414. The French Pantry, Ludlow

 

  The French Pantry in Ludlow is very well loved by those who dine or lunch there and I think it must be one of my favourite restaurants in which to eat of all the places I have visited in the West Midlands. I have described it before and will not go over old ground but I have to say it is one of those restaurants which I truly look forward to dining at with great anticipation. Lacking in any pretention, it serves delicious, rustic French food which takes into account British tastes - it is not extreme Français but, having a French Chef Patron its authenticity can hardly be questioned. The helpings are generous, the presentation is rustic, the food is delicious and the overall delivery gives great pleasure.

  On this occasion, it being one of those rare hot, bakingly sunny, English summer days where you feel a thunderstorm can only be a few hours away, despite lusting after the magnificent French onion soup and perhaps the signature Olivier’s coq au vin, I opted for the two rather more summery sounding specials as starter and main course.

  The opening quiche Lorraine was lovely and highlighted just how awful supermarket quiches, which I am apt to buy, really are. The custard was tasty and nestled in a pleasingly textured pastry and the ham inside was full of flavour and the cheese, which I assume was Gruyère, had a bite to it that made this quiche a thing of gustatory beauty.

  Then the special main course on offer - salmon almondine - a beautifully cooked and generously sized piece of salmon, again tasty beyond the normal, with a beurre blanc. The sliced almonds gave a soothing texture to complement the meat of the salmon - dishes have not become classics for no reason one thinks - and the accompanying broccoli was cooked to be nice and tender though broccoli aficionados might have judged it overcooked, and they would be entitled to their opinion I suppose. This was a very enjoyable, seasonal dish and brought me great happiness but also rendered me too full to feel capable of managing a dessert though the tarte tatin was alluringly beckoning to me. 

  I love the French Pantry. Au revoir but I’ll be back!

  Rating:- 🌞.

  Meanwhile, I see that sadly, the Good Food Guide has removed Forelles from its online list of recommended Ludlow restaurants. Let us hope that the new owner sees sense and takes action to enable the restaurant to return to its former glory and its place in the Guide.

10.10PM, 26 June. Night falls over Clee Hill as viewed from Forelles.

413. Purnell’s.

 

  It had been at least six months since I last visited Purnell’s. This is unusual as I have dined/lunched there countless times since 2008. The reasons for my prolonged absence had been a less than perfect dinner I had held there in May 2023 to celebrate my birthday, the increasingly unchanging nature of the menu and the presence of a number of other fine restaurants which proved more alluring. The thrill of Purnell’s had faded, the wit of the dishes had shrunk away, the lure of specialness was lacking. In short, Purnell’s personality had become middle aged and unrefreshed. Head Chef Luke Butcher departed from his post at the end of December 2023 and recently two longterm Purnell’s kitchen staff (Sam Luck and Tom Blakemore) were appointed to be dual heads. Perhaps this was to be the start of a new era. I was interested to find out. 

  The meal began, comme toujours, with gifts from the kitchen, and included a new tarted up version of the once clever squid ink meringue ‘edible charcoal’ which mainly involved putting little spots of the delicious chorizo mayonnaise straight on to the meringue rather than the diner being presented with a pleasing small bowl of the mayonnaise in which to dip the charcoal.Not only had the amount of mayonnaise provided as a ‘gift’ been severely cut back but also the number of ‘charcoal’ blocks had been reduced to the bare minimum - that is - one per diner. Gone too were the rather comforting black potatoes. The minuscule amounts of chorizo mayonnaise resulted in the diner having very little opportunity to enjoy the pleasing flavour of it and, in parallel I suppose, reduced the amount that needed to be made to produce it and hence reduced the cost of ingredients to the kitchen. 

  While on the subject of reduced costs, the restaurant appeared to have fewer front of house staff and the theatre of presentation of dishes had been reduced. Perhaps this cost cutting is necessary as the restaurant was only half full on a Friday lunchtime when in the past it would have been a vibrant, buzzing place with not a table spare and waiters parading in and out of the kitchen on their way to and from serving the diners. I suppose many of the local office and business workers now “work from home” and on a taxing four day week so that while Purnell’s was in the right location for success in the 2010s, post-COVID that is no longer the case. Post-COVID Britain is a very different place from when Glynn Purnell, young and dynamic, first opened his restaurant in Cornwall Street.

  So what was the food like? As a starter I chose Loch Duart salmon served with a hint of heat from wasabi, apt sweet and acidic pickled cucumber and the summer splash of fresh peas and pea purée. The dish looked attractive and was enjoyable though it did not set my pulse racing as dishes at Purnell’s once did.

  My chosen main was supremely well cooked cod, with the air of the sous vide about it. This was served with excellent plump pickled mussels, Roscoff onion and pieces of green strawberries which played a role but not a large one. Again, a pretty dish which scored more points for its look than for its flavour, despite the necessary hits of acidity which helped it along. But, again, where was the thrill? My lunch companion thought I was being a little too downbeat but this is 2024 not 2007 nor 2014 and cuisine has evolved and Purnell’s is starting to feel just a little antediluvian.

   We also had roast Creedy Carver chicken - again nicely cooked, indeed perfectly cooked, meat served with two equally well cooked spears of Wye Valley asparagus, a blob of delicious black garlic purée and with a good chicken sauce and separately a bowl of chopped pickled cucumber which gave a sweet added crunch. 

   Purnell’s has long been a place where good pastry can be experienced and I enjoyed my tart of crispy pastry filled with blueberries, lemon cream and delicious blueberry sorbet. I do like a restaurant where the pastry chef produces, er … pastry.

  So, all fine dishes, attractively presented but not very different from those we may have found being served at Purnell’s ten to fifteen years ago. Is evolution needed there? I suppose if sufficient numbers of diners continue to eat there then the answer is “No” - but other cutting edge restaurants continue to appear in the city and will the Purnell’s brand be enough to compete with them?

Rating:- 🌞

412. Pleasure At Mortimers.

 

  Still in Ludlow, while Forelles seems to be in something of an existential crisis at present, the great joy of dining at Mortimers remains. The welcome is nicely judged, the preprandial drinks in the panelled bar (livened up on this visit by a remarkable pair of octogenarians elegantly dressed like something out of PG Wodehouse, she whose 87th birthday it was, giggling away charmingly like a schoolgirl being chatted up by a first boyfriend, and wearing a summery, sweet straw hat) so absolutely right with the only hors d‘oeuvres of which Ambrose Heath would have approved nuts and crisps (though I failed to follow his rules on the only aperitif which should be acceptable - dry sherry - opting instead for a cooling, relaxing Hendricks and tonic).

  And so, to the exquisite panelled dining room, where I was comfortably seated, watered, wined and delivered of the signature plate of three breads and three butters. I had opted for the extremely well priced 3 course lunch (£45 for three course plus bread) and was very happy with my choice of perfectly pan fried sea trout nicely balanced with pickled cucumber, soothed by herb crème fraiche and tickled by dill. 

  The main was an exciting prospect - pork tenderloin served as a generously sized portion. It was tasty but sadly much too dry - it really did need to have had a shorter cooking time. The accompanying herb mash and finely shredded, acidic cabbage were fine balances for the pork but perhaps more sauce would have helped to counter the dryness of the meat.

  I thoroughly enjoyed my dessert - a lovely light strawberry cheesecake with deliciously sweet strawberries, a nice base to it, delightful little meringues, red berry gel and good vanilla ice cream. The meal concluded with three mignardise just as it had started with three breads and three butters. An intentional symmetry I suspect and one I rather like.

  I do like Mortimers and now look forward to my visits there with considerable anticipation.

Rating:- 🌞

411. All Change At Forelles.

 

  After about three months away from Fishmore Hall, I had a grave foreboding as my driver pulled up in front of Fishmore Hall. A new owner, based in West Bromwich of all places, lusting seemingly after a chain of hotels to add to his nursing homes and other properties, had obtained Fishmore from the hotel’s founder, the remarkable Laura Penman, and appeared to be in the mood to cut costs at Fishmore whether or not the service suffered. Most of the excellent staff who were present at the beginning of the year had departed, the garden is looking disorderly and the couple of staff who have worked there for years soldier on providing reassuring, friendly, recognisable faces that the hotel dearly needs.

  Head Chef Phil Kerry departed from his post in May 2024 and the hotel has had problems recruiting a successor. It seems that most of the kitchen and restaurant staff departed at the same time. Hotel and restaurant owners must realise that we are in a new era - the hospitality industry is desperately short of staff and if you don’t pay staff enough money then they can easily find a job elsewhere..Fishmore would seem to be at the sharp end of this staffing market crisis.

  The Forelles kitchen crisis seems to have been particularly serious in the late May/early June and hotel residents were not served meals except at breakfast time. An attempt to provide a Tasting menu (without an à la carte alternative) over the weekend when the latest Head chef took up his post was not successful and so a two or three course à la carte menu is now in play for dinner with a limited à la carte available at lunchtime. Reducing costs was very much at the forefront of the new approach to dining at Forelles. Out goes Fine Dining and in comes Bistro. The Guidebooks need to change their references to Forelles if they decide to include the restaurant at all.

  To start, a slice of very ordinary bread paired with some very ordinary butter was served. Right from the word go, cost cutting seemed to be the new theme. At the same time an ‘amuse bouche’ was presented. Apart from being oily there was little taste to this bowl of emulsion despite four little crispy bits being present in the dish - no attempt was made by the polite but clearly brand new young waitress to explain what it was. I deduced that it must be a bowl of mayonnaise with nothing to go with it. It was flavourless and vaguely unpleasant.

I failed to photograph my starter because of a degree of pallaver associated with it. I had ordered confit tomato bruschetta. It was a long time coming though one feels the time to prepare it might not have been lengthy. Some discord arose at the table next to mine when an elderly lady was surprised by the appearance of her main course which had been delivered by one of the very inexperienced waitresses. Both the diner and her husband were of the opinion that she had not been served the dish she had ordered which should have been scallops with fried black pudding and ‘pea pot fricassee’. The gentleman pointed out to the waitress that there were no scallops present on the plate while the young woman insisted that the confit tomatoes actually sitting there were indeed ‘scallops’. My suspicions were aroused and I stood up to claim what very likely was my starter which it indeed proved to be. The elderly couple were correct - there certainly were no scallops on the plate. Most of the tomatoes were flavourless though the dish was rendered a little more interesting by heat coming from some added spice but the bruschetta was somewhat soggy and the dish, as a whole, was gloriously mediocre.

Fresh drama arose next door to me when the gentleman who had correctly identified that the supposed scallops were really tomatoes drew the waitress’s attention to the fact that he had requested rare steak and that which was served to him was anything but. To be fair, the overcooked meat was swiftly whisked away and replaced with a specimen more in line with what had been ordered which is fair enough.

And so my very own plate of three plump, nicely seared scallops arrived at the table with the accompaniments already mentioned above. The scallops were satisfactorily cooked for my tastes though I could see that one or two scallop aficionados might have expressed the opinion that they were a few seconds over. In contrast the black pudding was probably a few seconds over but more moist than some I have been served but two of the pieces came complete with the wrapping paper around them. The pea pot fricassee was unremarkable. There seemed to be something missing perhaps because this is a dish usually served as a starter.

  There were just two desserts - lime posset and brownie with vanilla ice cream - which failed to excite me and so I called it a day reflecting on how things change and usually not for the better. 

  I later learned that the newly appointed Head Chef who is faced with the mammoth task of sorting out the Forelles kitchen is Joshua (Nicky) Hull-Saldanha who was born in Portugal and raised in England where he undertook his training as a chef. In 2007 he moved to the Cayman Islands where he first worked at the Ritz Carlton Hotel moving three years later to work at Cracked Conch for the next ten years and where he was Chef de Cuisine, then Outpost Bar and Grill in San Pedro and in December 2021 as Head Chef at U’NIQUE in Georgetown.

Caymangoodtaste.com reported that Hull-Saldanha was, “…at the Outpost cooking the food he loved, ceviche, any form of salted cod, sushi and fish stew such as bouillabaisse”. Perhaps that will give us an idea of what is to come at Forelles once the kitchen becomes more stable from the point of view of staffing.

Nicky Hull-Saldanha -

  I dined again at Forelles the succeeding evening. It had been a hot day and it was a fine evening and, if nothing else, the restaurant is a lovely place, a gorgeous, spacious conservatory with a distant view of Titterstone Clee Hill rising above the surrounding countryside looking never better than it does on a beautiful summer evening. I liked the look of the menu and I liked the way it had changed since the previous evening. An amuse guele was presented which was rather good - spicy steak tartare served on a circle of toast - in the past we might have expected it to be served as a croustade or tartlet - the cost cutting was showing already but the appetiser was tasty enough.

   Then, perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, my main course of lemon sole arrived, switching places it seemed with my chosen starter of smoked haddock rillette. The main was swiftly whisked away when I pointed out the error and it was not long before the pleasingly presented haddock rillette showed its face nicely complemented with little balls of apple and some trout roe. The smoked haddock gave it a punchy flavour and it was very nicely balanced with citrus but pthe dish was lacking in physical substance with nothing binding it together. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it - it was light and summery and made good use of the remnants of the smoked haddock which must have been in the kitchen after I had ordered it for what had been a substantial breakfast.

  I also enjoyed my main course - two small pieces of nicely cooked lemon sole fillets on a particularly enjoyable, very rustic bed of crushed potatoes and under two magnificent stalks of broccoli whose texture was very much to my taste. There was sweetness and citrus which perfectly complemented the sole.

  The desserts were the same as those on offer the previous evening and again I could not work up sufficient enthusiasm to order one of them but I left the dining room feeling generally happy with the food I had been served though fully aware that the Food Guides were going to have to change their description of Forelles if they decided to continue to recommend it all. I was told that the restaurant will soon have a new manager with more staff which is vital to keep this once excellent restaurant on its feet but the change in style of the food I think will see Ludlow lose another representative in the Michelin Guide, Good Food Guide and so on.

  Restaurant owners must decide if they want to cut costs or maintain a good reputation - there seems no doubt which of the two the present hotel owner has chosen and I mourn the likely passing of a fine gem.

Rating:- 🌛.

Post scriptum - shortly after posting this Blog, I discovered that Hull-Saldanha was to be moved to work at the hotel group’s restaurant in Droitwich and two new chefs from Romania had been appointed to work in the kitchens of Fishmore. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

408. Albatross Death Cult - Opening Night And The Week After.

 

 Dining out is theatre and so the opening of Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult in the wonderful old and beautifully renovated factory building in Newhall Square - previously home to Atelier and Counter - was rather like the opening of a new play - full of anticipation, leading men and leading women, spectacle, perfection of delivery, special effects, a keen audience holding its collective breath. And the performance did not let artistes and diners down. 

  Thirteen dishes proved to be a number not at all unlucky. Alex Claridge was there with Marius Gedminas and the sous chefs meticulously plating up for the fourteen diners all perched around a wide aluminium-shiny counter - benign, empathetic diners expecting the best, the exciting, the delicious and they had little to complain about. Two fine little amuses gueles to start - a tart and a croustade showcasing hits of prawn and the gorgeous and unadulterated flavour of chalk stream trout served with its roe.

 An indisputable highlight was the fabulously textured and tasty mackeral sashimi of with caviar neatly followed up by presentations of apple and elderflower with crab and another gorgeous croustade of prawn head over a layer of the freshest, zingiest, most seasonal peas I have been presented with for years (ever since I gathered them in myself as a youth from grandfather’s allotments). These were very fine ingredients presented with the quiet passion which Alex Claridge exudes and the punters were having a ball.

    Oyster was next, simply prepared with a splash of vinegar and the pleasure of peach, and then sushi in the form of hamachi - Japanese amberjack - emboldened by sesame. Then firm lobster with a soup rich in the flavours of Siam and next quite superb mussels - the best I can remember being served in many a moon- enlivened with black pepper and the addition of Iberico.

  

 The fresh purity of Chalkstream trout was revisited next with the strong, hot, sour flavour of tom yum - so very good - and then an admirably light dessert of sushi rice cream and to end memorably - a tiny but celestially wondrous segment of Hokkaido melon which, Alex told us might cost £60 to £80 per fruit and when one sampled it one could see - or perhaps - taste why.

  

  I had wisely already made further reservations for this astonishing restaurant in the following weeks before some critic or the other popped up to rave about it and ensure that it is then booked months ahead. Indeed, I returned the following week to find the menu to contain the same dishes, perhaps even more slightly perfected than on opening night apart from the sad disappearance of the Hokkaido melon though it was replaced by a lovely cherry dessert. I can be smug that I am already one of the few, the happy few, who have dined at ADC and must wonder if this where Alex Claridge will finally find the Michelin star he has so long deserved.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

410. Oyster Club. Purnell’s Cafe And Bistro Coventry Closed.

   Passing the weekend with Lucy The Labrador in town I opted to have Sunday lunch at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes as I have on a number of previous Sundays in town. Well, actually I had a reservation for 6PM so the use of the word ‘lunch’ is somewhat stretching things. 

  The town was busy with countless fathers being dragged around the city centre to whichever dining establishments were open so that they could pay for their offspring to wish them “Happy Fathers’ Day”. 6PM on a Sunday evening is usually a nice quiet, civilised time to dine at The Oyster Club, one of the very few well thought of dining establishments to actually bother to open at this particular time on that particular day of the week and the restaurant was as civilised as ever on this visit though noticeably busier than usual with a number of men being entertained by their grateful broods and then handing over their bank cards in the knowledge that their families had enjoyed the occasion at their expense. Happy Fathers’ Day indeed.

  Sunday lunch at the Oyster Club usually involves me partaking of the excellently priced Chateaubriand plus all the trimmings lunch on offer there but on this particular day I wanted fish and nothing less than Dover sole would do. After a starter of pleasingly lightly battered tempura King prawns with a tongue tingling Gochujang dipping sauce which gave great pleasure, though one or two of the prawns were a little oily, there was presented a magnificent sole, meaty and of impressive size, quite adequately accompanied by nothing more than a wedge of lime and a fine beurre noisette with the right amount of saltiness and a happy texture provided by a multitude of capers and an insistent flash mob of delightful little prawns. Away you vegetables and you sea herbs, your presence is not needed here! The, I repeat, magnificent, fish was as much as any normal man could cope with though perhaps I might have thought of asking for some little buttered new potatoes (chefs - don’t sauté them please) but I was replete and the sole had not died in vain but such a fine chap had it been than dessert was out of the question.

  And to think, I had toyed with “going for a curry”

  Back to the Grand Hotel and the joyously sumptuous Madeleine bar for a couple of Vieux carrés which were rather good and rapidly served and, I thought, more paralysingly alcoholic than one might expect, which was rather good as there seemed to be no barmen there making the drinks. Great stuff. I do love Birmingham.

  There seems to be a little group of true gourmands in this city and they all tend to be attracted by special events at The Wilderness in particular, or perhaps Simpsons, and now Albatross Death Cult (I love typing the name, how will Michelin deal with it? - there’s no doubt that Alex is a real star). So at the public opening of ADC I was able to ‘network’ with the star Birmingham gourmands - dare I call them ‘epicures’ - who were present there and heard news that had previously bypassed me. This was that Purnell’s Cafe and Bistro in Coventry had been closed for the past winter and had not reopened, nor was it intended to do so. It had been Michelin-listed and well thought of and its life was short. Adieu.