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.

288. Cheal’s Of Henley Soon To Be Of Knowle.

   Old blokes often find change difficult. That is often because decades of experience teach us that change is not usually for the best. Of course sometimes it is and I hope that is the case with Cheal’s of Henley, considered by me to probably be the best restaurant in the West Midlands, which is to leave the home where it began its life and is now to move to Knowle. When I read the news I felt I must pay one last visit to Cheal’s in its present home which has always been a very simpatico sort of place to dine in.

  Getting there was not easy, a combination of another strike by our extremely well-paid but apparently impoverished  train drivers and the sheer incompetence of those who run West Midlands Trains ensured that there were no trains running and that a return taxi journey to Henley was necessary. I was also limited on time, having another appointment arranged for 4 o’clock back in Birmingham and so I was unable to indulge myself again in the excellent Tasting menu offered in the restaurant but chose to lunch from the three course lunch menu (with various trimmings included) exceptionally well priced at £40. After olives, enjoyable bread and butter and an amuse gueule, I had a starter of ponzu cured sea trout finely combined with cucumber, pink grapefruit, samphire, yuzu vinegar and tasty little crisps as light as a feather.

  The main course was also excellent - finely cooked hake with tasty brown crab risotto, shiso and a deeply delicious lobster reduction. This was an immaculate dish. With time speeding by I had my dessert of a lovely William pear choux with a splendidly crispy shell filled with vanilla crème diplomat and a sharply perfect blackcurrant sorbet.

  And so farewell to this Henley restaurant which was once home to a restaurant where Andy Waters was Head Chef and subsequently to the Thai restaurant, Thai Cottage. As Cheal’s moves out from there hopefully to success in its new home, one wonders what will next happen to this charming cottage on Henley’s main street. 

235. Dining At The Grand.

  

  There’s no doubt that cocktails in Madeleine and dining in Isaac’s at The Grand Hotel in Birmingham are rather special whether or not the food is any good. I’ve thought that Isaac’s is a missed opportunity in its New York-diner guise rather than in a classic, rather stately English alter ego persona but that’s just me I suppose; I’ve just read too much of the writing of Nathanial Newnham-Davis whose time has long passed and I have visions of grand dining rooms full of smart people dining off Escoffier-inspired cuisine rather than early 2020s casualness, American scoff, noisy music, tattooed arms and upmarket burgers, hot dogs and, er, lobster Newburg. I am forced to acknowledge that the Newnham Davis experience is not really for this present age. And yet…..

  But for decor and atmosphere Madeleine and Isaac’s are not to be missed even on a slow Wednesday evening when everyone’s dashed off to Europe to catch up on their continental experiences which they have missed for the past two-and-a-bit years, leaving the second city’s centre to its denizens who have only just arrived in the country and hardly want to be on their way out of it again. First an excellent Margarita in the soothing comfort of Madeleine. Such pleasure.

  Then, down a floor to Isaac’s. It really is very good (see photograph at head of this Blog). I start off with a generous portion of excellent house-cured lox served with tomato and onion on excellent rye bread with a generous layer of cream cheese. This was a grand dish. Then one of my great loves, hot dog - one of the finest frankfurters I recall eating - with sauerkraut, red cabbage coleslaw, sorry, slaw, ketchup (I declined the mustard) and really excellent thin chips, nicely salted and acceptably crispy. Such fun! 

  Finally for dessert, a mildly bitter New York cheesecake with splendidly sour macerated cherries though a little more sweetness might have been helpful in addition to the vanilla ice cream. Still, not bad. 

 Return visits to The Mount by Glynn Purnell in Henley in Arden and Toff’s in Solihull. In fact it has been two return trips to The Mount, both not quite up to that heady first day when Glynn Purnell was on site and it was all very exciting. The second visit, as mentioned in Blog 234, involved a pleasurable Atlantic prawn first course, a satisfactory but rather dull chicken main course and missed crème caramel as recounted previously. On the third visit I was determined to relive the great pleasure of my first visit - I ordered once more the truly delicious cheese custard starter (my lunch companion was delighted with his scotch egg), I gluttonised on the very generously portioned and optimally rustic pork cutlet and finally got my teeth around the long awaited crème caramel. My dining companion chose the cod and chips which was remarkably unimpressive with mediocre batter covering the admittedly nicely cooked cod and middling chips and a tiny helping of unsensational mushy peas. 

  The Mount quite naturally raises great expectations as part of the Glynn Purnell brand but does not quite live up to them. These are early days and the restaurant is full and the short term looks promising for Purnell’s latest enterprise but given the prices, it will need to raise its game in the medium term if the punters are going to keep coming back. And present commodity prices and the yoke of inflation could pose a major threat to any restaurant’s future.

  And so, a return visit also to Rob Palmer’s Toff’s in Solihull, this time accompanied by my dining companion who had ordered the disappointing cod and chips at The Mount. The menu was largely unchanged from my previous visit which is not surprising given how recently I had dined there. It was a damp spring Tuesday evening but most of the tables were occupied and later Chef Aktar Islam of Opheem fame and two of his team came in to sit at the Chef’s table and dine and to chat with Palmer.

  It’s not surprising that I should report that most of the dishes were exemplary on this second visit - my dining companion agreed with me - and while I derived least pleasure from the monkfish (not because of its cooking but just because it was monkfish) we were both mesmerised by the perfection of the cooking of the duck. The weakest course was undoubtedly the duck ragu (which itself was delicious) in a brioche ‘doughnut’ which was far too heavy. I thought that the dish would be improved by serving it in choux pastry and my companion thought it would be better in something crispy - no matter, we really did not enjoy the brioche. The other courses are described in Blog 231. The splendid scallop had been substituted by a mackeral ceviche (presumably a sign of the financial times but this was a truly fabulous dish and what had been lost in the luxuriousness of the ingredient has been substituted by the brilliance of the dish’s preparation.

  Just as for The Mount, these are very early days for Toff’s. Some honing and fine tuning is needed but given that Solihull needs a high quality fine dining restaurant and it has a captive well-off local residential population it should prosper..

  Wednesday 20 April - The Michelin Guide announced the latest additions to its list of recommended restaurants - it is no surprise to find that no West Midlands restaurants feature in it - none at all have received a mention since the Guide began this monthly exercise last summer. The five restaurants receiving recognition equally unsurprisingly are located in London (2), Scotland (1), the Michelin inspectors’ much loved Republic of Ireland (1) and Liverpool (1, presumably to irritate Mancunians as they fume in their gastronomic wilderness).

  Finally, a photograph taken from a Twitter posting of a recently opened and already locally respected restaurant in Harborne. I am being curmudgeonly here but is it really necessary to put a garnish of blood-veined sorrel, coriander and other herbage on what I take to be breakfast? Aren’t chefs just going a little bit mad with this plague of green stuff? I really don’t want a herb garden on my fried egg. And I certainly don’t want to see any more peashoots (see Blog 228). Honestly, I don’t.

234. Oyster Club And The Mount Revisited.

 

  Quick reports on repeat visits to a couple of restaurants which have given me much pleasure in the past, one last September and the other only days after my first fabulous experience there.

  Firstly, lunch at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes. In Blog 181 I reported an excellent meal of fish charcuterie platter followed by a stupendous roast sole on the bone. So much had I enjoyed myself that I could not fight back the need to revisit these two lovely dishes. Alas both courses were shadows of their former selves. The food at the restaurant is far from cheap which is forgivable if the food measures up to the price. The charcuterie, while being as tasty as before, was served with no generosity - as can be seen in the ‘then’ and ‘now’ photographs above - compared with last year the fish was sliced so thinly that flavour was barely discernible. This was appallingly poor value for £15.

  Then the sole with razor clams, grapes and verjus sauce (£34.50). This might be described as a less impressive specimen than that I adored back in 2021 (see ‘then’ and ‘now’ photograph below). The texture of the fish was less firm and the presentation of the dish seemed somewhat disorderly in comparison with the first time I ate it. The fish was certainly tasty and succulent but remarkably unremarkable. There was not the degree of consistency between the two dishes that I should have liked to have enjoyed. My lunch companion and I shared some unremarkable chips which would have been fine had they not cost £2.50p per half dozen and some leeks (with Calcot onion and pancetta) which were ridiculously overpriced for what they were (also £5). Things were not going well.

  However we battled on, choosing with a certain amount of thrilled anticipation, to share a tarte tatin served with vanilla ice cream (£24). I failed to photograph the dessert but it was not a happy creation. Instead of slices of apple a large lump was placed in the centre of the pastry which was a little flabby and the whole had not the unctuous stickiness to which I had so looked forward.

  There’s little more to say. This had been a meal riven through with disappointment for which we paid a not inconsiderable sum.

  As a footnote it’s worth noting that a couple of days afterwards there was a rare tweet from the West Midlands by a Michelin inspector who must have lost his way to Dublin where you would normally expect Michelin inspectors to be enjoying themselves and that individual had clearly been at the Oyster Club shortly after us. From the comment, I must conclude that I chose the wrong dishes. To be fair, my companion had thoroughly enjoyed his starter of whole roasted king prawns with spiced lobster bisque (£18.50).

  The next day, again with pleasurable anticipation, I returned to Henley-in-Arden to pay a second visit to Glynn Purnell’s new country version of his former bistro in Newhall Street which is labelled ‘a pub’ but is really a very nice, quite large modern restaurant off a small olde worlde bar (see Blog 230).

  While quaffing a couple of the old Ginger’s Bar classic cocktails, I studied the menu and badly needed to relive the joy of consuming the Cheddar custard and sweet and sour tomatoes followed by the Wiltshire pork cutlet but girding up my inner strength I decided I really must try some other dishes and therefore chose a pleasing starter of Atlantic prawns with caviar, little cubes of apple and croutons. Then I chose perhaps slightly over-cooked but generously portioned roast chicken with a lovely side dish of tubetti pasta with a generous covering of pecorino, wild garlic and a deliciously sweet scorched pickled lettuce. Chicken is chicken and this was not the most exciting of chicken dishes I have had but it was very pleasing.

  I requested crème caramel for dessert but I was informed that chef was not happy with how they had turned out that evening and with time running short before the next hourly train back to Birmingham I thought it best regretfully to pass on the course and head uphill to Henley Station.

  Henley has a lovely old station and is a bit of tourist sight in its own right. It presently has a series of posters on display, one for every station on the line, and the Small Heath Station poster is fun depicting as it does the theme of Peaky Blinders.

  The present series of the BBC television programme Great British Menu 2022 has finally come to an end with chefs from Wales, London, Scotland and Northern Ireland winning to cook dishes at the banquet which was this year mainly to indulge a number of BBC luvvies on the occasion of the Corporation’s centenary. 

  The new panel of judges has been disastrous with the chef Tom Kerridge dominating the other judges with his opinions which are of course a chef’s opinion which, as we know from previous years, is a completely different viewpoint from that of the people who eat the food. While Nisha Katona has made some useful contributions that is something that can not be said of the ninny who is there to tell jokes (and little more of him is expected) and who should go the way of the previous comedian who hosted the programme and was seen for one season and never seen again. Andi Oliver on the other hand has been an excellent host and it was warming to see her great the two previous long-running judges, Oliver Peyton and Matthew Forte, who knew what they were talking about and made watching the programme worthwhile.

  It is pleasing to note that the Central region finalist (though an East Midlander), Sally Abé, as runner-up, did prepare food at the banquet in the food of the canapés and pre-desserts and rather good they looked too. She carried out her tasks calmly, charmingly and pleasantly and was it a delight to watch her work surrounded as she was by the broiling gallons of competitive testosterone put out by the male competitors.

Sally Abé.