388. Mortimers.

 

  I have reported on my very enjoyable experiences at Mortimers three times before (see Blogs 321, 302 and 159) but not since June 2023 and it’s pleasing now to report that when I chose the six course lunchtime tasting during my present stay in Ludlow I was again very impressed with the excellent food served, the location and the spot on service.

  I need not go on in depth given all that I have written before about Mortimers but Chef Patron Wayne Smith continues to send some fine and excellent dishes from his kitchen although perhaps for those customers who like to visit from time to time some of the courses would benefit from changing a little more often. The lunchtime tasting menu was broadly unchanged from my last lunch there almost nine months ago. Having said that there is at least one dish which is so gorgeously memorable that it is never a chore to have to eat it time and time again.

  The amuses bouches - an excellent cheese tartlet, a delicious blini with crab mousse and a somewhat less tasty ham hock croquette were all as familiar as old friends, the bread and butter selection too was largely unchanged but nonetheless very pleasing and I enjoyed the previously described confit chicken terrine with charred corn, successfully crispy chicken skin,grilled leek and a bonbon of black pudding which was much tastier than that in my last visit.

    The goats cheese with beetroot, a sweet beetroot sorbet which contrasted pleasingly with the cheese, sorrel and  olive bread was served in a very generous portion. The olive bread was not as hard as on my last visit and there was no danger to the long term health of my remaining teeth on this occasion but the bread had little flavour though I could see that something with a bit of texture was needed for this dish.

  And then, to a very fine dish indeed - the extraordinarily tender and tasty Herefordshire beef, cooked and seasoned immaculately - so tender that a spoon would have cut through it. This was absolutely appropriately accompanied by an excellent mash (much better than on my last visit) and sweetly roasted onions and leeks and a fine beef sauce. This finds its place on my list of the 10 best dishes of the year. It is the Pride of Mortimers.

 

  The two desserts were the same as those served on my previous visit - this time, accurately cooked rhubarb with pistachio cake, vanilla cream and pistachio ice cream. This was a definite improvement on that which was served on my previous visit. The chocolate mille feuille was presented very prettily and was as enjoyable as the last time I ate it.

  Mortimers seems to me to be as underrated as Cheal’s now in Knowle. It serves generally excellent food with at least one real gem. These are two West Midlands restaurants which restaurant critics need to take very seriously.

Chef Wayne Smith

Rating:- 🌞🌞

299. Cheal’s. Now In Knowle.

   At the beginning of February 2023, Cheal’s of Henley closed its doors for the last time and moved from one pretty Warwickshire village, Henley-in-Arden, to another, Knowle. I could see why - Knowle, where there’s a lot of serious wealth, certainly seemed more full of buzz on its high street which runs straight through the village than Henley which always appears rather sedate and not fully open. More buzz, more possible customers.

  Knowle has some interesting buildings to admire, including the lovely parish church, if taking a preprandial stroll, and Chef Patron (and former Simpsons Head Chef) Matt Cheal has brought his restaurant to a building, though larger than the restaurant’s birthplace in Henley, which has exteriorly, the same olde worlde charm as its predecessor.

  On entry however there is the shock of the new. The restful, intimate comfort of the Henley location has given way to glitzy, more spacious comfort which takes some getting used to after the cosiness of the Henley site. After being greeted by a large, somewhat tacky mirror when first stepping into the building, there is a sizeable, in-your-face bar down stairs where you can imagine the local wealth splashing out on gins and tonics and cocktails and on ascending the stairs up to Cheal’s restaurant there is space and lots of lighting and some dining booths and more glitz and it isn’t quite what you expect Cheal’s to be if you’ve dined in Henley a few times.

    No matter. The sommelier or perhaps restaurant manager or perhaps both (I know we English don’t like wearing badges but their value is sometimes dismissed too easily) initially looked after me and seated me (very comfortably I might add) and politely and professionally went through the opening movement of this culinary symphony but I should have been quite happy if he could have smiled a little. 

  A fine Monkey 47 and tonic soon drew me into the new way of things however, soothed too by the light jazz music soundtrack discretely playing and it wasn’t long, without a moment’s hesitation, that I was placing an order for the six course tasting menu, perhaps an optimal length for such a concept, and arranging for a couple of glasses of wine, well chosen by the restaurant staff for me. I admired the lovely, gold-edged charger on the table, its centre glistening and snowdrop white, which I think was meant to tell the diner what the newCheal’s was all about. That may be so but for me Cheal’s is first and foremost about the excellence of the food which mixes the superb accuracy of classic cuisine with originality and new Britishness.  So how was the food in these opening days of the new restaurant?

  Two little amuses gueules sounded the opening bars as Cheal’s metaphorical kitchen orchestra got underway. They hit the right notes straightaway. First a tiny but beautiful play on fish and chips - a little panisse with an immaculately crispy edge served with battered fish roe and a soupçon of pea purée. This was witty and amusing. Then a gorgeous tartlet made of the most sublimely crispy pastry filled with perfectly textured and delicious beef tartare blanketed by parmesan.Two little gems which brought immense pleasure.

Then arrived a lovely, deeply flavoured bowl of mushroom broth with chopped shitake and nicely textured pearl barley. This was served with Cheal’s’ excellent sourdough and a delightful herb roll with two butters include a yeast butter. Cheal’s seemed to have moved locations seamlessly in terms of its fine cuisine.

  And so to the starter proper - a finely seared scallop with a gorgeous lobster tempura, the pleasing sweetness in the dish derived from the presence of sultanas pairing happily with the flavour of curry oil. The accompanying cauliflower purée and capers were wholly appropriate.

  Matt Cheal’s menus usually seem to have a crispy egg course. Long may they do so as he always comes up with new twists on them and executes the eponymous ingredient perfectly. I have had one or two grim crispy eggs in some other establishments in my time but Cheal is a maestro. The variant this time gave me a finely crispy egg on a pleasing bed of cabbage all surrounded by potato espuma and winter truffle shavings scattered all over - delicious in it entirety - but the most miraculous part was the egg itself - when cut open it was the most supremely perfectly runny egg yolk I have ever had the opportunity to admire and  to enjoy. 

On to the fish. I enjoyed the beautifully served sea bass - was it just a few seconds over? - and though I liked the sweetness of the passion fruit which worked very well I gained nothing from the Muscade de Provence pumpkin and the pistachios certainly gave texture though they did seem a little odd in the context of the dish. An interesting dish all the same.

   The main course of Balmoral Estate venison was less rare than found in some restaurants but for me it was spot on. This was as tender a piece of meat as will be met anywhere - quite delicious - and very nicely accompanied by a thrillingly rustic ally flavoured ball of haggis, equally delightful salt-baked swede, its sweet earthiness just right for the dish, cavalo nero, red cabbage ketchup and a silky juniper sauce.

  The dessert which usually appears in Cheal’s tasting menu is a usually not-less-than-excellent soufflé and this is a reason to choose the tasting menu option if there were no other (which there is of course). This time it was a nicely flavoured forced rhubarb soufflé complemented by tangy ginger ice cream. After this came an excellent selection of six English and French cheeses with accompanying quince jelly, grapes and a generous number of crackers. The cheeses presented are listed on the menu depicted below. Alas I was too full to eat them there and then but they were nicely boxed up in a Baron Bigod container for me to eat at my leisure which I subsequently did with great pleasure. Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

     Before I had taken myself to Cheal’s I had had a short walk around Knowle itself. The local church is impressive with pleasing stained glass but an otherwise understated interior. The churchyard contained a large number of older graves, especially notable were a number of rather grandiose Victorian stone monuments.  I noted the presence of the ‘King’s Oak’, not named because Charles II hid up it after the battle of Worcester which is the case with most big oak trees in the West Midlands counties but rather more prosaically because it had been planted there to commemorate King George V’s coronation. I wondered if the village in that hoary and iconic ITV soap opera, Crossroads, also King’s Oak, had been named after it by one of the programme’s  producers, after they had come across the tree and with a sense of irony, given that the star of the show’s name was Noele Gordon and the tree was in Knowle, had felt the coincidence and the aptness too hard to resist. Well, it’s a nice idea.

294. Restaurant Guides - How many do we need?

  Harden’s restaurant guide published, in the last few days, its list of the ‘UK’s Best Restaurants 2023’. How useful an exercise has that proven to be? Harden’s’ opinions are given based on those from its readers which is rather similar to The Good Food Guide. Its readers on the whole, judging by their opinions which presumably are based on the restaurants wherein they have eaten, are comfortably off, conservative with a small ‘c’ and moderately tutored in fine dining. I have an acquaintance who submits his opinions to the editors fairly frequently - he is not a food lover but enjoys analysing each course and searching for something to moan about (or very rarely praise) - he also sees himself as an amateur art critic and enjoys dissecting the elements of a painting and commenting on them without enjoying the whole.

  Hence I wonder at the usefulness of a restaurant guide which relies on people such as my acquaintance or those who are self-selecting by their wealth, conservatism and moderate knowledge to pinpoint the leading restaurants in the country. I assume that most of the opinions expressed by those from this privileged group are also identifiable by place of residence of this group - London and its well heeled suburbs - and the places where they have second homes - the south west, the Lake District, Oxfordshire, the Cotswolds - plus a similar well-off population in Scotland, notably in Edinburgh. These people have very few qualifications, apart from wealth and location of home(s) to pronounce on what are the best restaurants in the United Kingdom but they do so and that is why the list is dominated by restaurants in the locations mentioned above.

  It is also, I suspect, why it is routine for the West Midlands to be poorly represented in Harden’s’ 100. This year we are genuinely congratulating our restaurants that have received a mention but at the same time must feel deflated that only four West Midlands restaurants appear on the list - Adam’s at number 17, Lumière in Cheltenham (number 21), Opheem (60) and The Wilderness at number 92. 

  Meanwhile, around the same time, an internet-based restaurant site, of which I was not even aware previously, called Squaremeal, which appears to have been in business since 1990, announced it too had prepared a list of the United Kingdom’s ‘100 Best Restaurants’ and the results were very different  from those of Harden’s’ list - many more West Midlands restaurants appeared on it. The site appears to be a restaurant and hotel booking site with an accompanying critique of the places bookable on it. 

  The Squaremeal list placed Grace and Savour at the very top of its list - number 1 - with other West Midlands following - Opheem (7), Pensons in Tenbury Wells (38), Lunar Stoke-on-Trent (43), Lumière (46), Carter’s of Moseley (51), The Wilderness (61), Adam’s (65), Purnell’s (72), The Old Butcher’s, Stow on the Wold (82), Chakana (97) and The Slaughters Manor House, Lower Slaughter (98). In the list there is finally recognition that the West Midlands is punching well above its weight when it comes to gastronomy. It does not recognise Cheal’s which is a glaring omission and in my opinion there is room for Folium on the list as well, not forgetting Andrew Sheridan’s remarkable 8, Upstairs by Tom Shepherd and Liam Dillon’s The Boat, both in Lichfield, Sheridan’s Black And Green in Barnt Green, Shrewsbury’s The Walrus and Hampton Manor’s other restaurant Smoke and Toffs in Solihull. The West Midlands could quite easily occupy at least 20% of a ‘UK Top 100’ list.

  What is clear is that guides and lists are not necessarily all that helpful. Where Harden’s can only find four WM restaurants  to place in its top one hundred, Squaremeal can find twelve and place one of them at the very peak of its list. Squaremeal seems the better judge, as The Good Food Guide identified Birmingham as the most exciting UK city in which to dine at the end of last year and placed three Birmingham restaurants in its top twenty ‘most exciting’ restaurants list. And over them all looms the Michelin Guide, its recognition the most craved by chefs. It is conservative, impenetrable, obscure and often its decisions are inexplicable and abstruse, more inconsistent than its editors would admit and ultimately for these reasons, of less value than it thinks it is. The Michelin Guide’s underlying French-style food bias remains though it may deny it - it has glued itself to the book for eternity - this may have snob appeal but it does not necessarily result in a British diner sitting at a table enjoying the often expensive food laid before him. 

  In contrast The Good Food Guide seems much more alive, more relevant, in step with taste but does seem in danger of being dragged away too far from the mainstream - listing hipster haunts, furnished in shabby style, uncomfortable, where good food is indeed served but with nothing else to make the meal a pleasure. 

  So when it comes to Guidebooks or websites - Caveat emptor. Take a pinch of salt when you’re reading them and doublely so when it comes to ‘Best restaurant’ lists. Consider who are the people who have rated the restaurants, are they shadowy elitist figures or an untutored vox populi or trendy self-loving influencers? Personally, I like a good newspaper reviewer; with regular reading of their articles, one knows their prejudices, their pleasures, their dislikes and with those in mind one can put their informed opinions in context and judge the validity of their opinions and consider how that match with one’s own.

  On the subject of which, I enjoyed a recent piece by Jay Rayner in The Guardian, a paper I otherwise can not bear to read, on the future of fine dining and, in particular, the horrors of the twenty plus course tasting menu which may bring one many delights but also an angor animi as the meal drags on, the hours pass and the realisation dawns that there are still another nine courses to ingest - it’s a bit like a direct flight from New Zealand - you’ve been in the air for sixteen hours and you realise that there’s still another eight to go before you touch down in dear old Blighty. 

  There was another piece recently by a writer for The Financial Times - Janan Ganesh, more a political writer than a food critic but apparently he has devoted the past year travelling around fine dining (haven’t we all?) and in it he gave his opinion on “what to look for in a restaurant”, presumably a restaurant of the Now, of where fine dining is going. He arrives at all sorts of depressing conclusions - “the neighbourhood must be hipster” (groan), the “view must be rubbish” (goodbye to the bib gourmand and no herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically past the window), “staff mustn’t ask if you’re enjoying your meal” (should they just scowl at you, perhaps? What about the size of their gratuity?), “champagne must come in a wine glass (the modern triumph of lack of substance over style) and “the kitchen must be unconfidential” (really I am there to eat and enjoy and not to watch men work no matter how nice modern head chefs are to their staff). Newnham-Davis is turning in his grave.

  Coincidently Mr Ganesh was dining at The Wilderness when I was there for dinner a couple of week’s ago, doubtless continuing his mission to dine. I suspect there’s a book planned at the end of it - well he is a journalist - and now we know that Birmingham should have a place in it. I revisited The Wilderness three or four nights ago. The Jewellery Quarter was very dark, damp and moderately misty, the streets virtually deserted and the little passageway at the end of which was the prettily-lit entrance to the restaurant, had all the feeling of a Brummie version of 1880s Whitechapel about it. No wonder then that the restaurant was not fully booked on this mid-winter evening. But the punters there were treated to a magnificent repast - basically the same ‘Future of Dining’ menu from which I had dined a couple of weeks before but brilliantly executed. The wagyu beef was immaculate and generously portioned on this occasion, and in the fish course, pollock had transformed very pleasingly into turbot. The petit fours were also different from two weeks before with a charming cow’s head fudge sitting prettily on the plate beside a yuzu jelly. Chef Marius Gedminas was in cracking form and after a slight wobble at the end of last year one evening, The Wilderness was unquestionably still up there among the stars.

‘Carrot 2023’ - 

Chicken broth with egg yolk and seaweed - 

Magnificent wagyu with a fine sauce -

Seared Anjou pigeon with foie gras-stuffed paratha - 

Petit fours - Cow’s head fudge and yuzu jelly - 

  There’s certainly a new future in store for a couple of West Midlands established chefs - Matt Cheal of Cheal’s of Henley is putting his final preparations in place for his new restaurant in Knowle and Nathan Eades, Yorkshire-born but raised in Bromsgrove, once a sous chef at Forelles in Fishmore Hall in Ludlow from which he operated a pop-up, Epi, firstly in Ludlow in 2012, then in Bromsgrove from 2013 with side trips to the Kitchen Garden in Kings Heath (January 2014) and then Head Chef at Simpsons (from 16 September 2015 succeeding, coincidently, Matt Cheal though it had previously been announced he was to be the Head Chef at St Andrew’s Hotel in Droitwich, and thence to the Wild Rabbit at Kingham, is to open his own pub restaurant, Halfway at Kineton.

  Worldwide, the biggest gastronomic event of the year was the announcement that René Redzepi is to close his multi-course, astronomically priced restaurant Noma in Copenhagen finding that since he started to pay his junior chefs a salary the restaurant’s financial model did not work. Famously, the restaurant has been judged by the cognoscenti to be the best in the world but was it after all, just a side branch in the evolution of dining out which eventually fizzles out? Regardless, let’s face it, I was never going to get there.

 

  Finally the grim news that the BBC’s Great British Menu returns to the nation’s television screens next week sadly with the same judges as last year, in particular the exquisitely irritating Ed Gamble who brings the BBC’s dumbing down to new previously unplumbed depths and that magnificent chef Tom Kerridge who dominates the other judges with his opinions. With the West Midlands in general, and Birmingham in particular, leading the country’s gastronomic scene, perhaps the programme’s producers might even feature chefs this year who actually work in West Midlands restaurants to represent the region. Oh, this year’s theme is a celebration of Paddington Bear and British animation so I suppose every chef will feel obliged to incorporate marmalade in their menus or strive to produce Anglo-Peruvian fusion dishes. Bring back Fort and Peyton.  Please.

    Finally, when staying in town, I am still enjoying taking Lucy The Labrador to breakfast in Wayland’s Yard in Bull Street. A rather delicious and very filling ‘Full English’ is on offer but I’m rather keen on the bacon bap, literally piles of well-cooked streaky bacon on a sweet bap, washed down by some of the café’s fine coffee. I like the amusing mural there, it has the air of this year’s Great British Menu theme about it.