175. Forelles.

 

 

   You may have noted that Ludlow, a small but historic Shropshire town, birthplace of the English food festival (alive and kicking again this year in two weeks time after last year’s online version), scored third equal on the list of cities and towns having Michelin mentioned restaurants in the 2021 Guide (see Blog 167). Beaten only by the mighty Birmingham itself and Cheltenham, Ludlow has five Michelin mentioned restaurants putting it on par with Stratford upon Avon. And I am back in this very pleasant town which combines the joys of the Mercian countryside, the hills of Cymru looming in the near distance, with the pleasantness of its acceptable distance from the urbanisation of the great West Midlands cities and towns.

  Since I began my not-infrequent trips here I have stayed at the very congenial Fishmore Hall, just out in the country not far from the edge of the town’s modern housing estates which do not usually come to mind when one thinks of medieval Ludlow, capital of the Marches. Consequentially I have eaten more than my share of usually fine meals at the hotel’s fine restaurant Forelles, delightfully housed in a large conservatory with the local beef in the next field and Clee Hill looking down on us all. But I have never ventured into a journey along its Tasting menu. Well not until now. One look at the menu persuaded me to detour off my usual à la carte route and to take the longer, more winding and more decorous route that led  to the final course of six. 

  Fishmore Hall recently officially appointed its new Head Chef - Phil Kerry, formerly sous chef at Fishmore - after its former Head Chef, Joe Gould, forsook the Midlands and headed to a challenging job in Scotland. This has been a brilliant appointment. On my visits here since Kerry took over, first during the interregnum and then as crowned occupier of the post, I have I have had some quite fabulous dishes at Forelles and the excellence has even shone through in the simpler but usually delicious food being served up in the accompanying bistro. Fishmore, or rather Forelles, appears to finally be there - in a place any proprietor and chef would wish to find their restaurant, A very good restaurant in its category (une tres bonne table dans sa categorie) or in modern terms high quality cooking worth a stop which is rather understated but is dripping with meaning (see Blog 4). 

  And there I was in a place I wished to be starting at the beginning with three perfect little canopés - a tiny goats cheese cornet and a little morsel of a fish cake among the three nibbles. How remarkably good. Then a profoundly flavoured tomato consommé served as a cappucino with its basil, balsamic and Parmesan elements adding to the wondrous and thrilling combination of flavours. A tiny dish but memorable for all the right reasons. By now, I was hooked and giving no resistance as Chef reeled me in.

  On to a starter made up of an abundance of asparagus under a runny poached egg yolk and a crispy little piece of Melba toast with soothing buttermilk and lovage oil. Spoilt a little by this particular dish being a little cold (perhaps it was meant to be) but still a fine dish.

  

And then something really great and very dramatic in its presentation - two scallop shells, one containing a delicious, accurately cooked scallop on a bed of sea vegetables including samphire, the sea washing through it, as well as the salt of a robust dashi and in the other shell a tasty smoked roe, the whole looking very pretty.

  

And then the dish which told me that Forelles has finally got there - a completely admirable and accurately cooked piece of beef on a bed of garlic-suffused potato, an unctuous beef sauce, sweet tender onion and shiitake. One of the best courses I have eaten anywhere this year.

 

 Predessert. Another delight. Tongue-tingling pink peppercorn pannacotta matched with a champagne sorbet and sweet thin slices of peach. A perfect transitional dish. Light, refreshing, clever, inventive. Afterwards a single dessert (who needs two?). We seem to have entered a situation where a chocolate dessert is the last dish we must have. Unfortunately I am not a fan of dark chocolate puddings, I don’t need to end on something so deeply rich. I prefer sweetness rather than the potent flavour of chocolate. But this was as good as I could hope for - a pleasing crumbly base under a glossy, gold-leafed half-globe topping the chocolate mousse centre and served with a soothing ice cream. For the chocolate lover, this was a beautiful gem.

  Afterwards some enjoyable petits fours. And so to bed.

Post scriptum:-

There are three small pear trees in the gardens of Fishmore Hall which are of the forelle variety. They’re looking rather undistinguished at present and rather like a lot of garden fruit this year they seem to be in a state of delayed development. But for what it’s worth here’s one of them:-

159. Back In The Marches.

   I am happy to say that I visit Ludlow reasonably often and am always very content to stay at Fishmore Hall where Forelles restaurant is located in its pretty little conservatory with Clee Hill in the distance looking down on it. I have reported on meals eaten at Forelles a number of times and so will not go on again at length save to say, even though former Head Chef Joe Gould  left there in May to cross the border and venture into Sturgeon (the politician not the large fish) territory. Nevertheless I had a couple of dishes this time from the à la carte menu which I had not previously tried and a great pleasure they were; Fishmore’s residual kitchen team are clearly in excellent form and spirit even if they have lost the team captain.

  As a first course I had the prettiest little starter that I have seen this year - a sophisticated dish of goats cheese with a cider jelly, caramelised red onion, parsley gel on a bed of oat and walnut bread (I think) with a pleasing potato circle and as a garnish the surely the prettiest little viola flower ever - yellow with purple veins - whose beauty should not be lost by eating it but which should be pressed in a book as a souvenir of a very fine starter.

  

During the same meal I also had an extremely delicious and powerfully flavoured main course centred on Iberico pork. This was a great pleasure - a generous helping of unctuous pork on a bed of nicely acidic gochujang, little chunks of grilled fennel and caraway seeds and soothing consommé with a crisp which mimicked  in appearance, but sadly not in flavour, a strip of pork crackling, all topped off by a courgette flower. There was also pak choi which was apt with this dish though for me it is one of those vegetables which it would have better if it had never been introduced in British restaurants, limp looking and limp flavoured - I do not blame Chef for this but instead I blame the person who first thought that mankind should eat the vegetable. However I suppose it’s greenness rounded off the visual impact of the dish, wrapping itself around the bountiful slices of pork as it did.

 

 I have been intending to dine at the Michelin-plated Mortimers in Corve Street for some time and I finally achieved my goal on this visit to the town that may be viewed as the birthplace of the modern West Midlands gastronomic revolution. Housed in the building that was home to Ken Adams’ Bib Gourmand-winning Oaks restaurant and then Claude Bosi’s Hibiscus and then Will Holland’s Le Becasse, Wayne Smith’s  Mortimers has a charming courtyard which is a good place to sit on a fine summer evening imbibing a fine Negroni and grazing on complementary olives and tiny sweet, tangy peppers before moving indoors to the gracious wood-panelled rooms where dinner is served. Perhaps the dining room is a little dark and oppressive for a long, bright summer’s evening but it certainly comes into its own as autumn draws in and the days are shorter and dignified cosiness is required (I recall that being the case from when I last visited in the dying days of Le Becasse.

  Service, after a pleasing welcome by Tamsin, Wayne Smith’s wife who comes over as an excellent host, was highly laudable throughout the meal and I felt very comfortable as the very enjoyable appetisers appeared, including an amusing mini-fish finger with little dots of tartare sauce on it and a witty little ice cream cornet filled with liver pâté plus a cheeky cheesy little tart. I was rapidly developing a mildly euphoric state of mind and this was only heightened by a fabulous scallop dish - perfectly pan-fried, delicious scallop with lardo, textures of apple and an entirely apt series of crunches provided by the presence of a scattering of fragments of toasted hazelnut. Fine dining indeed.

  

Was it to be upwards and onwards? Next came another starter, this time of Gressingham duck rillette with a happy little morsel of duck breast, a joyously sweet piece of toasted brioche and various little items which injected orange flavours into the dish. Great stuff! What could go wrong?

  It’s hard presently to have a tasting menu without a course of heritage or just in-season tomatoes slotted into it. This is often a refreshing and reviving dish opening the gates to the main course. The menu did indeed include a tomato dish at this stage - “Isle of Wight tomatoes, buratta, basil” The buratta worked well but the tomatoes were sadly disappointing, colourful but not as rich in flavour as I have had at some other restaurants in recent times and they also had a vague mushiness to them which was not altogether pleasant. I felt that this was a course which could easily be removed from the menu with a benefit to the overall meal.

  

And so to the main event - ‘Lamb, Alsace bacon, baby gem’. This dish started off at a disadvantage because next to loathsome pak choi and utterly unacceptable mange tout, charred baby gem lettuce has to rank, to me at least, as an unpleasant green thing filling but not enhancing a plate. But I rose above my prejudice and concentrated on the lamb which was deliciously and perfectly lamb-flavoured (lamb is not always as tasty as it should be). The accompanying caramelised onion was as sweet as any I have had and provided much joy.

  Being immature in my tastes, for me peas are the greenness I crave (pea shoots, green beans cooked to perfect tenderness, cauliflower, green cabbage, Savoy cabbage and Brussels sprouts (yes, I did say sprouts, with their scintillating sulphurousness) may be added to the list) and the peas in this dish were excellent but while it may be totally apt to throw in some little pieces of bacon with the peas or the baby gem (which was as edible as I expected it to be) it is not at all a happy choice to add the bacon to a dish of fine lamb whereby the potent flavour of even the smallest piece completely overwhelms the darling taste of the lamb. A dish that is winning at half time but ends up as a 2-2 draw.

 

 I do not pretend to know why we must now be served two desserts but it is a reality wherever one dines. Perhaps it is to ensure that the pastry chef has something to do though so many desserts seem to have little to do with pastry. The first was a timely, enjoyable strawberry dish, the strawberry elements filled out with a delightful pistachio sponge and a vanilla cream. I forgot to photograph it but it was a pleasure to eat. The second dessert seems to have to be chocolate-based and I understand why but I would not normally go out of my way to chose one. However this dish at Mortimers, a chocolate marquise, was happily light and easy to eat and was properly accompanied by variants on a cherry theme though the cherry ripple ice cream was not exploding with cherry flavour.

  I finished with a fine cup of coffee and was presented with three excellent petits fours including a very cheerful fudge. 

  The tasting menu was excellent value at £65 plus service. I have pinpointed some elements of the meal which did not suit me but it was an extremely pleasurable evening of good food when taken in the round and I will happily revisit Mortimers on my next visit to Ludlow. The inevitable problem with a tasting menu is that it is almost impossible that all elements of it will suit all the diners and it is much more difficult to bring off eight perfect well-conceived  courses than it is to achieve three or four optimal ones. 

  Ludlow may not yet be about to revive its golden gastronomic age but there are some fine places to eat there and Michelin stars are not everything in a gastronomic life. And as we learned recently at Simpsons the possession of a Michelin Star does not guarantee satisfaction.

 

155. In Ludlow, Forelles Loses Head Chef Joe Gould.

 

  Previous Blogs have mentioned visits to Ludlow and stays at Fishmore Hall and enjoyable dinners in both its bistro and its Michelin-plated fine-dining restaurant, Forelles, housed in its handsome conservatory with a delightful view of Clee Hill in the distance and of handsome cattle in the neighbouring fields. In Blog 8 I outlined the history of Forelles restaurant and I have dined there during the reigns of three of its four chefs - the earliest chef was Marc Harriman (2007-9 - I did not experience his cooking) but I did eat there during the period of David Jaram (2009-15) and Andrew Birch (2015-18) and now during the period of chef Joe Gould who has just announced that he will be leaving Fishmore to work as Executive chef at Glenapp Castle Hotel in Ayrshire. We await developments of who will take over in the kitchen at Fishmore and look forward to finding out how the cuisine at Forelles will develop under new leadership.

 

 Having visited an exhibition at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery this week and being unable to resist succumbing to buying a wonderful textile work, Towering In Fur Foe by Vivien Hewson, with which I am very pleased, combining as it does an image of Birmingham with witty humour and a lovely punning title (if it were food it would be by Glynn Purnell), I stopped off on the way back to New Street station for a quick lunch at the newly opened restaurant Rosa’s Thai Cafe just off Chamberlain Square. Think Thai fast food. This is not a particularly big branch of a chain which started off, so the story goes, in London’s east end. I opted for the £9.95p ‘Express lunch set’, choosing the starter of chicken satay (“2 char-grilled chicken skewers in a lemongrass marinade. Served with our addictive peanut sauce”) to be followed by red curry with chicken (“our signature red curry with bamboo shoots, red and green chillies and basil, served with jasmine rice”). You can’t expect too much when your paying under £10 for two courses.

Towering In Fur Foe by Vivien Hewson.

   I was surprised by the truly ‘express’ nature of the meal as both dishes arrived very shortly after ordering and simultaneously not long after I began to nibble some pumpkin crackers I had ordered to be consumed with a very necessary sweet chilli sauce. The food was what one could have expected for the modest price; the chicken was somewhat over cooked but edible and I do not think exact precision of cooking should be expected for what I payed but other than that, apart from the fact that I really didn’t like the ‘addictive’ peanut sauce which I found to be bitter, I felt as content as one could reasonably expect to be. But it would have been nice not to have starter and main course delivered together. The portion of jasmine rice was a generous size and the heat of the curry was mild despite the ‘two chillies’ guide depicted on the menu - the accompanying glass of Gingerella ginger ale was much more fiery than any of the food. I should have liked a little more heat in the curry. We Brummies can take it.

Express lunch - two course served together.

 

 This place seems alright for an unremarkable, modestly priced fast lunch and no doubt might be satisfactory for a pre-theatre bite to eat (if the Rep and the Concert Hall ever reopen) but it’s never going to set the Birmingham food scene on fire which is probably not what is intended. The small size and the location in a prestige building with accompanying probably high business rates makes me think that Rosa’s probably has a limited lifespan in the spot where it is. 

126. A Lost Year But A Happy Christmas.

 

Just when Birmingham and the West Midlands seemed to be doing so well from the gastronomy point -of-view along comes one of God’s smallest creatures, or perhaps it’s one of The Devil’s smallest creatures, which men named Coronavirus, and sets about wrecking everything. COVID-19 also followed straight on from flooding in some west midlands towns which had already done a lot of damage.

 Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, most of our distinguished restaurants have so far survived this year of lockdowns and tiers and eat out to help out by turning to producing expensive takeaways where the diner became partially the chef and entirely the waiter. Where there’s a will there’s a way. The general ability to think innovatively and work hard has for centuries been the hallmark of the pragmatic midlander, not cosseted like self-preening Londoners or self pitying like some whining northerners, which is why Birmingham restaurants have held out so long, they’ve got on with it pragmatically and often with a sense of humour and determination to overcome all odds even when things seemed to continue to get worse no matter how hard they tried. The city was devoid of people but our restauranteurs found a way. Let us hope that a rapid roll out of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine will soon be bringing back the diners who, let’s face it, probably have not spent much money at all during 2020 on rest and relaxation. If restaurants can hold on a little longer then a boom time may be awaiting them.

  Fortunately Birmingham was not placed in Tier 4 over Christmas unlike the south-east, birthplace of the new London variant of COVID-19, and Shropshire was still able to keep its hotels and restaurants open being in Tier 2 (until today which seems unkind as Covidity rates in the county remain startlingly low compared with elsewhere) and so the dog and I were able to pass our long-booked Christmas in Ludlow at Fishmore Hall in our own little bubble of one dog and one man.

 

What a delightful place it is to pass the Christmas break and each day was remarkably different - Wednesday somewhat wet and cold, Thursday dull and a little damp but not cold, Friday (Christmas Day) gorgeous, clear blue skies, bright sunshine, crisp with a lovely sunrise and a spectacular sunset, Boxing Day damp and increasingly rainy culminating in Storm Bertha overnight with rain and wind which decreased over Sunday until we woke to snow on Monday morning. 

  No matter the weather I feasted well in Fishmore Hall with the deputy chef Chloe Wednesday overseeing Christmas lunch (her proud parents were at the next distanced table) and I indulged in classic Christmas turkey, a very rich (perhaps a little too rich for me) chestnut and apricot stuffing, a pig in blanket, generous helpings of 6 different vegetables (nothing succeeds like excess) and a very unctious gravy/sauce. For my starter I had enjoyed a pleasingly thick roast carrot and cumin soup with little chunks of pickled cucumber which really lifted the dish along with an onion bharji which served as a tasty crouton. Dessert took the form of a Bailey’s crème brûlée which was just right after a very sizeable main course.

 

 

  

Chloe had been the pastry chef/sous chef at Fishmore Hall (before Joe Gould took up his post I think) and so I expect she was responsible for some of the splendid pastries and cakes served up at the two Afternoon teas (really it’s quite alright just to call them Teas) which were included in my Christmas package. My favourite had to be the Lemon and raspberry Battenburg but she also provides exquisite macaroons which on this occasion took the form of a blueberry and violet macaroon. Accompanying these two great pleasures was a splendid praline mousse with Tia Maria jelly and white chocolate (I’m not one for chocolate desserts but white chocolate does it for me every time. The savouries were a tasty little Coronation chicken sandwich, my favourite - a thoroughly enjoyable Ham hock, honey and mustard slider (I’ve gone so far in life without knowing until then what a slider is) and a smoked salmon, cream cheese and beetroot wrap. Least successful for me was a fine-looking but not terribly pleasant Tuna and red onion melt which would have been delightful without the aggressively favoured red onion in it which for a few moments alarmed me and made me wonder if I’d developed a disordered sense of taste. The tea was of course accompanied by very edible scones.

  Restauranteurs and diners will be pleased to see the back of 2020 I’m sure but when I’ve been allowed to do so I have had some grand meals here in Birmingham and our neighbouring counties. Keep fighting a little longer. There’s bound to be a dawn soon after this darkest Tier 4 night.

109. Forelles.

  If the Lurgy had not escaped from Wuhan and ripped its way through the world, the dog and I would certainly have visited Ludlow and stayed at the lovely Fishmore Hall sometime in the spring of this year. It was not to be.

  Therefore this was only the first time this year that I have been able to dine at the hotel’s Michelin plated restaurant, Forelles. The time away from work has not been wasted by Chef Joe Gould. On my first evening I dined from the à la carte menu and was delighted with the dishes which came my way.

  Let’s get the bread out of the way. Last year a very oniony bread and dull grilled sourdough were served - edible but the flavour of the onion in the first bread was excessive and stayed with you for the next one or two dishes and the grilled bread just seemed very unspecial. The new normal is a considerable improvement. The onion bread is less overwhelming, the sourdough is soft and tasty and there is a third charcoal lemon bread which is very good and tastes rather fine with the newly added seaweed butter (probably I wouldn’t have that butter with any of the other breads) as well as the familiar marmite butter and ordinary butter which both work well.

  And then a frivolous little amuse bouche of potato foam with horseradish and tiny cubes of apple. So light you wouldn’t know you’d had it but definitely amusing.

  My starter was excellent. A gorgeously golden raviolo filled with the wild flavour of rabbit meat, little shreds of napa cabbage, a swirl of BBQ aubergine in an arc on the side of the dish (at first I thought it was the dish’s pattern) and a little moat of delicious minestrone sauce poured around it all. Top marks for flavour. Thoughts come flooding in - is this a new era of Italian? and has Joe Gould now arrived in the big league. Perhaps the main course would tell. 

  Without hesitation, on to the main of very nicely cooked and handsome-looking salmon and a real star which was partnering it - a wondrously-flavoured mussel agnolotti given texture by sitting on a bed of strips of pickled mooli and the plate made to entertain with blobs of courgette purée as well as more of the same shaped like the thermometer that might measure one’s temperature at this COVID time with a band of buttermilk running down it and blobs of paprika gel giving a hint of the heat that COVID might give you! Another great dish. This is proving to be a great meal.

  The pre-dessert - unchanged from last time I visited but very good and doing its job perfectly. A celery mousse with a lemon jelly and a some crunch from a bit of walnut perched on top.

  Not for the first time I couldn’t resist the joy of Gould’s Baked Alaska for dessert. Arctic roll surrounded in white chocolate with the sponge at the base in the form of a lovely green and tasty pistachio and the soft meringue looking for all the world like an edible hedgehog. Alongside, and perfectly matched, a lovely slice of peach beautifully garnished.

This was good stuff. I was glad to be back in Ludlow.

33. Ludlow Food Festival 2018.

  The dog and I passed a happy weekend in Ludlow attending the country's oldest food festival for our fourth consecutive year.

 Just ahead of this the Good Food Guide 2019 had added three new local restaurants to its listing - Forelles located in Fishmore Hall where the dog and I were staying for the festival as we always do, Mortimer's and Old Downtown Lodge - meaning that 3 of the 7 newly-added restaurants in the West Midlands are located in this, the original, food town - Ludlow returning to its sacred old place in English gastronomy we hope.

  The Festival as ever was enjoyable and the dog was in raptures about having her own ticket for the Sausage Trail. She and I were of one mind that this year AH Griffith's peppery and spicy sausage was the clear winner but we felt we could not complain about any of the five entrants in the competition. I had to buy myself some souvenirs to take home from the event and picked up a bottle of the excellent rhubarb Gun Dog Gin made by a family business in Herefordshire and a couple of bottles of wine from the Halfpenny Green vineyards in south Staffordshire - the dreamy Late Harvest 2014 made from Huxelrebe and Bacchus grapes and a bottle of the immensely tasty Mercia made from Madeleine Angevine and Ortega grapes. I also allowed myself the pleasure of buying some packs of Droitwich salt, extracted from Roman times from brine springs in this historic Worcestershire town. The West Midlands - we've got it all!

  There were some highly interesting presentations from chefs usually with, at some stage in their careers, a connection with Ludlow. The chefs were generally young but accomplished and many talked as much about the science of gastronomy as about the art of being a chef. That I thought, is the theme for now - the science of cooking.

  The theme cropped up frequently during the talk by chef David Kelman of Cowley Manor in Cheltenham and in the following demonstration by chef Joe Gould of Forelles whose food I was to eat later that day.

  So how did the science and the modern technology fare when I dined at Fishmore Hall that evening? It all started off with a delectable amuse bouche which was basically an elegant miniature kedgeree. A starter of quail made lively with goats curd and chorizo was very good but the main course of turbot was not as tasty as it promised to be. The dish included a crab gnocchi which I couldn't identify and an accompanying strip of chicken wing was very tasty but the texture was remarkably unpleasant resembling soggy cardboard. The highlight of the dish was a stupendous and unctuous chicken sauce which allowed one to forgive almost anything (apart perhaps from the texture of the chicken wing). Chef's dessert of banana parfait with white chocolate and pineapple restored pleasure to the meal and the coffee was accompanied by some interesting petit fours.

  On Saturday, Lucy The Labrador and I had a busy day at the Festival. I started off the day having coffee with a view (the beautiful Dunham Weir) at CSons Ludlow, formerly the Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded Green Cafe. Inside the castle I listened to Liam Dillon talking about his restaurant in Lichfield and I was impressed by what he had to say so that I feel I must soon pay a visit to The Boat Inn. It's good to have an extra reason to visit another one of our beautiful West Midlands medieval towns. I missed a number of talks which I would have liked to visit because of the canine necessity of walking around the Sausage Trail!

  A second night of gastronomy at Forelles. After another joyous dip into the immaculate mini-kedgeree amuse bouche it was on to a starter of tasty sea trout accompanied by what seemed to be deep fried Serrano ham and beetroot, neither of which really worked for me (the texture of the Serrano was far from crispy and the beetroot, though it should be a perfect companion for oily fish, seemed to be too sweet to enjoy the trout to its best). The main course however was much more enjoyable than that of the previous evening - chicken cooked in hay with another gorgeous sauce, perfectly cooked asparagus and an oyster bonbon which was not entirely successful. For the second evening the dessert was highly enjoyable and memorable - a charming and delightful 'baked alaska' with peach.

  Lucy and I passed Sunday morning at the Festival. I enjoyed listening to a talk by Reuben Crouch who with his three brothers had opened CSons in Shrewsbury and had recently taken over the Green Cafe in Ludlow. I really must head for Shrewsbury in the foreseeable future. 

  So, another highly enjoyable and interesting weekend for man and dog in Ludlow. I've already booked my accommodation for next year's festival. Regardless of what south-east and London-based critics and food guide writers might think the West Midlands is a gastronomic region of which to be proud.