242. The French Pantry

 

 

 Before moving on to report on my visit to Ludlow’s Michelin-listed The French Pantry, I can not resist mentioning having a second enjoyable dinner in Fishmore Hall’s bistro restaurant. I had so enjoyed my meal there the previous evening (see Blog 241) I resolved to eat there again instead of choosing from the à la carte menu in Forelles and quaffing a Monkey 47 and tonic I set about consuming a highly enjoyable simple but luxuriously glistening and deeply tasty chicken liver pâté enhanced by a little blob of English mustard and tiny sweet pickles together making a witty deconstructed piccalilli.

  I then moved on to braised beef shin served with creamed garlic potatoes, well-cooked celeriac fondant and pleasing braised red cabbage. The beef was satisfactory, a little dry, but the nicely unctuous sauce and red cabbage helped it along. Finally, for dessert, I had an old favourite, an absolute gem - coconut panna cotta, tiny cubes of pineapple, toasted coconut and a wondrous basil ice cream. There was much to be happy about in this meal.

  And so to lunch the next day at The French Pantry. Outside woodwork painted a soothing light blue and inside a French bistro nicely recreated complete, as everyone who reports on the place just has to mention, the tables covered with red chequered tablecloths and blue padded seating along one wall, all very Tricolore and cosily delightful. A quiet and pleasant welcome and I was seated in a very comfortable padded chair which would have been lovely to snooze in postprandially. Rustic and yet not rustic to judge by my starter of robustly flavoured gateau of crab (actually a mousse sitting in a tasty, buttercup-yellow saffron beurre blanc), beautifully crafted and, for the crab lover, highly desirable and delicious..

  Then a stupendous confit duck leg served with prunes, garlic sautéed potatoes and prune sauce. Crispy skin, succulent duck meat, the sweetness of the prunes and the sauce, the perfection of the potatoes, total Gallic delightfulness. 

  And then classic tarte tatin. No messing about with daft fruits - good, down-to-earth perfectly cooked apple placed mosaic-fashion on a pleasing pastry with lots of gooey unctiousness and helped along with a simple vanilla ice cream.

  With food like this you have to wonder what revolting French peasants were moaning about back in 1789.

  A trip to Ludlow in the future will not be complete without a visit to The French Pantry. It’s extremely good value, serves delicious food and has just the right atmosphere.

241. Back To Ludlow.

 The dog and I are off on our West Midlands gastronomic tours again and back in Shropshire in Ludlow. For the first evening it was dinner in the bistro section of Fishmore Hotel. Past experience tells me that you can have some great dishes there as well as one or two which don’t quite hit the target. Fortunately this was a great night to be indulging oneself with the dog nicely relaxed by the side of the table and the late spring evening cheerful and pleasant.

  I chose a lovely starter of smoked trout rillette with little balls of avocado, tiny cubes of sweet pickled cucumber, a nicely crunchy slice of toast and, somewhere, caviar. I did so enjoy this dish. I wanted very much to order it again but self respect prevented me from doing so.

  The main course was a lovely piece of fish described as plaice on the menu though sturdy and thick like cod, finely cooked with truly excellent crushed potatoes, peas, broad beans and pancetta and tasty scorched lettuce. This dish was so good I purred with pleasure.

And then an interesting banana-flavoured deconstructed, crème brûlée, banoffee mousse, with toffee creméux and a few too many toasted hazel nuts. Light and pleasing.

What an enjoyable meal.

  Three Birmingham restaurants were included recently in the list of the top 100 UK restaurants in the Estella Damm National Restaurant Awards. Not too surprisingly they were:-

Well done and well deserved to our restaurants making up 3% of the the list but no other Birmingham or West Midlands restaurants featured on the list which I suspect says more about the list than it does about our restaurants. Hence no Cheal’s of Henley, no Wilderness, no Upstairs, no Hampton Manor, no Le Champignon Sauvage. Plenty of London restaurants. It’s all a bit daft really isn’t it?

Follow Lucy The Labrador’s and my adventures in food in the West Midlands on Twitter @knightanddog (Dog And Dinner).  

240. Dim Sum At Lulu Wild.

 

    In the history of Birmingham Friday 6 May 2022 was a mildly important date as it was then that the votes were counted at the Utilita Arena in the Gas Street Basin area, the votes having been cast the day before in the 4 yearly elections for the city’s council. I had stood as a candidate in a ward where my party did not stand a chance (someone has referred to it as a socialist republic which it proved to be) but it had been an exciting morning watching as the vote counting went on and listening to, and passing on, rumours of how our various candidates were getting on.

  The day had started early and standing around keeping an eye on the counting was more tiring than it sounds and by late lunchtime, as I walked back to New Street station through Brindley Place, I was feeling decidedly peckish - no, actually I was really quite ravenous. The sensible idea of lunching somewhere in Brindley Place popped into my mind but where exactly? Well, Lulu Wild looked promising and I had been ‘fancying a Chinese’ for a while when I came to think about it. So I ventured in.

  The menu lured me into cocktails and dim sum. I thoroughly enjoyed my two cocktails and was delighted with the dim sum. It was one of those meals where I did a little contented purring during it and, quite unusually for me, ordered extra food. And purred again.

  Great pleasure was extracted from each of the supreme dim sum - one each of prawn dumpling with pomegranate, scallop shui mai with tobiko, chicken and vegetable dumpling and Shanghai vegetable and mushroom dumpling. Great pleasure equally sprang from the pan-fried dim sum - Shanghai pork and chive dumpling, pan-fried prawn dumpling, chicken and vegetable dumpling and Shanghai vegetable and mushroom dumpling. Then, as reported above, so consumed with the pleasure of it all was I that I had another plate of pan-fried dim sum. It was all a very enjoyable experience - excellent service, a colourful happy decor, comfortably relaxing atmosphere. Just what you want for an unplanned lunch or even a planned one for that matter. Now I’m at home again I have a renewed lust for the dim sum so a return soon is a necessity.

  For the record, Lulu Wild opened in Birmingham in September 2021. 

239. Excursion To Sheffield - Vero Gusto And Juke And Loe.

 

  Although Birmingham has always been my home, I worked in and had a little house in, Sheffield, across the border from northern Mercia in the dark lands of Yorkshire. I worked there from 1981 to 2004 and I can tell you far more about the dining scene there, what little there was of it at the time, during those important years of English gastronomic history from practical experience than I can of West Midlands food at that time. I still visit friends there sometimes and go out to dine to find out what’s hot there, so to speak, especially as Sheffield is presently on a crest of trendiness.

   And so, once more, Lucy The Labrador and I set out from Stratford upon Avon where I had sat through six hours of violence and murder at the RSC watching the second and third parts of Henry VI and was pleasantly surprised the plays had not been murdered too much by their director, Owen Horsley, as some of the other directors there might have been expected to do, and headed for the foreign territory across the border in South Yorkshire. This might have been problematical as I had been an ardent supporter of the Lancastrians in the plays but I thought I would not mention this partisanship to anyone I came across during my stay in this land of the Yorkists.

  On my first evening in Sheffield my dining companion had suggested we dine at Vero Gusto, a family-run local favourite Italian restaurant in town which was opened in 2006 and, though Italian cuisine does not rank too highly in my list of favourite dining categories, this seemed like a reasonable proposition to me. And there was much to be pleased about.

  Unfortunately we were dining there when men, in considerable numbers, who were attending the ongoing snooker competition at the Crucible Theatre, and who were more rowdy than Jack Cade’s mob who attempted to bring down Henry VI’s government, had occupied most of the restaurant and there was a veritable hubbub with the staff looking somewhat stressed. The welcome, I think in consequence of that, was brisk and not warm. We were also parked up a narrow section of the restaurant at an inadequately sized table close to a table of noisy snooker enthusiasists which was not a happy start.

  Still we coped with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and dug in for the evening. And how delighted we were that we did so.

  I chose a starter of splendidly cheesy and truffley ravioli stracchino and tartuffo nero. The pasta was fine and a scattering of chopped roasted peanuts gave added texture. An excellent start. My dining companion enjoyed his asparagus soup served with focaccia and bread sticks.

  Then I had a truly great dish of superbly cooked lamb loin with a gorgeous, slightly sweet sauce. The accompanying potato gratin might have had a little more flavour but the smoked aubergine cream added another element to the deliciousness of the dish. Nevertheless if I had been served a plate of nothing but the magnificent lamb and sauce then I would have been no less ecstatic about it. My dining companion chose the lasagne, and though not known for holding back on criticism, gave it “9 out of 10”. I think my lamb will be one of my stand out dishes of the year.

  For dessert I chose a gloriously amaretto-soaked affogato and had no reason to complain. 

  Towards the end the snooker enthusiasts had returned to The Crucible for the evening session, peace began to reign and the front of house staff seemed less tense and friendlier. I was thoroughly delighted with my meal and already resolving that an earlier rather than later trip back to Sheffield was indicated to eat again at Vero Gusto.

  The following day, a three course lunch at the Michelin-listed Juke and Loe, “Brothers Luke and Joe [Grayson] have come together to run this laid-back eatery in this bustling part of the city. Seasonal cooking mixes the traditional with the modern ad every dish is equally appealing; preparation is skilful and flavours big and bold.Start with a cocktail in the bar”. 

  I doubt that having the cheap lunch option is ever a good idea and I think that one rarely gets a genuine impression of what a chef is offering. Naturally ingredients are less luxurious and more often than not, less enjoyable. But, despite what I write, we opted for the £30 for 3 courses lunchtime menu and it is hard to complain that we did not have value for money.

  I enjoyed my starter of smoked trout with wasabi mayonnaise, pickled whelks and seaweed salad but was less enthusiastic about the main course of ray wing, which was just too insubstantial in texture for me, served with a tasty white bean stew made lively with delightful pieces of guinea fowl and bursts of heat from harissa butter. The dessert of carrot cake, vanilla cream, black olive caramel and carrot sorbet was very much to my liking.

To do this restaurant full justice I feel I must return for dinner where cod and hogget are on the menu at present. I note that the restaurant will close for a short period in the coming weeks and then reopen having moved its location and that may well be the time to return.

238. Pick Thai, Stratford Upon Avon..

   When going to the latest bowdlerised version of the Bard’s work being performed by the RSC’s dreary creative management’s choice of actors picked not for their acting abilities but for their ability to confuse an aging, already befuddled audience and to fit in with the management’s view of a fair society, I find it best to have lunch rather than a rushed pre-theatre dinner and certainly not a post-theatre experience at the only place still open in town at that time - the horrible south Asian restaurant on Sheep Street which I shall not name.

  But of course, getting one’s hands on a reasonably edible lunch early or midweek is problematical in itself as few chefs want to serve the midday meal except on days closer to the weekend. I pondered and then remembered that when the late, lamented No 9 Church Street had closed its oven doors for the last time it was replaced by a Thai specialty restaurant called, slightly inelegantly, Pick Thai, in which there may or may not be a pun on the Thai language or simply an imperative to choose some neckwear.

  The restaurant is little changed from the days of No. 9 apart from appropriate new wallpaper and the addition of some Thai-themed pictures and decorations on the walls. It all looks comfortable and pleasant and charming. The restaurant is family-run which sets it apart from the two other Thai restaurants I can think of in Stratford and the service is quiet and polite and efficient. A two course lunch can be had for the remarkable price of £9.99 which sounds like pretty good value to me.

  And so as starter I chose the ‘Chef’s Special’ which was made up of two nicely crispy spring rolls filled with pieces of pleasingly cooked duck with carrot, spring onion and celery served with a tangy hoisin sauce. Very edible.

  The only real problem was that the starter was served at the same time as the main course so, feeling anxious that my massaman beef curry with rice, would soon cool down I felt an urgency to polish off my starter which was a pity really. The massaman curry was served in a rustic fashion and was very pleasant, the beef was tender and tasty and the sauce carried with it the pleasant favour of the soothing coconut milk with star anise and cinnamon and there were cashews and fried shallots in the curry. The generously-portioned rice was cooked well and it all made for an enjoyable main course at a very reasonable price.

  My choice for dessert was banana fritters with ice cream. When served, these looked lovely on the plate and the breadcrumb coating was pleasantly crispy but the coating was too thick and there was no flavour of banana. This was a disappointing dish.

  Despite the unsuccessful dessert, a fairly rapid lunch at Pick Thai proved to be an overall enjoyable experience and it certainly it was good value. I will be pleased to revisit the pleasant little restaurant again to enjoy its food and to support one of Stratford’s little local businesses.