258.The Walrus.

 

  Back in Ludlow, it seemed a good idea to venture forth elsewhere in Shropshire to eat somewhere I have been intending to visit for a long time - The Walrus in Shrewsbury. It’s always an adventure putting one’s trust in Transport for Wales-run trains which makes a very good argument for governments, particularly the Welsh one, never being allowed to run public transport, especially when their hegemony extends itself over the border into the Marches and England. At least with privately-run West Midlands Trains we can rely on them being hopelessly unreliable and not have any false hopes that the train will arrive on time or even that it will turn up at all.

  Still, I did indeed put my trust in TFW and it did indeed manage to convey me relatively uneventfully, the half hour journey from Ludlow to Shrewsbury, through empty green countryside and looming hills, dotted with sheep or cattle, past the towns of Craven Arms and Church Stretton. What a pleasure it is to visit Shrewsbury with its links with Charles Darwin and how exciting to be visiting a much loved dining establishment to discover how high-end food had evolved in this part of Shropshire and The Midlands

  I was pleased with my welcome at the restaurant, which had opened in October 2018 and is listed by Michelin, and happy to be seated downstairs in full view of the kitchen where Chefs Ben Hall and his partner Carla were going about their work quietly and efficiently. I was also impressed that, apart from Hall himself the restaurant appeared to be run by an excellent all-woman crew. There were obvious problems with the restaurant itself in that the toilets are located up steep stairs making them inaccessible to some customers and in particular anyone in a wheelchair. I liked the soothing grey and blue decor with the portrait of a walrus looking down on the lower dining room. Which begged the question of how the restaurant got its name. On enquiring I was told it had been named after the Beatles’ record, “I am the walrus”, an apparent favourite of Chef’s which sent me running (metaphorically) to the internet to look the song up and I was fascinated to find that the lyrics have a number of allusions to food items which may or may not have some relevance to Chef’s interest in the song.

  And so to the menu. On Friday evenings only a six course tasting menu is available - at the very reasonable price of £60  (though a wine flight will add another £90 to the bill). To start, three pleasing amuses gueules were delivered to the table - all with crispy textures in them - one a fine cheesy mousse another with bresaola and the other with artichoke crisps on an excellent potato salad base that worked very well for me. A flying start.

  The first starter was delicious - an oblong of delightful, subtly flavoured smoked eel with sweetly pickled cucumber and slices of carrot, the mild heat of thinly sliced radish, Exmoor caviar and hints of horseradish.  It was an excellent summery dish and the next course was, if anything even better - drapes of very thin slices of very tasty Lancashire porchetta, the flavours heightened by Shropshire truffle and gooseberries. For me the dish was unimpeachable.

  On to fried spinach pasta dumplings with crispy kale, Parmesan and onion. Delightfully cheesy and the crispy kale brought with it the pleasures of Chinese-restaurant-style ‘crispy seaweed’. Then the meat course - Goosenagh duck cooked perfectly to my tastes and accompanied by a fabulous little square of brilliantly conceived duck leg and squash lasagne which raised a fine plate of duck breast to a legendary status - eternally memorable and complemented by glazed plum, an excellent sauce, mushroom purée and cabbage - none of these ingredients were out of place.

  Oh wow! That lasagne.

  There were two desserts. The first was very pleasing - slices of macerated cherries, buttermilk semi-fredo, shards of meringue and cherry sorbet - everything had its place and helped the dish along. I very much enjoyed too, the second dessert of aerated dark chocolate (the aeration was that little touch which raised the dish above what some chefs often produce) and miso caramel mousse, both paired very happily with delicious coconut ice cream. It was all such a pleasure.

   I had the feeling that this had been a meal of items which Chef himself really enjoyed and perhaps that’s something other chefs should do - prepare the meal as though they were going to pay £60, £70, £80 and so on for it so that they could sit back with relish and indulge themselves with it and emerge from it content and happy they had something not only that little bit special but also just plain fun and pleasurable.

  

 

  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to The Walrus and thought it a restaurant well worth making a special journey to eat in. I note that the restaurant will close at the end of this month and will be relocated elsewhere in Shrewsbury. In some ways this is sad - it is a lovely  restaurant but clearly the single upstairs lavatory is a real practical problem and may be one of those non-food issues that causes the Michelin inspectors to hold back from awarding The Walrus a Michelin star.

  I look forward to visiting the new Walrus and eating Ben Hall and Carla’s cooking again.

187. 1988.

 

  I have just obtained a decent copy of the 1988 Michelin Guide Great Britain and Ireland which was one of the three editions of the guide which was not in my collection of the book’s modern day version which dates back to 1974.

  Not surprisingly, given even today’s Michelin Guide’s attitude to the region, The West Midlands did not have many restaurants which the then Guide inspectors felt worthy of inclusion in the book in that year. The United Kingdom as a whole was home to just two three star restaurants - the Waterside Inn at Bray and Le Gavroche in London. There were just 4 two starred establishments - La Manoir Aux Quatr’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, The Terrace, La Tante Claire and Simply Nico all of course in London.

  The Guide included 21 one starred restaurants in the whole of The United Kingdom, ten of which were in London, and only two of which - Croque-en-Bouche in Great Malvern (see Blog 94) and Mallory Court in Leamington were in the West Midlands. The Guide also included a ‘red M’ category which was explained thus, “Whilst appreciating the quality of the cooking in restaurants with a star, you may, however, wish to find some serving a perhaps less elaborate but nonetheless always carefully prepared meal. Certain restaurants seem to us to answer this requirement. We bring them to your attention by marking them with a red ‘M’ in the text of the guide”.  In the whole of The United Kingdom there were 68 restaurants in this red M category (just 8 in London) with the following West Midlands restaurants being featured:- Henry Wong and Henry’s (Birmingham), Buckland Manor  (Broadway),  Redmond’s (Cheltenham), Hope End Country House (Ledbury), Westgate Arms (Warwick) and Brown’s (Worcester) - a total of seven.

  The Birmingham restaurants mentioned in The Guide apart from the two red M restaurants were:- Ploungh And Harrow, Jonathan’s, Sloans, Rajdoot, Dynasty, Lorenzo, Maharajah and Pinocchio’s plus Le Bon Viveur (Sutton Coldfield) and Franzl’s (Smethwick) (see Blog 94).

  It’s interesting that unlike now, Coventry had 3 restaurants named in The Guide - Herbs, Simla and nearby Nailcote Hall. It has been a long time since Coventry has made an appearance in the Michelin Guide, perhaps the planned opening of Glynn Purnell’s restaurant there will act as a spur to the Michelin inspectors to visit the city and reestablish it as a destination for food lovers. 

  Meanwhile Wolverhampton made no appearance in the 1988 Guide; there was no mention for any Ludlow restaurant; in Cheltenham there was just the above mentioned Redmond’s plus Twelve; Shrewsbury had Antonio’s and the Old Police House with Albright Hussey at Albrighton and Country Friends in Dorrington. In Stourbridge Berkley’s (Piano Room) received a mention as did Severn Tandoori in Stourport-On-Severn, Hussain’s (still there but very much trapped in 1988!) in Stratford-Upon-Avon and The Chase Country House in Ettington. Stafford had no restaurant mentioned with just Effy’s in Hereford, Thrales in Lichfield and there were no restaurants mentioned in Stoke-on-Trent. In addition to the above mentioned Westgate Arms there were Randolph’s and Aylesford in Warwick, Hunt House in Rugby, the above mentioned Brown’s plus Kings in Worcester, Rose Tree in Bourton-On-The-Water, College Green in Gloucester, Old Colonial and Haywain at Bridgnorth, Brookhouse Inn at Burton-Upon-Trent, Le Filbert Cottage in Henley-In-Arden, Grafton Manor in Bromsgrove, Lambs at Moreton-In-Marsh while at Kenilworth there was a goodly list of mentioned restaurants - Diment, Bosquet, Portofino and Ana’s Bistro. In Tewkesbury there was Corse Lawn House, in Tetbury there was Gibbons, in Chipping Camden there was Caminetto and in Solihull there was Liaison.

  This list is clearly not exhaustive but it occurs to me that restaurants are featured in the 1988 Guide in rather more towns and communities than is the case today. In 1988 the Michelin inspectors were loitering in Bearwood or driving down country roads to Tewkesbury or Stourport-on-Severn. The Guide’s representation of the West Midlands, though having more named restaurants now, seems to have spread its listing around the smaller places in the area. Of course the current Guide richly features the Cotswolds area and Cheltenham but elsewhere across the region a number of significant smaller towns do not make an appearance. Perhaps it is because they just do not genuinely have anywhere worth eating in or perhaps it is because standards for inclusion in The Guide have been raised to unrealistic levels. Perhaps those with their London-centric gastronomic brains and bellies who plan the Guide should look a little more at the bye-ways towns of the West Midlands than seems to be the case at present.

  Perhaps we may see some new West Midlands mentioned in The Guide as my Michelin Guide Twitter watch reveals just where the Michelin inspectors have been in the West Midlands recently:-

1 October - Simpsons “A verdant oasis in the heart of the city of Birmingham” (really, that’s a bit overblown isn’t it? and since when was Edgbaston “in the heart of the city”?).

11 October - La Dolce Vita, Shrewsbury -  not mentioned before by

16 October - Henne, Moreton-In-Marsh - not mentioned before by Michelin.

  Myself, I have had a very pleasant week of dining in Birmingham with a repeat visit to Kray Tredwell’s 670 Grams,  tasting some dishes I have had before as well as some new ones. It’s certainly a different dining experience, novel, often exciting, even thrilling. Tredwell offers a true tasting menu - not a collection of dishes but small plates with items that send the diner travelling through the world of food - a single langoustine with a tiny pot of Thai green sauce, a vegetable course highlighting celeriac, his now familiar crispy chicken served with a garish red sauce in a dish shaped like a skull with its top sawn off, a course of excellent halibut (more accurately cooked on this second visit) and so on.

 

 Then, the following evening to Purnell’s to join a small number of old university friends for our annual reunion. Those who had not had the pleasure of dining at Purnell’s before were astonished at the excellence of the dishes - there were the usual ‘gifts from the kitchen’, the totally delicious pain de campagne, the classic but a little revised, I think, emotions of soixante-dix (the modern day twist on cheese and pineapple which only Glynn Purnell could come up with): ‘Mom Purnell’s remix’ of the smoked haddock, cornflakes and egg yolk classic, a surprisingly chewy and overcooked Cornish monkfish dish with roast butternut which brought the evening down a bit only for it to be salvaged by a fabulous dish of divinely cooked Ramsbury Estate fallow deer artfully served with a little pat of duck liver parfait with thin little slices of beetroot and a cameo by some sorrel, an Autumn version of 10/10/10 burnt egg custard surprise with blackberries plus the usual tarragon and honeycomb and then the ‘Mint choccy chip’ which as usual rounded everything off to the delight of my fellow diners. Needless to say, it was a happy reunion.

 

 I might just mention that a final treat was shared by the aged reunioneers - a splendid vanilla and strawberry jam sponge bought from the excellent cake maker, Mary Ashman of Kiss Me Cupcakes located in West Heath, here decorated in line with the former professions of the diners:- 

 The week had not completely come to an end. The day following the reunion I was off to Bennett’s Hill to lunch in at the newly opened fish and chip restaurant and takeaway - Fillet Of Soul.

 

 There are a good number of options to chose from but it seems ridiculous to go to a fish and chip shop and not have fish and chips. I chose the excellently-priced cod and chips and as a side dish a black pudding fritter. I had forgotten that the restaurant cooks in either beef dripping or rape seed oil and when my perfectly sized plate of fish and chips arrived I realised I should have asked for the oil-cooked version. Beef dripping-cooked fish always leaves me with a slightly claggy sensation on my tongue and the flavour is not quite to my liking. That aside it was an excellent piece of cod, cooked admirably with perfect batter and as fish and chip shop chips go those on my plate were pretty good. The black pudding fritters were a revelation; apart from being far too big a helping for my appetite, they were cooked perfectly - so many hotels who offer black pudding as part of a cooked breakfast overcook it so that it is dried out to the point of unpleasantness. I was surprised how very edible they were with the fish and chips. So Fillet Of Soul proved to be an excellent option as a meal alternative in the city centre, offering fine fish and chips at a reasonable price. What a joy it is to find a good fish and chip establishment.

178. Ludlow Food Festival 2021.

 

 After a necessary year’s break (though there was an online version in 2020) the Ludlow Food Festival, Britain’s first, has returned to Ludlow Castle as autumn arrives in a timely way. Lucy The Labrador and I were in town for when the Festival opened its gates and I was surprised to see how many people were waiting to be admitted. 

 I attended all the talks from West Midlands chefs on the stage during the first day and broke them up by exercising the dog and visiting the fast food and other stalls. It was hard to believe that anyone was taking the pandemic seriously, no-one at all was wearing a mask, social distancing was a forgotten concept and the only visitors forced to keep their distance from the food tents were the multitude of dogs who, when you think about it, were probably a far lesser threat to the health of the humans than other humans. 

 The first speaker of the opening day was Reuben Crouch of C-Sons on The Green and C-Sons of Shrewsbury. He had been a speaker at the 2019 Festival and well worth listening to and he was the first speaker of the day to reflect on the difficulties of the pandemic and the possibly even greater difficulties now experienced by the hospitality industry due to the shortage of staff and the difficulties associated with supply problems.

  Well worth listening to was the Suffolk Food writer and Fisheries journalist, Mike Warner, who talked about preparing the various ingredients for a fruits de mer dish. The interviewer admitted she had never eaten an oyster so far in her life and was therefore encouraged by the audience, like a Collisium crowd gesturing a ‘thumbs down’ sign, to sample one, a fresh raw specimen. Warner advised that the best way to achieve most pleasure from the shellfish was to chew it and relish it slowly - first the salty, maritime “flavour of the ocean” followed by a sweetness and ending with a metallic burst. The interviewer was game though reluctant and with a moderate amount of gurning set about her task hardly with relish. She indicated that this might not only be her first oyster but also her last. 

  And then an enjoyable cooking demonstration by Andy Link, chef at the Riverside Inn in Aymestrey in Herefordshire. He had first spoken at the event about, I think 15 years ago as a mere lad, and now gave an account of his career and work in a fine restaurant in a Marches village and how he had dealt with the unique problems of the last 18 months.

  The final demonstration of the day on the Wardington’s original stage was by Mike Bullard, founder of the Butcher’s Social Club, now located in Dorridge. Bullard was asked about the evolution of his restaurant from a ‘pop-up’ in a butcher’s shop in Harborne, the several months of carrying on serving burgers and beer from there till he established himself in Henley in Arden. He found his restaurant was popular in the village but there was not sufficient passing trade and so he has recently moved on to the Forest Hotel in which The Butcher’s Social Club is now situated which offers greater opportunity for catering for events. He talked about how much of the restaurant’s meat is cooked in water baths (good for beef and lamb apparently, less so for pork) which greatly eases their preparation of large amounts of food. Well, each chef must choose what is best for his business but sous vide cooking may make good business sense but it often results in a less than satisfactory outcome for the diner - not so much Chef as artist as Chef as Swimming pool lifeguard. My enthusiasm for visiting the Butcher’s Social Club was considerably reduced by the prospect of everything there being largely cooked sous vide.

 

  In between listening to the talks, Lucy The Labrador and I toured the fast food stalls. Inevitably the longest queue was waiting at the Beefy Boys stall. My enthusiasm for burgers is usually only a little greater than my enthusiasm for food cooked sous vide but the previous evening I had had a perfect burger, precisely seasoned (which is the key) in the ‘Bistro’ (the former sitting room) of Fishmore Hall (it was accompanied by a sensuously delicious relish and very fine chips) and I resolved to see how the Beefy Boys burger matched up to the delight of the previous evening. I chose the Beefy Boys original burger - more simple and less encumbered with numerous additional ingredients - with its ‘original’ and ‘secret’ accompanying sauce. It was not really all that good. The Beefy Boys burger was desperately under-seasoned and the sauce unmemorable and really now one has to ask what all the fuss is about. Prize-winning in the past, I believe, but now nothing to place it in the firmament of great burgers. The number of customers queueing may say differently but it looks to me that the makers of this product have been living on old successes for far too long and need to take a long hard look at their tired product.

Beefy Boys burger, tired and underseasoned

The dog at least remained a fan

Fishmore burger, great chips, delicious relish

  The businesses occupying stalls at the Food Festival are little changed from previous years. There’s a wealth of local cheeses, ciders, ales, charcuterie, pies, meat, pottery, utensils, condiments, preserves, chutneys, relishes, breads, pastries, greengrocery and so on if you wish to buy. And very good it all lookks too. And of course there are countless opportunities to buy local gins from businesses around the area. Ludlow Gin is a major sponsor of the event but in name at least my favourite has to be Gun Dog Gin.

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.