411. All Change At Forelles.

 

  After about three months away from Fishmore Hall, I had a grave foreboding as my driver pulled up in front of Fishmore Hall. A new owner, based in West Bromwich of all places, lusting seemingly after a chain of hotels to add to his nursing homes and other properties, had obtained Fishmore from the hotel’s founder, the remarkable Laura Penman, and appeared to be in the mood to cut costs at Fishmore whether or not the service suffered. Most of the excellent staff who were present at the beginning of the year had departed, the garden is looking disorderly and the couple of staff who have worked there for years soldier on providing reassuring, friendly, recognisable faces that the hotel dearly needs.

  Head Chef Phil Kerry departed from his post in May 2024 and the hotel has had problems recruiting a successor. It seems that most of the kitchen and restaurant staff departed at the same time. Hotel and restaurant owners must realise that we are in a new era - the hospitality industry is desperately short of staff and if you don’t pay staff enough money then they can easily find a job elsewhere..Fishmore would seem to be at the sharp end of this staffing market crisis.

  The Forelles kitchen crisis seems to have been particularly serious in the late May/early June and hotel residents were not served meals except at breakfast time. An attempt to provide a Tasting menu (without an à la carte alternative) over the weekend when the latest Head chef took up his post was not successful and so a two or three course à la carte menu is now in play for dinner with a limited à la carte available at lunchtime. Reducing costs was very much at the forefront of the new approach to dining at Forelles. Out goes Fine Dining and in comes Bistro. The Guidebooks need to change their references to Forelles if they decide to include the restaurant at all.

  To start, a slice of very ordinary bread paired with some very ordinary butter was served. Right from the word go, cost cutting seemed to be the new theme. At the same time an ‘amuse bouche’ was presented. Apart from being oily there was little taste to this bowl of emulsion despite four little crispy bits being present in the dish - no attempt was made by the polite but clearly brand new young waitress to explain what it was. I deduced that it must be a bowl of mayonnaise with nothing to go with it. It was flavourless and vaguely unpleasant.

I failed to photograph my starter because of a degree of pallaver associated with it. I had ordered confit tomato bruschetta. It was a long time coming though one feels the time to prepare it might not have been lengthy. Some discord arose at the table next to mine when an elderly lady was surprised by the appearance of her main course which had been delivered by one of the very inexperienced waitresses. Both the diner and her husband were of the opinion that she had not been served the dish she had ordered which should have been scallops with fried black pudding and ‘pea pot fricassee’. The gentleman pointed out to the waitress that there were no scallops present on the plate while the young woman insisted that the confit tomatoes actually sitting there were indeed ‘scallops’. My suspicions were aroused and I stood up to claim what very likely was my starter which it indeed proved to be. The elderly couple were correct - there certainly were no scallops on the plate. Most of the tomatoes were flavourless though the dish was rendered a little more interesting by heat coming from some added spice but the bruschetta was somewhat soggy and the dish, as a whole, was gloriously mediocre.

Fresh drama arose next door to me when the gentleman who had correctly identified that the supposed scallops were really tomatoes drew the waitress’s attention to the fact that he had requested rare steak and that which was served to him was anything but. To be fair, the overcooked meat was swiftly whisked away and replaced with a specimen more in line with what had been ordered which is fair enough.

And so my very own plate of three plump, nicely seared scallops arrived at the table with the accompaniments already mentioned above. The scallops were satisfactorily cooked for my tastes though I could see that one or two scallop aficionados might have expressed the opinion that they were a few seconds over. In contrast the black pudding was probably a few seconds over but more moist than some I have been served but two of the pieces came complete with the wrapping paper around them. The pea pot fricassee was unremarkable. There seemed to be something missing perhaps because this is a dish usually served as a starter.

  There were just two desserts - lime posset and brownie with vanilla ice cream - which failed to excite me and so I called it a day reflecting on how things change and usually not for the better. 

  I later learned that the newly appointed Head Chef who is faced with the mammoth task of sorting out the Forelles kitchen is Joshua (Nicky) Hull-Saldanha who was born in Portugal and raised in England where he undertook his training as a chef. In 2007 he moved to the Cayman Islands where he first worked at the Ritz Carlton Hotel moving three years later to work at Cracked Conch for the next ten years and where he was Chef de Cuisine, then Outpost Bar and Grill in San Pedro and in December 2021 as Head Chef at U’NIQUE in Georgetown.

Caymangoodtaste.com reported that Hull-Saldanha was, “…at the Outpost cooking the food he loved, ceviche, any form of salted cod, sushi and fish stew such as bouillabaisse”. Perhaps that will give us an idea of what is to come at Forelles once the kitchen becomes more stable from the point of view of staffing.

Nicky Hull-Saldanha -

  I dined again at Forelles the succeeding evening. It had been a hot day and it was a fine evening and, if nothing else, the restaurant is a lovely place, a gorgeous, spacious conservatory with a distant view of Titterstone Clee Hill rising above the surrounding countryside looking never better than it does on a beautiful summer evening. I liked the look of the menu and I liked the way it had changed since the previous evening. An amuse guele was presented which was rather good - spicy steak tartare served on a circle of toast - in the past we might have expected it to be served as a croustade or tartlet - the cost cutting was showing already but the appetiser was tasty enough.

   Then, perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, my main course of lemon sole arrived, switching places it seemed with my chosen starter of smoked haddock rillette. The main was swiftly whisked away when I pointed out the error and it was not long before the pleasingly presented haddock rillette showed its face nicely complemented with little balls of apple and some trout roe. The smoked haddock gave it a punchy flavour and it was very nicely balanced with citrus but pthe dish was lacking in physical substance with nothing binding it together. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it - it was light and summery and made good use of the remnants of the smoked haddock which must have been in the kitchen after I had ordered it for what had been a substantial breakfast.

  I also enjoyed my main course - two small pieces of nicely cooked lemon sole fillets on a particularly enjoyable, very rustic bed of crushed potatoes and under two magnificent stalks of broccoli whose texture was very much to my taste. There was sweetness and citrus which perfectly complemented the sole.

  The desserts were the same as those on offer the previous evening and again I could not work up sufficient enthusiasm to order one of them but I left the dining room feeling generally happy with the food I had been served though fully aware that the Food Guides were going to have to change their description of Forelles if they decided to continue to recommend it all. I was told that the restaurant will soon have a new manager with more staff which is vital to keep this once excellent restaurant on its feet but the change in style of the food I think will see Ludlow lose another representative in the Michelin Guide, Good Food Guide and so on.

  Restaurant owners must decide if they want to cut costs or maintain a good reputation - there seems no doubt which of the two the present hotel owner has chosen and I mourn the likely passing of a fine gem.

Rating:- 🌛.

Post scriptum - shortly after posting this Blog, I discovered that Hull-Saldanha was to be moved to work at the hotel group’s restaurant in Droitwich and two new chefs from Romania had been appointed to work in the kitchens of Fishmore. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

387. Forelles.

 

  And so back to Shropshire for my first visit of the year to Ludlow and a shock on arrival at Fishmore Hall to find that the remarkable Laura Penman had sold the lovely, peaceful small hotel with its gorgeous view of Clee Hill and a distant glimpse of Ludlow castle in the less than three months since the dog and I had last stayed there over Christmas. Change. So much change in this post-COVID era. Some old familiar friendly faces had left the hotel’s employment, plans are afoot for renovation and new buildings. Old blokes find it hard to see change as necessarily a good thing but we must see what comes to pass.

  For the moment at least the kitchen of Forelles remains unchanged and I was pleased to be choosing from the à la carte dining menu. I started with a dish based on Flower Marie cheese, a tasty soft and creamy ewe’s cheese from East Sussex. The flavour was enhanced with fig and pear and the texture with crushed walnut.

  

  The main course was nicely cooked breast of poussin nicely complemented with pancetta little cubes of apple and thin slices of pickled cauliflower and a cauliflower purée. This was very satisfactory. After a well judged inermediate dish there was a dessert of choux au craqualin with a pistachio creme patisserie, pink peppercorn ice cream and delightful segments of blood orange. The pastry chef had provided an enjoyable choux and the ice cream was very pleasurable and it made a very pretty dish.

  The meal had the style now familiar at Forelles under the stewardship of chef Phil Kerry with his careful, fine cooking techniques on show coupled with some originality of approach to devising the dishes; the combinations of the ingredients are sometimes challenging but usually interesting and always beautifully presented.

  Fishmore invariably delivers a fine breakfast but I rarely go the Full Monty and indulge in the Full Breakfast, rather I frequently order the little rectangle of excellent smoked haddock sans Hollandaise and poached egg which the menu pairs it with but instead I eat it peppered and heavily buttered and accompanied by white bread and butter. One of my own private little pleasures.

  A couple of evenings later I enjoyed a second dinner at Forelles and chose the six course tasting menu substituting the vegetarian option for the omnivore option in the main course - the vegetarian choice being root vegetable Wellington - the mere sight of the word ‘Wellington’ sends me into paroxysms of culinary lust.

  The amuses gueules were delightful - I loved the presentation on a gilded spoon of a deeply delicious gougère and the crab apple croustade was wonderful, paired as it was with a cube of tasty ham hock.

 

  There followed a cup of deeply flavoured onion consommé with a Gruyère crisp and then, after a serving of fresh focaccia with cultured butter on to an accurately cooked and tasty scallop paired with fennel and 

Sweet passion fruit. This was very good.

  Then, perhaps my least favourite dish - a generous quantity of celeriac with mushroom and lovage. The powerful flavours proved a little challenging for me.

  And so to the Wellington. The puff pastry was very acceptable and the vegetables were well cooked but I couldn’t help thinking what a gem this would have been with beef inside instead of vegetables. Here much work had gone in to producing a worthy dish for those who do not eat meat but, no matter what you say, vegetables are rarely exhilarating as substitutes for meat or even fish. A vegetarian should have appreciated the Wellington but someone who would normally being expecting the flavour and texture of meat could not help feeling that there was something missing which could never be truly substituted for. Still, nice try.

Two good desserts rounded off the meal. Firstly, seasonal rhubarb - always a welcome element though perhaps in this case it was a little too al dente for my taste but the dessert was finely paired with some lovely rose ice cream and refreshing lychee.

  Afterwards, there was a chocolate dessert which incorporated salsify in it which left me a little ambivalent about the dish. 

  It’s spring. The weather is characterised, as it has been for months, by frequent and sometimes heavy rain. But I took the opportunity to photograph the blossom on the forelle pear trees in the garden at Fishmore. I hope the Forelles survive the change of management at Fishmore and all the ambitious plans which include extending the garden. After all, what would Fishmore, and for that Forelles, be without their forelles?

Rating:- 🌞