428. Ludlow Food Festival 2024.

 Lucy The Labrador and I are back in Ludlow for the Food Festival - the original food festival in Britain. This is our tenth year (though of course we were not here in 2020 when a Festival of sorts was broadcast on line because of the pandemic we did not attend thr festival in body though we were in Ludlow physically.

  Once more we were staying at Fishmore Hall, as we always have, and the now old dog is familiar we the room we always have if not the staff who have largely departed after Laura Penman sold the hotel in January this year to a cost-cutting businessman who seems to be doing to Fishmore what Starmer is doing to the country. A lot of the joy seems to have disappeared from the place just as it has from Britain in general over the last two months or so. The kitchen staff all departed with the Head Chef Phil Kerry who had maintained the reputation of the hotel’s restaurant, Forelles, after his predecessor, Joe Gould, had moved on and matters culinary seem to have been very chaotic over the late spring and early summer. A new chef, Nicky Hull-Saldhana, who had worked for a long time in the Cayman Islands, was appointed in June and dining in Forelles seems to have improved with only an à la carte menu being on offer (three courses for a fairly stiff £55) but I am told that he will depart Forelles next week to be replaced by a Cayman Islands colleague, Alan Pressly, to whom I was introduced as he was arriving at the hotel.

  The dishes on offer generally have a veneer of fine dining but lack the finesse needed to see Forelles returned to The Good Food Guide or to maintain its presence in the Michelin Guide. We will have to see what chef Pressly brings to the party.

  My first dinner at Forelles brought with it an amuse bouche of a mushroom in a crispy batter on a rather rough looking pea purée, but who doesn’t like a piece of crispy batter?

   There then followed a starter of murky coloured but nicely textured leek and potato soup which was tasty and accompanied by well-flavoured smoked haddock and precisely poached egg. There was the inevitable garnish of the omnipresent pea shoot.

  A slice of sourdough with miso butter was served along with the soup. I was not too keen on the butter. Sometimes I would like to experience the pure taste of good quality English butter.

  The main was visually messy, wholly lacking in the finesse one would expect to be on display in a “fine dining restaurant”. But it tasted much better than it looked - blackened cod, nicely cooked and seasoned on a bed of mashed potato. Some sad pea shoots inevitably served as garnish and they did not add to rhe dish’s attractiveness.

  The dessert was very enjoyable and quite arty in its presentation though to be fair it was a passable strawberry cheesecake deconstructed with no very good reason.

  All in all Nicky Hull-Saldhana presents some pleasant and edible food but the presentation leaves something to be desired. It will be interesting to see if Alan Pressley brings more finesse to the dishes presented at Forelles.

Alan Pressley

  In my search started before the assault by the COVID-19 virus for great Ploughman’s lunches, I derived some pleasure for an example of the dish served at Fishmore especially as the plate included to be, aptly, Shropshire Blue, though one fully understands that Shropshire Blue is not made in Shropshire?

  And so, to the festival. I attended some of the food demonstrations including that by a Gareth Johns, ‘Slow Food Ambassador for Wales’. This was helpful especially as Johns gave an explanation of what ‘Slow food’ is exactly, particularly as the term seems to have become very trendy. Basically it is food that isn’t fast food and not slow cooked food.

  I should have liked to be present at the food demonstration given by Stuart Collins of Docket in Whitchurch but unfortunately his session clashed with an excellent tasting demonstration on cheese and drink given by Emma Young, author of The Cheese Wheel. Emma concentrated very appropriately on local cheeses which, because no cheeses are made in Shropshire other than Ludlow Blue from the Ludlow Food Centre, involved presenting Cheshire and Welsh cheeses.

  I was very impressed by the demonstration by Ivan Tisdall who earlier this year opened Native at Tenbury Wells at the location of the former Michelin starred Pensons. It was interesting to hear how pleased he was to have exchanged the pressures and costs of London for the quieter rural location of Worcestershire. It emphasised to me how fortunate to live here in the West Midlands rather than London which may have far more to offer but at a much greater price.

  Dinner again that evening at Forelles. After an amuse bouche the starter I chose of trout gravlax came with little blobs of beetroot relish dotted all over plus, I think, a saffron cream. It was quite enjoyable but, goodness, what a fussy presentation.

  The main was made up of three very nicely cooked slices of lamb served with pickled walnut and another rendition of beetroot. This was a very enjoyable dish and the lamb was just as I should have liked it. I chose not to have dessert.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

434. Charlton Arms Ludlow.

 

 I had seen an online communication from Ludlow’s The Charlton Arms which urged its customers to vote in another one of those online surveys with which the editor of the Good Food Guide is presently obsessed - this time to identify the restaurant serving the Best Sunday Roast - and as I was in Ludlow I thought I would dine there myself to try out their Sunday lunch.

 With no Sunday bus services operating in the town I had a long walk from Fishmore Hall where I was staying, Corve Street seems to become ever steeper, and I thought I deserved a treat after my physical effort. I was to be disappointed.

  The Charlton Arms is beautifully located at one end of Ludford Bridge with a fine view over the river Teme. It certainly has the location needed to win a Bib Gourmand. The dining room furniture is looking rather shabby chic but the service is very much on the ball and one is rapidly concentrating on the food rather than the internal decor.

  I decided not to have a starter as Sunday roast main courses are usually quite filling. Four slices of nicely cooked beef were served though it was not the tenderest I have eaten (the finest beef lunch in Ludlow, I think, must be that served at Mortimers in Corve Street). Roast potatoes, rather dry I thought, accompanied the beef along with a crisp, very puffed up Yorkshire pudding and what amounted to almost a macedoine of cubed root vegetables and decent gravy. Had I wanted to have any form of green, the only one on offer was cauliflower in a cheese sauce at an additional £3.50. I regret that the lunch did not really live up to my expectations even though it was very reasonably priced. I shall not be voting for the Charlton Arms’ Sunday lunch in the Good Food Guide’s competition I am afraid.

  I enjoyed my dessert of a well poached pear with vanilla ice cream and a warm chocolate sauce though there was little about it to make me feel that a Michelin recommendation was indicated.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

  After leaving the Charlton Arms, a necessarily slow walk back to Fishmore Hall, taking in some pleasing sites of old Ludlow, first over Ludford Bridge crossing the river Teme where Yorkists fought Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses and then up the steep hill to the market square, then through the town and down Corve Street, past the excellent Mortimers, previously the Michelin starred La Becasse and before that, the two starred Hibiscus where Claude Bosi was chef, and then further down the hill past the former location of Shaun Hill’s The Merchant House, Ludlow’s first Michelin-starred restaurant and the birthplace of Ludlow’s now faded reputation as a centre of gastronomy. No sign I’m afraid of Ludlow returning to its former culinary prominence but it will be forever a location of the greatest importance in the history of dining out in the West Midlands.

433. Koba-ko x Lucky 7.

 I have never really appreciated the charms of Kings Heath, if there are any. It is scruffy and clogged with traffic, the more so since some entitled middle class residents have managed to have the dread word of ‘low traffic neighbourhood’ imposed on certain roads (those in which they live) leading off the main road artery running through the suburb. This has resulted in mammoth planters, now rotting with all the rain and highly attractive to the all pervading litter that is strewn around Kings Heath, and full of dead flora, blocking side roads and adding to the post-apocalyptic appearance of the place.

   This is a faux Bohemia, colonised it seems by the not terribly useful middling members of the hipster middle class made up of bearded men and dowdy women with more money to spend than the average but not enough to enable them to reside in Harborne or Edgbaston. Kings Heath feels oppressive, the generally unattractive old buildings crowding in on one, and it looks particularly depressing on a dark, very wet early October evening with the streets largely deserted. “What am I doing here?” I asked myself as two thin, bearded men holding hands and speaking in American accents join me outside the restaurant on York Road where we are soon joined by other hipster types, waiting to be let in to the tiny Koba-Ko Japanese-style ramen/noodle restaurant located above a cafe. A lot of them seem to know each other and it is all somewhat cliquey. I toy with giving up and going back to town as we wait in the damp and the dark but as I have already paid half the bill I decide to hold on and endure what may come to pass. 

  Getting into the restaurant involves a tricky ascent up a steep, narrow, winding staircase but once in situ Koba-Ko is warm and welcoming and interesting. I allow my fellow diners to take their seats and I heave a sigh of relief that I have a table to myself and don’t have to talk to anyone as I feel sure there are very few there with whom I could carry on a two hour conversation which would be of interest to either side. And so I relax.

  This was to be a collaboration between Koba-Ko and, quite logically, Thomas Wood of Lucky 7, the Jewellery Quarter cocktail bar, who has a special interest in things Japanese in general and sake in particular. Robert Wood and Sam Hill, who opened Koba-ko in October 2023, appeared to introduce themselves and outline the coming evening and we were ready for action. The thin bearded men mentioned above meanwhile set about playing a version of pattercake, pattercake with each others hands and it seemed a cabaret was part of the meal.

  The meal was very good and Wood really had matched the ambitious cocktails with what was served to eat. Firstly, there were three unpretentious snacks which were immensely enjoyable in a daft, guilty pleasure sort of way - tasty deep fried nori in a light crispy batter, a small bowl of refreshing smashed cucumber with a mild back-of-the-throat heat to it and three crispy coated chicken balls, a little overcooked, served on a stick. What pleasure.

  Next came a superb dish of cold noodles delightfully flavoured with nori oil matched with Dassai 45 poured from a rare magnum of this particular sake to which Wood gave an excellent introduction and allowed a starring role.

  Onwards with Saba shioyaki, delicious salt grilled mackeral - perfectly cooked and delightfully tasty and enhanced with the radish tang of daikon. Wood matched it admirably with a splendid yuzu based cocktail which was a perfect pairing. Afterwards came pumpkin gyoza - the dumplings were ideally textured and the filling very tasty. I found the tomato-based sake cocktail to be my least favourite pairing.

Next to come was panko coated fried pork loin. The pork was well cooked but may have benefitted from feeling the heat for a slightly shorter time. The panko coating however was splendidly crispy. The accompanying shreds of raw cabbage did little for me as did the little blob of mustard which looked out of place and inappropriate. 

  The dessert which was made up of some pleasing black sesame ice cream and equally pleasing macerated fig rounded off a very enjoyable meal and I was in a happy state of mind when I set out back into the cascading rain and black night, though my happy thoughts were from time to time invaded by grim flashbacks of two grown men playing pattercake pattercake with each other in the centre of a public dining room. Then again, I reflected, this was Kings Heath, so what did I expect?

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.