The concept of linking the name of a new local restaurant to a supper-consuming society of great historical importance is, I think, rather interesting and pleasing especially when this restaurant is located in Stoke-on-Trent whose appearances in foodie guidebooks have been either non-existent or profoundly rare or at the very best, fleeting. More notable for its industrial history than its gastronomic history, we all know by now that Niall Keating, two Michelin star chef recently working at Whateley Manor in Wiltshire, famously decided to give up his job there and return to his childhood home in the northern West Midlands and with Craig Lunn join up with the Wedgwood Centre there to open Lunar by Niall Keating, named after the 18th century Birmingham-based Lunar Society of which Josiah Wedgwood was a prominent member.
This was too important an event to miss out on and so it was that Lucy The Labrador and I, overnight reservations arranged at a local dog-friendly hotel, embarked on a train headed for Stoke, travelling the reverse journey Josiah took monthly to meet his intellectual Birmingham friends including Boulton, Watt, Priestly and the physician William Withering. I wonder if his anticipation of supper was as great as mine was for my pending dinner at Lunar.
Clearly they all had a good time or else they would not have continued to return for more and Wedgwood would not have troubled himself to travel the not inconsiderable distance from Stoke to Birmingham. The cartoon shows Priestly proposing a toast at one of the Society’s meetings. We can see that the participants have had a good bowl of soup and there are chunks of discarded bread on the table. Rather sinisterly, starved-looking beggars stand on the edge in the background waiting to grab the fallen crumbs from the table - well there’s always someone trying to make you feel guilty for eating a good meal! But perhaps the cartoon just rings a bell in these present times as the middle class head for the fine dining restaurants and the poor head for food banks.
Four days prior to my visit, a miracle happened when a tweet (dated 31 January 2022) revealed that not only had a Michelin Guidebook inspector visited the West Midlands but had actually made it all the way to Stoke and paid a visit to Lunar. The tweet seemed to have commented more on the ceramics rather than the food but it was still a historic event - Stoke had attracted the attention of the Michelin Guide. A miracle indeed!
My first ever visit to Stoke. The dog and I were nicely settled in our friendly hotel and I was waiting for my taxi. Lesson number 1 - don’t trust Stoke taxi drivers to turn up anywhere near the time they promised to or to turn up at all. Lesson number 2 - when you finally manage to persuade a taxi to turn up don’t expect them to actually know the location of the World of Wedgwood or to have heard of the city’s scintillating new restaurant. Lesson number 3 - Don’t panic, it’s not your fault you’re late arriving at the restaurant.
But I did finally get to walk through Lunar’s doors into the immense space in which the restaurant is located. Not so much spacious, more like an aircraft hanger with a colossal suspended moon filling up some of the headroom. The welcome was very good and cocktail and tasty, perfectly salty sourdough bread were winging their way to the table just at the time when the bread should appear to provide a delicious little nibble while waiting for the starter. I say starter but that is not technically correct. No tasting menu is on offer which is a wonderful thing in itself but there is a pleasing choice of starters, mains, and desserts (beginning, follow, share and ending) and the portions are of a size which provides the diner with a comfortably sized dinner (certainly sufficient for an old geezer like me). However currently it is suggested that the starters are rather small and in order to satisfy, more than one is recommended. So I had two starters only to discover that they really are a very reasonable size and that one would have been a very sensible choice (perhaps younger people with more amenable digestive tracts might disagree).
Recently Jay Rayner wrote a spot-on piece about the problems of the body’s mild failings associated with advancing age which come to the surface when sitting in a restaurant, among them small print, indecipherable menus read under a poor light. I was seated in an area of the restaurant with no direct light over it and struggled, despite squinting and holding up the menu at odd angles, to make out a word on it particularly because some of it was printed in a very pale ink. Fortunately my struggles were recognised by the excellent waitress and a menu printed entirely in black was brought to me and my menu dilemma was dealt with though I still had to cope with the several items of Japanese vocabulary, mostly familiar to me but not all, that made up parts of a number of the dishes. Have menus always been a struggle for oneupmanship between chef and diner? - it took decades for Englishmen to come to terms with French culinary terminology and now the Far East, particularly the Land of The Rising Sun, is challenging our linguistic and cultural knowledge.
That said Lunar does offer an interesting menu of British food fused with all sorts of Eastern promise and I was ready to rise to the challenge. Hence my starter became two starters - a superb dish of succulent sweet Orkney scallops - just about as perfectly cooked as one could hope for with a supremely enjoyable crust on them which few chefs seem able to achieve and served with a parsnip purée, little snips of pak choi and delightful whispers of heat from the presence of togarashi (a pepper’ A truly impressive dish. My other starter choice was herb congee (a rice porridge), a rather humble dish with a texture not entirely to my taste, but immaculately raised to a much higher level by the additional inclusion of brutally tasty black pudding, a welcome kick of kimchi and a perhaps not entirely necessary quail’s egg. The latter dish was quite filling and I wondered about the wisdom of ordering two starters.
For the main course I was too weak to resist the luxury of the lordly turbot dish on offer, its special flavour and robustly firm texture not at all overwhelmed by the delicious intense truffle sauce - they were matched in Heaven itself - and the sheer indulgence added to by the presence of caviar, a glorious pomme purée and creamed leeks which would have sent St David into raptures if those are the sort of emotions he ever allowed himself to experience. The dish incidentally did not suffer because of the absence of any oriental element. Doubts crossed my mind however as to whether such luxury could be fully appreciated in this cavernous restaurant with no table cloths and casual cutlery placement. Have no doubt that this was luxury dining not run-of-the-mill fine dining; would it be a little more aptly located in a more intimate, even formal, setting? Perhaps the exceptionally reasonable prices for these remarkable dishes are not possible in smaller, more refined settings and the location does at least allow the up-to-now eternally gastronomy-starved residents of Stoke to turn up in large numbers to grab a piece of the culinary action.
I could not resist the tarte tatin for dessert. The fruit used in it was spiced pineapple. The tarte was very good but highlighted why apple has long been the fruit to be used in this unctuous dessert.
Some of the dishes, particularly the dessert, were served on attractive ceramics which should be expected I suppose given the location of the restaurant in the World of Wedgwood visitor centre. Less apparent were any links to the Lunar Society which gave the restaurant its name. While I waited for my taxi back to the hotel - arranged by the restaurant and it therefore actually turned up - I was given a brown card with small black writing on it which gave some information about the Lunar Society and the restaurant’s philosophy and aims. I like receiving souvenirs and I never like to look a gift horse in the mouth but the card did rather suffer from the same problem as the menus - difficult to read with an old bloke’s eyesight either with or without his glasses on. The card is also rather wordy and worthy but with a good light shining on it tells the diner just what the restaurant is all about. However, though the diner is surrounded by the Wedgwood links while eating, the connection with the Society of which he was a leading member could probably do with being a little clearer to make the whole theme seem relevant.
Lunar, then - a great piece of culinary history for Stoke on Trent and a missing piece to insert into the West Midlands fine dining jigsaw. It is an exciting place to visit and some fine food is indeed served there. Is the atmosphere quite right for the luxury of it all? - I’m not sure. One thing is for sure, as you wait for your taxi in view of the open kitchens and surrounded by many, many tables occupied by excited diners, the restaurant has certainly been taken up enthusiastically by the people of Stoke and in the kitchen chef Niall Keating is very visible and instantly recognisable and everyone is clearly working their socks off to ensure Lunar’s success.
