least satisfactory dish of the meal with the smokies completely overpowering the subtle flavour of the turbot and it seemed a pity to allow such a fine luxury fish to fall viciim to an overbearing flavour of smoke and nothing else. Perhaps the smokies are best held back for breakfast.
Next, a scintillating piece of glistening line-caught cod, its cooking timed exceptionally to the very second - just look at the sublime transluminescence of it in the picture below, a veritable mother of pearl sitting in the dish, bathed in a ponzu espuma and accompanied by a delightful, lusty savoury beignet - ‘fried bread’ - with a pleasing texture.
We opted for the pleasing selection of British cheeses served with a lovely fruity homemade malt loaf, crispy homemade crackers and an unobtrusive but apt apple chutney. The palate cleanser worked very well for me - refreshing but lacking in aggression - frozen yuzu with marshmallow and ideally textured crispy rice.
The dessert proper was toasted hay ice cream (when hay is mentioned on a menu I always thing of Winteringham Fields in north east Lincolnshire and indeed Ben Tesh did once work there) ably assisted by
miso and textured with buckwheat. Finally two familiar but fine mignardises - a wonderful sunflower and cep fudge macaroon and the signature whiskey and peat butterfly bun.
Folium, thankfully, remains a towering feature of the Jewellery Quarter dining scene. Discrete and placid, a place to visit when a peaceful meal of remarkable dishes is required.
Rating:- 🌝🌝
Sadly, the day I dined with my old friend at Folium, the news was released that the Michelin starred Pensons at Tenbury Wells, where the respected chef, Chris Simpson, heads up the kitchen,
was to close permanently on 22 December 2023 with the management there citing that the decision to do so was made after careful consideration [of] its future commercial viability”. Pensons had opened in January 2019 under the leadership of chef Lee Westcott and was awarded a Michelin star just 10 months later. Simpson took over from Westcott at the end of 2019 and not only held on to the star but lead the restaurant to achieving the award of a Michelin Green star for sustainability in 2022.
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| Chris Simpson of Pensons |
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