544. Grace And Savour And Champagne.

 Who could resist the suggestion of a high summer evening at Grace and Savour where champagne is the centre piece paired with David Taylor’s fine cuisine? And what a summer’s evening - the sun perfectly warm but not overbearing, the sky blue, the breeze soothing, the setting gorgeous, the service charming.

Answer - certainly not I.

  This was a collaboration with Billecourt Salmon and included a serving of the company’s prestige cuvée, Elisabeth Salmon Rose vintage 2012 which was remarkable and retails for £179 though I very much enjoyed the non vintage Billecourt Salmon Demi-Sec which retails for £58.50 (in a gift box) and proved to be very quaffable when served with the dessert.

  After a sharply priced gin and tonic (£16) in the lovely, sunny sitting area, watching the arrival of the other diners, on to the dining area-proper for a nicely appointed table where I could enjoy the formal cabaret of David Taylor conducting his troops, front of house and kitchen, all smartly dressed, and the whole giving the impression of being a single organism, each part working in unison with the rest,  knowing precisely its role and carrying it out without falter.

  We started with a little bowl of Lavington lamb bone broth, precisely intensely flavoured, clear as a cloudless day and served with a delightful Parker House bread roll shaped like a mushroom and scintillating with the fresh summer flavour of sorrel vinegar. Did the sorrel mildly overwhelm the lamb? - possibly - but this was an enjoyable opening to the pleasure that lay ahead.

  Next came a little gem, modest in size but enormous in flavour - said to be a “celebration of carrot”,  it was far more exciting that its description sounds - a slice of white carrot under carrot tops with a gorgeous carrot and magnolia purée and buckwheat.

  Then the excitement continued to build with perfectly cooked, tender lobster with a sauce of roasted lobster shells and peach leaf - formidable - and a little salad of nasturtium and Isle of Wight tomatoes. There followed a delightful bread course - a slice of sourdough, like the previous Parker House loaf, baked on the estate, and served with a fine butter infused with the same grain from which the bread is made as well as a butter dip seasoned with fava bean miso and estate garden herbs.

  There followed an immaculately cooked piece of line-caught Cornish cod - as perfect a piece of cod as one might hope for - with a mussel and oyster cream sauce and pickled herb stems and caramelised onions. 

  Then, a very fine dish indeed - Lavinton lamb from Lincolnshire* meticulously cooked to the point of sublimity. Tender and sweet - the best lamb I have had this year beyond a doubt and I have had some great lamb so far in 2026. The lamb was served with a fine lamb sauce and the “first lettuce of the year”. Oh, the joy of early summer.

  Dessert was excellent and took the form of a slice of cream cheese with “last year’s blueberries” picked in the estate as well as blueberry icecream and brown butter. This was a thoroughly enjoyable dessert and the meal was rounded off with an unusual mignardise in the form of an icecream sandwich which was a blackcurrant parfait contained by two wafers.

  This has been an excellent evening and I ambled back to the manor so that my uber driver would have somewhere easily identifiable to pick me up from. The sun was just sinking towards the horizon and there was an orange light in the sky. I sat inside the reception area while awaiting my transport and reflected that this had been almost memorable early summer evening,

 * Lavinton lamb is raised by Sophie Arlott of Lavinton Farm in Lincolnshire. She crosses the Hebridean breed, an ancient breed dating back to when the Vikings brought sheep to these islands, with the Southdown - the former produces rich dark meat and the latter gives marbling and a sweetness to the meat.

2  July 2026.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

487. 2025 Great British Menu Dishes At Hampton Manor.

 

  I was pleased to grab a suddenly available, last minute ticket for an exciting event hosted by David Taylor at Hampton Manor which brought together the four chefs of the Central and East region in the 2025 Great British Menu (see Blogs 467 and 468) competition screened by BBC. We will recall that Taylor was the first chef to be eliminated on the first day of the competition when three chefs - Taylor, Thom Bateman and Harry Davenport from East Anglia - all tied with the same number of points and Taylor’s somewhat lacklustre but subtly sophisticated canapé which had proven to be the least liked by chef-judge Tommy Banks led to his early departure from the competition.

  We will also recall that East Midlander Sally Abé went on to win a place at the banquet itself and scored a perfect 40/40 points for her starter course, Nursed Back To Health, which celebrated Florence Nightingale who spent some of her childhood in Derbyshire and that she also tied in first place of the main course with another perfect 40 points with a venison dish, Eat the Rich, but lost out after much discussion to a chef from London.

  And so to the fine evening of 8 June 2025 when ordinary food lovers had the chance to not only see and have described some of the notable dishes which were served by the chefs in the heats of the Central and East region in the BBC programme but also also to smell them  and taste them. 

  I arrived rather early at Hampton Manor and started off the evening in the comfortable, homely hotel bar sipping a very pleasing Grapefruit Collins and then was shown my way to the outside area where a Nyetimber reception was being held and where the first of the canapés was served - an excellent, full flavoured salmon and cucumber crumpet topped by a generous helping of Exmoor caviar prepared by chef Harry Kirkpatrick. 

  Then into the dining room for the two remaining canapés - Sally Abé’s coronation crab crumpet where, sadly, I neither got the flavour of crab nor the true taste of coronation sauce and Thom Bateman’s very tasty Staffordshire cheese custard and salt baked beetroot tart with black garlic ketchup.

  Then the host for the evening, James Hill, Hampton Manor’s managing director, introduced the evening to the eighty or so guests (roughly the same number as those attending the BBC’s banquet) and then interviewed Sally Abé so that she could describe her dish to her diners who were full of enthusiastic anticipation. The first course was an obligatory vegetarian dish in the Great British Menu and at the banquet Abé scored a perfect 40 with it. And, served by the chefs who mingled with the diners, it was delicious. The dish, as reported above, was Nursed back to health - a lovely, clear onion and seaweed consommé with a small roast potato full of punchy Brixton Blue cheese and the hit of black truffle served with the most fabulous little brioche loaf ever presented in an English restaurant, gorgeously glutinous and sticky with its yeast extract glaze. This was a very memorable dish and it is not surprising that it went down so well with GBM judges. 

    Next came the fish course and Harry Kirkpatrick delivered a wonderful Cornish brill Wellington with a leek and brown shrimp mousse betwixt the fish and the excellent pastry. The fish was beautifully cooked inside its casing and had a full bodied and distinctive flavour which made it very moreish. The brill was served with a generous amount of sauce fleurette (Hollandaise enriched with cream, (crème fleurette)) which made the plate look rather rustic though it was so pleasing to have a generous helping of sauce rather than the little smears that usually appear on fine dining plates. I think that this was my favourite dish of this particular banquet. 

  In contrast, I am afraid to admit that I found Thom Bateman’s Origin of Species, which celebrates Shrewsbury’s Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by linking the dish to the evolution of the domestic pig from the wild boar, somewhat problematical and unenjoyable. The dish presented slow cooked wild boar collar which, for me was too dry in texture, with barbecued Mangalitsa loin glazed in black garlic and honey; the latter had a fair degree of chew to it and felt claggy in the mouth. The pickled walnut ketchup had a zing to it but the potato terrine cooked with Mangalitsa pork fat was too salty though it was admirably crispy and crunchy and would have been delightful were there less sodium chloride discernible. There were sticks of apple which gave a little comfort though more might have helped the pig go down and more sauce may also have helped matters.

  Then to David Taylor’s contribution. There was what the irritating Scottish comedienne Susan Calman called “the prepooding pooding” in the single series in which she hosted the programme. In this case the ppp was titled A Light In Darkest England and paid tribute to those who had suffered serious physical consequences caused by their work in the match production industry in the Victorian era. It was pleasant enough and did the refreshing job that it was meant to do but it did not seem to have the pizzazz that might have been needed to have enthused the GBM judges - it was a redcurrant compôte with a crème fraiche sorbet with rhubarb root oil and chocolate matchsticks which would not have added much to the dessert apart from fitting in with the theme and being nice little pieces of inoffensive chocolate.

  The dessert proper was titled For Robert and clearly held a lot of meaning for David Taylor and it probably hurt him that by being eliminated in the first day of the GBM regional round he had not had an opportunity to present the dish to the viewing public. The dish celebrated the charity work of a boy with terminal cancer who had produced beaded bracelets to sell in support of another boy who was a friend of his and who also had the same diagnosis; hence the title.

  The dessert took the form of a trifle, and who would be unhappy about that?, the various layers of which were in the kind boy’s favourite colours. Thus there was a blackcurrant leaf sponge, exhilarating blackcurrant jelly, raspberry cream, apricot custard and a gorgeously tasty blueberry cream. The trifle was served with a barbecued pineapple fruit kebab but I can not comment on it as the waiters failed to serve it to our part of the table.

  Afterwards, the four chefs came and sat on the stage in front of the diners who were able to ask questions. Unfortunately I was unable to stay to the end of it all but I left having been very happy to experience some of the dishes from this year’s Great British Menu and interested to gain an impression of what the dishes tasted like rather than just seeing them on the television.