115. Digital Michelin Guide For 2021.

  Michelin will hold its Guide reveal event on 25 January 2021 at The Dorchester Hotel in London. The Guide is usually revealed in October but the delay will allow for a “full and comprehensive” edition to be published. Naturally the ‘reveal’ ceremony will be held in a London location and not anywhere else in the country where a worthwhile restaurant may be found occasionally.

  And this will be an entirely digital edition which makes it rather historic given that for the first time I shall have no new book to place on my bookshelf since 1974. In decades to come, foodies interested in the history of dining out will ask “What happened in 2021? Why was no Guide issued? Why’s there a gap in your collection?”. And I shall sigh and think of missed lunches, a birthday dinner that never took place and the constant sloshing of alcohol not down my throat but over my hands. We won’t forget the run-up to Michelin 2021.

  Chain restaurants have gone to the wall even the venerable Pizza Express (see Blog 49 is closing a large number of branches in the West Midlands which in Birmingham are in Corporation Street and The Mailbox as well as Bromsgrove, Dudley Merry Hill, Hereford, Ludlow, Moseley, Shirley, Stourbridge and Walsall.

  Of course the greatest loss of this year has been the Ludlow Food Festival - the world’s original food festival - and it did not seem right to not be in Ludlow last weekend when it should have taken place. So the dog and I went any way and walked around the town, she swam in the river, and in the absence of the famed Sausage Trail she had her very own excellent sausage sandwich from the marvellous Vaughan’s sandwich shop in King Street. This little shop is a gem, wholly unpretentious but keeping up the tradition of the great English sandwich for an excellent price.

  As usual we stayed at the dog-friendly Fishmore Hall where I indulged for the first time in its take on afternoon tea. This is the first time I’ve had tea which starts with an amuse bouche, a delightful piece of chorizo sausage roll with a pickled tomato jam. More sausage, and this time served on a slate! And then the savouries - 4 variants on a traditional sandwich theme - a tuna and Red Leicester melt which was very tasty and looked nice with its zigzag streaks of balsamic decorating it, a smoked Cheddar and spring onion wrap which was actually my favourite though I’d normally choose a straightforward white bread English sandwich over a piece of flatbread any day, a pleasing coronation chicken finger sandwich with extra texture and, saved till last because of its promise, but the least enjoyable, a brioche of tasty ham hock not benefitting at all from the accompanying mustard and honey.

  There was a fine collection of attractive cakes and when it arrived on my table the sight of the funky looking Battenburg squeezed a “Wow!” out of me. The fruit and non-fruit scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam were very edible but I thought the outer surfaces might have been a little too crispy. The petite chocolate espresso cup with a lovely smooth chocolate mousse and white chocolate was a happy indulgence as was the lovely violet and blueberry macaron and the gold and red coloured  lemon and raspberry Battenburg which had elicited the Wow! on first sight lived up to expectations.

  An unusual and enjoyable twist on a traditional English tea while sitting in a sunlit conservatory with a view of Clee Hill in the distance dominating the scenery - what could be finer?

  But afternoon tea is not all that’s on offer at Fishmore. Apart from the fine dining restaurant, Forelles, another part of the Hall, a splendid Georgian sitting room, is used to serve bistro food. Much of it is very good and a very pleasing sirloin steak, which I choose to eat only rarely, eaten in the ‘bistro’ made me extremely happy on my first evening at the hotel. Cooked exactly as I wanted, tender as butter and the flavour enhanced by perfect seasoning. No sauce was ordered and none was needed. A dreamily delicious portobello mushroom luxuriously cooked in butter with very fine chips and a spanking tomato accompanied the steak. There was also a bunch of leaves rich with rocket, which is one of my arch enemies, but the ferric bite from it went well with the meal though the challenge of eating all of the rocket was a challenge too great for my frail taste buds.

  One of the nicest things about Fishmore is that the hotel is very dog friendly and when eating in the bistro diners can be accompanied by their dogs. It’s just the right sort of room to have a black Labrador stretched out on the floor paying close attention to the precise direction the forkfulls of sirloin are travelling in and willing that direction to be the one which leads to her mouth.

  And there was Sunday lunch. Here fine dining with its neat little islands of food turns into a trencherman’s holiday. Well, perhaps that’s not true of the starter. I had a creamy cauliflower soup with curry oil and a crouton in the form of an onion bhaji which seemed like a very clever idea except that my bhaji was a little burnt and and the resulting bitterness spoiled the overall dish. 

  But back to trenchermen. A vastly generously sized roast pork traditional Sunday lunch was served up according to my choice. The meat was enjoyable, not completely delicious - perhaps it needed a little more seasoning - but the accompanying garden full of vegetables ensured there were several things on the plate to please. The pork’s crackling was stupendously perfect, crispy but not tooth-shatteringly crunchy,  the duck fat roast potatoes were more leathery on the outside than crispy - I picked at one of them and left the other two; getting roast potatoes to the point of perfection really is an art known to just a few, and there was also spot-on red cabbage, some rather indifferent broccoli, good old swede purée, crushed carrot, pleasing cauliflower, green beans which gave little pleasure and the very necessary apple sauce and red wine gravy. I was full long before I could I had eaten everything (well the beans and roast potatoes were never going to get eaten no much how much was on the plate) and no-one should be able to claim they still felt hungry after all that.

  I didn’t attend the virtual Ludlow Festival as it was broadcast - I was busy having an enjoyable weekend in reality in Ludlow itself, happily eating real food and doing my best to meet Lucy The Labrador’s sausage craving. I hope to watch some of the videos now we’re back home and plan to be in Ludlow for the next Festival among the happy, vaccinated, COVID-19 free crowds in September 2021.

 

114. Purnell’s Does Sunday Lunch.

  It’s the New Normal. And Sunday lunch at Purnell’s is part of that new normal. An exciting prospect. Would there be a novel Purnell twist on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? I wondered. Well that would have been exciting. Alas no. But that didn’t mean it was not a fabulous lunch. A languid, relaxed cruise through some old Purnell classics with some startlingly summery new dishes punctuating the menu alongside them.

  The celestial lemony black potato with accompanying edible charcoal got Sunday lunch off to the start that Sunday lunch should have. And all very elegantly plated up. 

  Along came the joyously familiar, equally celestial pain de campagne, so light and cloud-like you could float up to heaven on it and then the first starter of this aestorial parade of dishes - a lovely multicoloured dish of flavour-riven heritage tomatoes assisted in their efforts to please by sour cream and pink peppercorn. Then a ceviche of mackerel, more soothingly delicately flavoured than many dishes based on that fish, and embellished with flamed cucumber and apple gel.

  Old friends, as dear as always, turned up to the party. Better than ever it seemed, Glynn Purnell’s very own monkfish massala on its bed of spiced lentils with slivers of coconut, a dish much copied but never improved upon except perhaps in this restaurant itself. The second photograph shows what an effect I can have on a plate of this dish.

  And then the joy of perfectly barbecued, delightfully flavoured lamb rump with surprising and wholly effective peach, pea purée, a happy confit potato and the added greenness of avocado, with a lovely lamb sauce.

  A word on the wine menu. Much innovation going on with some delightful introductions to the list by Jarek Samborski. He suggested the wondrous little number depicted below and much pleasure was derived from it.

  And then the oldest friend of all, no introduction needed - Burnt egg surprise and all the little bits that come with it. 10 - 10 -10 (Oliver, Prue and Matthew).

  So no roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but gorgeous lamb and Sunday lunch at Purnell’s was well worth the trip through COVID infested streets dodging around those who confuse a millimetre with a metre. Well, if the government won’t use imperial measurements what you can one expect?

  The chef in charge that day appeared to be Luke Butcher.

113. A Treat At No 9 Church Street With The Help Of The Taxpayer.

  Though I planned to have dinner there, finding the evening fully booked I opted instead to have lunch at No 9 Church Street. Stratford was awash with day visitors and short break stay-cation takers many of whom had let the sun get to their brains and had lost the ability to measure 1 metre. Notably there were the middle-aged couples whose hands were glued together and had not the ability to walk single file for a few seconds while passing someone walking in the opposite direction on a narrow pavement. And as usual there were the problematic Lycra garbed cyclists who do not understand the difference between a pathway and a roadway and with their middle-class sense of entitlement drove furiously at any man or beast in their way. There were also the daytrippers who were obviously from the inner city of one of the West Midlands metropolises not all from the same household who can’t count to 6 or choose not to and then complain that their communities have experienced an unfair degree of visitation by that which shall not be named here. No wonder that the Stratford locals view the tourists as a curse and a blessing in not exactly equal measures.

  And everyone was partying in the broadest sense of the word on the Chancellor of The Exchequer’s bountiful generosity on the taxpayer’s behalf - whoever the taxpayer may be - oh look I’m one of them - the Eat Out To Help Out campaign. So I partied too. And you can’t help but party on 3 courses plus coffee for just £15 at No 9 Church Street.

Well of course the Chancellor hasn’t gone completely doolally so alcohol has to be paid for without the taxpayer’s help but that did not stop me being soothed by a pleasing Hendricks and tonic joyously garnished with minute cubes of cucumber. After a couple of slices of good bread accompanied by both butter or olive oil, I’m a butter man myself, the starter of smoked gammon on a bed of Romesco sauce with a heavy leaf fall of rocket rising high above everything else was delivered to my table and flavours, apart from the rocket, were not strong. Though rocket is an arch-enemy of mine here it worked generally well with the other parts of the dish and not too many leaves were left on the plate when I hung up my knife and fork.

  And on to the main course which arrived in its own good time - a finely grilled pork loin chop with 2 vegs (a satisfactory mashed potato and nicely cooked shreds of hispi cabbage) with a thyme jus. The pork was a lordly-sized piece of meat and very tender and highly commendable but did it need a little more seasoning? - I thought so. And am I being a little ungracious in saying that the dish would have been made more merry with some accompanying apple; pork and apple, why else would pigs live in orchards? But how can one feel unhappy with generously-portioned fine starters and main courses for just £10. Gift horses and mouths come to mind.

  I’m sorry to say that I really did not get the dessert. Vanilla-poached peaches with lots and lots of whipped cream and toasted almonds plating the the top of it. I really could not eat all the cream. And finally, also included in the £15 price, a good cup of coffee and an appealing little nutty petit four.

  Thank you Taxpayer, Chancellor, Chef and the wonderful Front of House restaurant manager, Magdalena, for a meal of great good value at No. 9. The changes there retain the cosiness of the restaurant whilst ensuring a feeling of safety in the face of that which will not be named. A nice comfortable lunch.

112. Back To The Woodsman.

  After several months away Lucy The Labrador and I were back in Stratford. The poor old Shakespeare Hotel seemed a little forlorn with the necessary changes wrought by that wretched virus. But there were plenty of visitors in Stratford in both the daytime and the evening and the town was overflowing with visitors - well it is summer and they can’t go to Spain - and hardly anyone seemed to acknowledge that there was a pandemic on from their general inability to recognise what exactly is meant by social distancing. Most forlorn of all is the closed theatre. There’s a poster outside The Other Place for The Winters Tale which was due to open a few days after the prime minister shut down the country. It’s sad to see but perhaps those right-on producers and managers at the RSC can use the time and sit down and take a good hard look at how they’ve bowdlerised Shakespeare in the last two or three years and descended into the depths of sanctimonious self-indulgence just like the chef who produces a devastatingly expensive Tasting menu using the cheapest and vaguely most unpleasant cuts of meat with the excuse that he/she wishes to introduce the diner to something new and “respecting” the poor dead animal by using the “whole of it” in their dishes (and coincidently maximising their profits).

  And so to some enjoyable food. Dinner at The Woodsman in the rather beautiful Hotel Indigo known to Stratford lags for centuries as The Falcon. 

  There was some lovely brioche made finer by the perfect use of salt and with the pleasant accompanying butter. No description of the bread was given which was a pity as it deserved an introduction as did my very fine starter of exquisite treacle cured sea trout served with a pleasingly crabby-flavoured crab mayonnaise and a less exciting avocado purée and a subtley flavoured fennel salad which gave the right amount of texture. Unfortunately my starter arrived seconds after my bread and I had almost finished my sea trout when my aperitif of Chase Pomodoro and pink grapefruit gin and tonic arrived. Pity. The gin went perfectly with the starter but there was too little of the dish left to get the full pleasure of the match. Still, I was feeling comfortable and relaxed and well socially distanced and so I found it really rather difficult to feel aggrieved in any way and the starter was lovely.

  But the best was yet to come. I had a fabulous main course of beautifully cooked Brixham plaice on the bone which was a joy in itself but it came along with a gorgeous beurre noisette which was a form of nectar in which the fish could bask. It was served simply with 6 triumphant mussels, tender and, like the fish, masterfully seasoned and spinach and crispy little capers. A truly great dish. See picture at the head of this piece.

Chase Pomodoro and Pink Grapefruit gin was late to the party.

  After these 2 magnificent dishes the dessert was something of a letdown with some of the ingredients vaguely discordant. I ate it all but it was a little deflating following on from what had come before. For the record I had the peach melba cheesecake with pistachio ice cream which I did not think was a marriage made in heaven.

The Woodsman serves up some fabulous fayre. I wish front of house, who give a polite, friendly and welcoming service, would give short introductions to each course and that the delivery of courses was more satisfactorily spaced but the food is generally memorable for all the right reasons.

111. Return To Craft, 8 Draws Near.

  The steamy hot weather had left the city centre deserted and public transport largely empty. So, not too worrying a journey into the city centre apart in my bemasked state from the risk of momentarily broiling in my own juices.

  I found Craft changed. For a start it now seems to be Craft rather than Craft Dining Rooms. Well that makes sense. The pods outside in an HG Wellsian sort of way seemed to have proliferated and the bar was now located outside. I had booked an outdoor table but was told I had been allocated one indoors which was gloriously air-conditioned and the social distancing space was generous. On this day the air conditioning was as important as the food. Well almost. Well, that is probably true, actually. So I was both happy and relieved to have had my reservation countermanded.

  On line menus and wine lists. Technology comes to the rescue. I was asked if I wanted a card menu and I did as it’s nice to have a souvenir. On the back there’s a nice little map of Great Britain showing the places of origin of some of the restaurant’s wines and ingredients. At this point I realised I had not had my temperature taken (which the restaurant had previously been making a big thing of) though the great heat of the day would have undoubtedly rendered me pyrexial anyway and no-one had offered me or pointed me in the direction of hand sanitiser. 

  The pleasure of a double Cotswolds Gin and tonic and in came the starter. Each course very reasonably offered four choices, I opted for the very tasty and fine-looking salt beef with refined pickles and mustard and accompanied by a small brioche loaf. The brioche was mildly burned though edible but really should not have been sent out of the kitchen in that state.

  The bread was a relatively minor issue when the main course arrived. Pork in many guises. Here Chef had come into his own. There was so much that was right about the dish. With its circular motif it was vaguely psychedelic and had lots of browns and yellows that those of us who lived through the 1970s would be so familiar with. And how wonderful not to just be served pork cheek or pork belly. Here there were both plus a lovely little bit of pork rump. The cheek was among the most tasty I’ve had before and the belly was magnificent with its slim little slice of crackling adhering to it. I enjoyed  the perfectly cooked five spice carrot, the mash of ideal texture and the magnificent piece of gorgeously flavoured pineapple which had been marinated in something ambrosian I think. At the hub was an egg which went well with the rest. Top marks. A repeat visit soon was now assured.

  So often the main course of a meal can be the low point but this was the undoubted star of this meal.

  The dessert was summed up on the menu as Rice pudding with Hay ice cream. Mercifully the flavour of hay was barely noticeable and the rice pudding was perfectly textured. The milk tuiles gave a subtle flavour to it all. Light and apt, just my sort of pudding.

  The indoor restaurant has halved its size since I last visited Craft rather as our prime minister would like us all to do. It was a little disorientating but made the restaurant more intimate as the restaurant had been far too big and hard to keep warm in winter. So where had the rest of it gone?

  I asked about the publicity I had read recently for Chef Andrew Sheridan’s new restaurant, 8, and wondered where it was going to be situated. The answer was in front of my nose. It was going to be in the missing half of Craft and would open on 8 October. The menu will be an 8 course tasting menu and will be themed around the number 8. Each dish pays ”homage to the number and Sheridan’s culinary journey” with the concept summing up his whole career in eight courses”. This sounds all a little too self-referential and self-absorbed but I’m ready to give it a go although getting a reservation might be difficult as the 16 cover venue will at first be limited to eight covers because of the need for adequate social distancing. Sheridan does produce the most delicious dishes so 8, I’m sure, is going to be rather special.

Addendum - Thanks to the Chancellor of The Exchequor for my very decently sized Eat Out to Help Out discount. It really is a very sunny day.