Harborne looked busy and thriving on the warm late summer day when the taxi carrying my dining companion and myself pulled up just around the corner from the Harborne Kitchen. I was pleased to have returned as, I think, almost a year had passed since my last visit. Tempus fugit.
It is a smart, comfortable and interesting place which, as I have written before, was once a Walter Smith’s butcher’s shop and jolly good meat they served too - their beef was unrivalled in my family’s opinion in the area where I live. The welcome was pleasing and we moistened our throats with the Harborne Kitchen’s Passion flower Sour which did have a nice sourness to it but was also a little too sweet for my taste.
But we were there for the food and with us comfortably settled, and both having chosen the £100 11 course tasting menu, the show began. Firstly, a pleasing Devonshire crab arancini which was delightfully crabby and the rice had a nice texture but we agreed that the dish was too salty. We reached the same conclusion with the second amuse gueule - another pleasing English pea (and broad bean) and ricotta tart. The peas were cooked admirably well but to be perfect I would have liked them to have been a little sweeter. Then there was a little oblong of brioche covered with tasty aged Cheddar and a successfully crispy chicken skin. This canopé was not troubled by excess salt and was very enjoyable.
Next was what for me was one of the highlights - two gorgeously tasty panisses accompanied by little dishes of herring roe, the colour of Whitby jet, sitting on a brown butter custard enlivened with spring onion. The panisses were first dipped in the roe and brown butter and the effect was an original and highly enjoyable take on fish and chips and then the remaining roe was scooped up with a little spoon to ensure nought was wasted. An excellent and clever dish.
Then perhaps the weakest dish - a slice of Westland’s tomato with a tomato ponzu and lovage. The weakness was the tomato which was lacking in any real flavour as seems to be the case with tomatoes in general in this year of grey skies and occasional sun. Given the poverty of flavour, it might have been best to omit this weak dish though the ponzu was good and made me think I should have liked some gazpacho or cold soup in its place.
On to the Malloreddus, by now very familiar to regular Harborne Kitchen diners. I liked the gnocchi though my companion thought them a little more dense than he would have liked them to be, but this was an enjoyable dish with punchy flavours and the joy of truffle.
We both agreed on the excellence of a finely cooked, plump Orkney scallop served with pleasingly textured charred sweetcorn, nasturtium leaves and tiny morsels of chorizo as chorizo jam which gave an added different and enjoyable texture though I am not sure it influenced the dish’s flavour to any degree. Then the meat - excellent salt-aged Herefordshire beef cooked to give a texture which required just the right amount of chewing with a good body to it. The beef was accompanied by nicely roasted onion, a split beef sauce and the best part of all - precisely slowly cooked beef cheek served in a fabulous crispy tube of pastry looking for all the world like a piece of bone marrow - a crazy twist, I think, on beef Wellington - it was delicious.
I like the way the Harborne Kitchen serves a cheese course prior to the desserts as in the days of yore - Tunworth served with a pleasing texture of amaranth and the sharp taste of burnt apple. Then a pleasing predessert of smooth, soothing yogurt sorbet with the great fun of puffed rice to give texture and the flavour of sorrel.
Dessert proper took the form of a generous mound of meringue which enclosed a white chocolate mousse and served with a yuzu sorbet. To end, though neither of us could manage coffee, a mignardise in the shape of glossy lips was served and we were very happy to smile back at them.
Harborne Kitchen is very well thought of and deservedly so. Its menus are ambitious and very good dishes are served and there’s a lot of originality which will keep some dishes such as the herring roe and chips in the memory for a long time after they were eaten; the service is excellent and the atmosphere is pleasing and soothing. The Good Food Guide, which is not infrequently somewhat quirky, judges Harborne Kitchen to be Exceptional. I don’t agree - it’s very good and deserving of high praise and always worth a visit - but I feel that the GFG’s rating might be just a little overstated especially when it rates Simpsons as being merely Good. But let’s not get carried away with all this rating claptrap - I enjoyed my meal at Harborne Kitchen and believe, also, that it represented very good value.
Rating - 🌞. 30 August 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment