501. Opheem Summer Menu.

 

  In between my making a reservation to dine at Aktar Islam’s two Michelin star Opheem, located at the edge of the Jewellery Quarter at the top end of Fleet Street on the parade, the restaurant had appointed and then lost, a new Head Chef - Tony Parkin had left to go to work as Development Chef at the Open Restaurant Group owned by Sam and Emma Morgan and Andrew Sheridan, once of Eight and Craft Dining Rooms at the International Convention Centre and presently owners of Black and Green in Barnt Green and the Bracebridge at Sutton Coldfield. 

  This seemed a pity as I should have liked to have dined there with him in charge of the kitchen on one occasion at least but whoever was in charge at Opheem the evening my dining companion and I ate there. It was running like the most well oiled machine in Britain. The chefs coukd be seen working away in the open kitchen, smartly dressed, collaboratively, industriously, professionally, calmly, effectively. The front of house staff were also perfectly on point in the balance between professional politeness and accurately judged, unobtrusive friendliness. This is a superb restaurant. There is no reason why it should not be judged to be of international standard and eventually raised to the highest level of Michelin’s firmament.The excellence of the dishes served underlines this. The recently introduced summer menu with many new dishes on it proved to be more evidence of Opheem’s ever increasing brilliance. 

  The meal started off as ever in the comfortable and spacious reception lounge - the opening canapés were all familiar and ranged from delicious to extremely delicious and working, as they were intended to do, to tickle up the taste buds for what was to come after we had moved to the main restaurant. To start there was the mock oyster served in an oyster shell and made up of oyster emulsion, chilli broth and coriander oil and then a delicate mango tuile with mango and burnt lettuce gels. The memorable third amuse gueule was a glorious apple macaron with a fine beef tartare enlivened by date and onion and sitting under piped duck liver pâté and nasturtium leaves and flakes of gold leaf.

  It was not yet time to move to the restaurant proper as more canapés were on their way - delightful sea bass with ginger, radish, mango sauce and puffed rice for texture and along with this came my favourite - a perfectly textured mini-crumpet under celestial curried crab. This could not be beaten and it was time to hasten  to the restaurant proper.

   First came a delightfully witty and enjoyable ‘pakora’ - Christmas tree tuiles with a mildly spicy chutney. Ah yes! Christmas in summer. Then came a bowl of sweet Isle of Wight tomatoes with a sweet and spicy South Indian rasam broth full of the happy flavour of tamarind and a Rajasthani chutney topped by a crispy black lotus-shaped tuile.

   Then followed a plump and perfectly cooked, to the most precise moment of timing, Orkney scallop, its surface temptingly scorched to a comforting brown gold and its rich flavour coming through amid apple and mooli and the complimentary texture of almond.

  Moving on, there was the signature dish of aloo tuk, which, unlike Dr Who, gets better with every regeneration and happily showcases tamarind and mango as much as it does the again perfectly cooked pink fir potatoes which are its base. If a man is tired of Opheem’s aloo tuk then he is tired of life, to paraphrase Dr Johnson. 

  Darling little palate cleansers, white chocolate and mango, came out, fresh looking and startlingly brightly coloured, like crab apples lined up on a golden spoon. Such fun. 

  The restaurant demonstrates its full grasp of fish cookery with the elegant Masor tenga, sea bream finely cooked, with summer underlined by courgette and pretty shaped pieces of summer squash to give some texture.

  Then a surprise, I think - the menu said, “Wazwan   Kashmir   Laminated paratha Hogget belly shorba”.  This was excellent. The meaty rib, full of the succulent flavour of sheep accompanied by a bowl of toothsome, spicy slow cooked hogget, gorgeous crispy, lamb fatty and exultingly greasy ‘laminated’ bread with a bowl of deeply spicy shorba, a basic soup passed on to the Indians from Persia and aimed to warm in winter and a lovely accompaniment to drink alongside the sheep and bread. 

 As if this was not enough, the final main course was a plate of pleasingly barbecued duck served with a fine bonbon of the meat from a confit duck leg (the coating was crispy and the meat inside not overcooked), kitcheree - mung beans with rice - and reduced Nihari sauce (a sauce dating back to the Mughals and name from the Arabic word ‘nahar’ meaning ‘daybreak’ which is when the dish was traditionally served having been slow-cooked overnight). This was a fine and refined dish at the conclusion of the midsection of the meal.

And so to the predessert. This was successful at delivering the necessary outcome that a predessert is intended to deliver. It was refreshing - it is always a wise decision to include a lemon sorbet at this stage of the meal - few dishes are more successful at refreshing the diner - and pairing it with lemon chutney, black pepper and the aniseed pleasure of fennel seeds, some in sugary coats, made this a very happy dish indeed.

  While the Mukhwas - the predessert - and all the other preceding dishes on the menu were given as having originated in one part of India or the other, the dessert itself, ‘After Eight’, was reported on the menu as having originated in Stratford Road, Shirley. It was made up from Vahlrona ice cream, not unduly bitter, with a lovely mint ice cream and pleasing shards of chocolate to give it some texture.

  Then the final act, back to the departure lounge for mignardises. I ate my warm and exquisite Madeleine on the premises but took home my very fine canale and three other pleasing gems including a fairly mildly flavoured pate de fruit and a white chocolate containing mango cream. Even the box the petit fours travelled home in had a style and feeling of good taste to it.

Rating:- 🌝🌝🌝🌝. My first four sun rating. Impeccable.

24 July 2025.

499. Stuart Deeley Takes Charge Of The Warwick At Mallory Court.

 

  The news that Stuart Deeley (I’m sure I don’t have to recount what he has been up to over the years, all covered over much of the time I have been writing this Blog) has taken over the kitchen at Mallory Court in Bishop’s Tachbrook on the edge of Leamington Spa where the principle restaurant was known as The Dining Room but is now renamed The Warwick (see Blog 452). 

  Mallory Court is a beautiful country house hotel set in some lovely grounds and has the distinction of being, under its then Chef Patron Allan Holland, the very first (jointly with Croque en Bouche in Malvern) West Midlands restaurant to have been awarded a Michelin star in 1980 (having been first included in the Michelin Guide in 1978 - four years after the first edition was published). Subsequently the Dining Room retained its Michelin star until 1994. Steve Love was appointed Head Chef in May 2000 but resigned the following year to open his own restaurant in Leamington and Allan Holland died in September 2001. Simon Haigh was appointed as Head Chef in December 2001 and Mallory Court was once more included in the Michelin Guide with an accompanying star in the 2003 edition. The restaurant remained in the Guide with its star until 2013 and then without its star until the 2017 edition.

  I stayed at Mallory Court with my new young dog for two nights. It’s a wonderful hotel and we had a marvellous bedroom and spent several delightful hours walking around the grounds including admiring the kitchen garden where a range of products were being grown for the restaurant table. We had a room with a wonderful view across the gardens and the beautiful Warwickshire countryside. They were a tremendously enjoyable two days. But would the food equal the loveliness of the hotel and was Stu Deeley returning the restaurant to inclusion in the Michelin Guide and en route to restoring Mallory Park’s star last held by twelve years ago?

  On the first evening I dined in the Warwick restaurant and chose the six course Tasting Menu rather than eating from the à la carte. Firstly, it has to be said that service was impeccable and the setting wonderful - a wood panelled room with a large fireplace and smart comfortable furniture, the tables nicely spaced and while being smart the room was relaxed and cosy. Certainly, the physical side of the dining room offered a fine stage for Stu Deeley to present his production. 

  And the diners looked the part as well with a number of tables populated by sleek, smart, slender, clearly comfortably off groups, the men jacketed though tieless and the women fashionably and expensively dressed. Not that money guarantees genuine classinesss. There was a family of Asians, clearly a doctor with his three children or in laws out celebrating his youngest son’s graduation as a doctor, smartly dressed, looking and sounding somewhat sophisticated, but still with rotten table manners - much time spent by them at the table scrolling on their mobile phones and using their forks to scoop up their food (yes, I agree peas are always difficult but the rest of the meal isn’t) and the young man sticking the knife in his mouth. And the swish English family group next to me again doing horrible things with their dining utensils and talking very, very loudly as though they were trying to broadcast to the rest of the room (and really their conversation was not interesting enough to even remotely thrill diners elsewhere in the room). I really feel etiquette should be taught in schools - yes, I’ve said it before - and by that proactive means the barbarity of many people’s food consumption not passed on to future generations.

  Three amuses bouches/canapés including a very welcome and toothsome gougère kicked off the proceedings. There was a small bowl of pecorino custard covered by wild garlic mousse. The flavour of the wild garlic was so mild that it failed to register on my tastebuds. 

  Next was burrata with pea and mint gazpacho and artichoke - I would have liked it more chilled on that warm summer evening and without thick cream covering the peas and burrata. The texture of the immersed burrata was not the gazpacho thinner but I enjoyed the artichoke. I was also served some fine malted loaf from the Silvertree bakery in Solihull and this came with some the estate’s dairy butter which I should have liked to be a little saltier or perhaps served with a little salt to sprinkle on it.

  There was a vegetable course of Burford Brown yolk which was satisfactorily cooked and served with sweet, nicely barbecued leeks and a warm tartare sauce. It was not a dish that really hung together for me -I didn’t really get the tartare sauce. For me, not a palpable hit served up with a cassoulet likeable spiced up with nduja sauce

   

   Then there was very nicely cooked monkfish which had a good texture, often so hard to achieve with a cassoulet also containing little pieces of baby courgette and pleasingly spiced with nduja sauce and nicely textured by tiny brown shrimps though the largish pieces of nduja also in the cassoulet had a less pleasing texture.

 The main was a nice plate of Oxfordshire hogget served on slow cooked lamb. The hogget was nicely tasty by itself and I could have done without the now almost obligatory slow cooked element even though it was quite toothsome. The accompanying potato terrine was satisfyingly crispy and the French beans had a bite to them while the slices of olive seemed a little out of place and one element to much perhaps.

   I was certainly very full by this stage and did nNot feel up to facing a chocolate dessert and so Imasked if my dessert may be changed to rhubarb and custard baked Alaska. My wish was granted and I found the dessert to be happily soothing with well textured rhubarb, the hit of mint and a punchy flavour of rhubarb from the sorbet. The meringue itself was said to have been flamed but I thought I sufficiently.

  This was a meal of very nicely presented food, not without its challenges, and riven through with interesting ideas on ingredient combinations which for me did also work but none so challenging that I could not eat them. 

  It was a fine dining meal in the the style of the Noughties and twenty teens and I wonder if Stu Deeley is still dwelling in that time space rather than the mid twenty twenties. I certainly hope to return later in the year to see how he has settled in at The Warwick.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛 

16 July 2025

    The next morning gave me a gorgeous sunrise view from my bedroom window and a thoroughly acceptable ‘Mallory breakfast’ which was made up of scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, tomato, black pudding and mushroom and which eschewed the likes of baked beans and hash browns. It was a busy service and rather slow but the leisurely pace did not concern me.

   It would have been nice if something a little more spectacular was on offer in such a setting - smoked haddock perhaps or the same but in a kedgeree or even an omelette Arnold Bennett - time consuming I know and everything costs so much in these present times but this is a rather upmarket hotel and one feels guests might appreciate something more than a standard, if good quality, English breakfast (one of my highlights when staying at the Lygon Arms in Broadway a few years ago had been the sumptuous omelette Arnold Bennett served to me there - it never fades from my memory).

  The breakfast was very well cooked especially the bacon which is usually in most places served either overcooked and leathery or undercooked and floppy. But as seems to happen everywhere there was the dragged pea shoot garnish lording over the mildly overcooked scrambled egg. Who will rid me of these turbulent pea shoots? I want nothing green at breakfast, not spinach, not anything and especially not peashoots on my scrambled egg or sausage and bacon for that matter. What is this love affair that so many chefs seem to have with peashoots?

  The dog and I had a splendid day alternately walking around the gardens and photographing the various plants in the Kitchen garden and then lolling about in our room or in the summer house. For lunch I paid an extraordinarily large amount of money for some remarkably undistinguished sandwiches. The less said about that, the better.

  And then to the hotel’s second restaurant for dinner. This restaurant, now known as Sencha, has a chequered history. In an annex, relatively recently built, it has previously been The Brasserie at Mallory, included in the Michelin Guide from 2006 to 2017 and was then renamed the Orchard House Cafe serving such dishes as Highland wagyu burger, fishcakes and gnocchi as main course. More recently it has once more adopted a new identity as Sencha, offering ‘pan-Asian food’ though in reality mainly dishes from Japan, Korea (kimchi) and Taiwan (bao). The pan-Asian food is unadventurous and is based on those dishes which are likely to appeal to westerners - fried chicken, tempura and Japanese dumplings. The term ‘pan Asian’ is, in short, somewhat overstated. 

  Some large plates were on offer but I was glad I did not chose any bearing in mind what I was served as small plates. The ‘small plates’ were quite generously portioned, making up perhaps in quantity what they not deliver in quality. I chose prawn gyoza which were edible though the dumpling was flabby but the little prawns inside were reasonably tasty. I had tempura prawns (5 for £12) - these were poor - the batter was batter and nothing as light as tempura should be and the prawns inside were flavourless. I also had ‘Korean wings’ which were sticky as the menu promised and spicy but on the whole hardly delicious. Finally I ordered smashed cucumber which was dull and reminded me, in comparison, just how good Yikouchi at Chancers Café.

  In a final act of madness I chose yuzu panna cotta as a dessert and it was perfectly edible, well  set and refreshing, but given my depression resulting from the underwhelming dreariness of the foregoing Japanese-Korean fast food offerings, I found it hard to enjoy.

  One positive point of Sencha was that two or three tables were set aside for diners to sit at with their dogs and mine enjoyed being there willing me to give her some of my meal.

  Sencha is a misjudgement on the part of those who run Mallory Court and if I were them I would think again about changing it back to a brasserie or bistro offering French food such as onion soup or coq au vin or some other reasonably priced dish accessible to the English or alternatively a British-style restaurant offering popular British food so with steak, fish and chips and the inevitable Mallory burger.

Rating:- 🌛.

  To bed and for breakfast a splendid omelette and then the return to Birmingham with the desire to pass another couple of days at the beautiful Mallory Park in the not too distant future and at the same time see how Stu Deeley’s food was going.

p.s. Lunch on the first day was an enjoyable charcuterie platter.

and pictures of bed and board -