228. Weston Super Mare - A Plague Of Peashoots On All Your Houses.

   Mid-March, and there seems to be a remarkable glut of pea shoots in the West Country. Lucy the Labrador and I are back in Weston super Mare, Birmingham’s ancient working class holiday resort, the weather variable, the dog-friendly hotel comfortable though the staff are mostly absent due to a mass COVID-19 infection and the town itself mostly deserted (perhaps its residents, like the hotel staff, are all self-isolating). Everywhere I go food is garnished with bunches of pea shoots. Even my pleasing scrambled egg hotel breakfast. Where have all these pea shoots come from? Is this a new pandemic - a plague of pea shoots? Fortunately, when it comes to garnish, I’m a fan of pea shoots. But you can have a bit too much of a good thing.

  I was particularly looking forward to returning to WSM to dine again at the Ginger Pig Kitchen (see Blog 186) which seems the most promising place to dine on western style, even British, food in the town at present - cuisine ménagère being infinitely more well represented there than cuisine bourgeoise. My first visit took place on tapas night, a weekly menu extending its contents beyond the borders of Spain to embrace other parts of the Mediterranean and their cuisines. The dishes are reasonably priced and generously portioned. Given the restaurant’s special emphasis on pork dishes I felt I really should have at least two dishes which used the flesh of that noble animal - I chose sticky pork belly bites with barbecue sauce and pork corn and sautéed chorizo in a red wine and honey sauce. The pork belly bites, though tasty, were not really to my liking as the belly was much more fat than lean (I suppose I am a Jack Sprat) but the chorizo dish was lovely, the sauce being particularly delicious and well matched with the sausage. I also had patatas bravas with tomato and red pepper sauce and very enjoyable garlic aioli, the potatoes being nicely cooked but not spicy enough for me. I also had the fabulous focaccia, freshly made on the premises, its soft crust perfectly salty and the robust flavour of rosemary running joyously through the beautiful large pieces of it. Oh, my focaccia was garnished with pea shoots. I finished with affogato, dessert and coffee rolled into one. So, a mixed bag but a couple of superb items among them.

  A return to the Ginger Pig kitchen to dine from the usual menu followed the next day. After an enjoyable cocktail, the base of which was Dead Man’s Fingers spiced rum, served in a skull glass jar, an equally enjoyable starter in the form of chicken liver parfait - very pleasant in fact - with delighful brioche and a pleasingly unctuous caramelised onion chutney. Rustic, I suppose and a garnish of, yes, peashoots had managed to elbow its way in on the dish, but this is a restaurant that doesn’t openly present itself as having pretensions though the chefs clearly have ambitions to bring good food to Weston.

  The main course was nicely pan-fried and meaty hake in a chowder of mussels and cubes of other fish and samphire and a garnish of, er, peashoots. This was very good with the only problem being the cubes of salmon in the chowder which were too powerfully flavoured in comparison with the hake itself. This would have been a real gem, served as it was with a good-sized chunk of the above mentioned focaccia to mop up the sauce, without the salmon and it reminds us that excellent fish cookery can bring such pleasure to the diner.

  I could not fight back the need to finish the meal with affogato, little pieces of macerated strawberry adding a little colour and enjoyable flavour.

  The third day’s dinner had problems. I started with cauliflower bhajis served with a sweet chilli chutney and heavily draped in peashoots. The bhajis had a nicely crispy coat and tasty interior though the presence of cauliflower was difficult to pin down but the exterior was very dark and the bhajis tasted burnt. I thought that a sweet flavour would help to some extent and searched for the sweet chilli sauce which had disappeared under the pile of peashoots and indeed, when I finally discovered it’s hiding place, the sweet heat it gave out did improve matters.

  The main course, alas, also had its problems. This was pork and cider pie with mashed potato, mushy peas, crispy kale, a pig in blanket, a stick of crackling and gravy. Unfortunately the pie pastry was too thick and consequently stodgy; the pork inside the pie was chunky and reasonably edible but not generously flavoured. The mash was stodgy and needed seasoning and butter and sadly the deep fried crispy kale which might have been fun had been rendered soft and soggy by having the gravy poured over it. The pig in blanket was very tasty but the crackling was far too hard and stronger teeth than mine were needed for it. The dish was oddly presented as a stack in which the peas were spread over the top of the pie which sat on the mash, the crackling protruding vertically from the pile like a chimney. At least no peashoots were involved.

  The dessert ended the meal positively - I thoroughly enjoyed a pleasingly favoured crème caramel, served with a delightful pig-shaped shortbread and three little spots of coulis.

  The restaurant has lovely staff and a small but pleasing wine list. It’s a cosy and comfortable and somewhat quirky place to sit in and dine in for a couple of hours and is clearly popular with locals and returning visitors to the resort. It clearly suits its target audience which in these present difficult times is probably something a lot of restaurants would wish to succeed in doing. I hope though that when I next visit Weston there will be rather fewer peashoots finding their way on to the plates there.

227. Grace And Savour.

 

 Like scientific boffins gathering around a laboratory workbench watching their distinguished professor at work on his latest experiment, the young, immaculately white-tuniced chefs of Grace And Savour worked at a preparation counter with Head Chef David Taylor putting together immaculately beautiful small dishes which made up the 15 course tasting menu of this third restaurant at Hampton Manor. And how pleasing that there was not a tattooed piece of human skin in sight.

  Rather like my meal the evening before, the proceedings start off in a comfortable lounge area where Taylor himself appears to shake hands (if one wishes to,  COVID-19 still in the back of everyone’s minds), introduce himself and present the guest with a delightful bowl of warm beef and carrot broth, punchy and at the same time soothing. And so the scene is set for a tasteful culinary extravaganza which will last about three and half hours.

  Moving to the dining room itself I, and the six other diners, seat ourselves at a counter close to, and in full view of, the preparation area where the smart young chefs are going about their business, calmly and neatly, preparing their various courses. First comes a small dish based on goats curd in white beetroot with rhubarb - an excellent start - then, what is introduced as the ‘carrot course’ (see previous Blog), a small carrot pleasingly tasty and enjoyable enough to make one overcome one’s now well-developed resentment of ‘carrot courses’. Next a pleasing small dish centred on Jerusalem artichokes and then (not on the menu) a mildly alarming but playful posh version of pork scratchings - chicken feet coated in a crunchy seed-filled batter - perhaps it was a little too crunchy as I had one or two moments of fleeting anguish about the immediate future of my aging teeth but on the whole it was fun and enjoyable and different.

   To be honest this was feeling like a meal made up of a series of delightful canapés (which is something I have always wished for) but I was still waiting for something big to happen. And then something big did come along - an immaculate dish of Shropshire wild boar tartare on a crisp made from sourdough leaven. 

   Dishes continued to arrive meticulously and patiently prepared, as we diners could all witness, from our viewing points. There was an excellent bowl made up of burnt leeks in butter and beef garam emulsion then, sadly, a dish I did not enjoy - chopped prawns in an emulsion covered by thinly sliced radish - it was certainly tasty but for me the texture was all wrong, verging on the mushy, though the ladies sitting next to me more diplomatically described the texture as “too soft’ and shared my reservations about the dish.

  Never mind, it was finally time for bread to be served and this took the form of a remarkably tasty, full-bodied heavily seeded sourdough made in-house served with a wonderful butter infused with the same grain used in the making of the bread. We moved on to another crustacean dish - Scottish langoustines with a spaghetti of squash and cherry blossom. Then a very lovely dish (which I forgot to photograph) of finely cooked monkfish well matched with pumpkin pickle and mussel cream and next, finally, what looked like being the star performance a gorgeously handsome slice of Welsh black beef accompanied little shreds of January king cabbage with various herbs all set off by an unctuous sauce of roasted beef bones. The beef was delicious, no doubt about it, but for me the cabbage was somewhat bitter and I did not enjoy it though the above mentioned ladies seated by me found the cabbage to be quite acceptable. But look at the photograph below and consider how lovely it all looked.

  Remarkably, I was feeling comfortably, but not excessively, full as I approached meal’s end. The choice of dishes and their sizes had been well-judged by Chef. There followed a predessert in honour of Chef’s Norwegian wife, the dish taking the form of what all Norwegians apparently eat for breakfast - caramelised whey served here with a ewe’s milk sorbet. This was excellent, the flavour certainly a palate cleanser, fresh and vibrant, and the back story was lovely.

  Just two desserts to go. Inevitably at this time of year, Yorkshire rhubarb had found its way on to the menu served with a custard and in the final straight my heart leapt at the the dish of Ivy house rice pudding with a burnished surface served with double cream ice cream. If I had been Cleopatra, which for many reasons I am obviously not, I should have chosen to bathe in this rice pudding rather than ass’ milk, so much did I enjoy it.

  The time had come to hurry back to Hampton Station to catch the train back to Birmingham. This had not been an evening of dining so much as an evening experience - sitting comfortably in a theatre watching not a Shakespeare play but the drama of smart young people acting out the preparation of high quality food and consuming the treasures that they produced as the various acts of the gastronomic play moved along. A great evening. And a nice touch to the end of the evening - a dated, chef signed menu was given to each diner as a very pleasing souvenir of their visit.

  It really is very early days for Grace and Savour and I felt very pleased to have been in one of the first group of paying diners (the restaurant had only opened the week before) to dine there. I hope it’s a great success. It certainly provides a highly enjoyable food-related experience.Could it be the West Midlands’ version of L’Enclume in twenty years time?

  Oh, I’ve just made a reservation for another visit there..

226. Opheem

 

  While some fabulous restaurant developments are taking place in the towns near Birmingham we must not forget the gems in the city itself and it may be argued that the jewel in the crown is the impeccable Opheem. This seems to be the Birmingham restaurant which is most likely to reap the city’s first ever 2 Michelin stars award if it keeps up its momentum. And presently there’s every sign that the momentum is building up more and more.

  There’s a new, more intimately welcoming entrance and luxuriously comfortable lounge area where amuses gueules are served with cocktails (well mine’s a perfectly prepared Monkey 47 and tonic with, importantly, a slice of grapefruit) and where an après-feast of petits four (a feast within a feast) is served with the coffee in a cosily comfortable, indulgently lazy few post prandial minutes before settling the bill and stepping out into the late Birmingham evening. 

  The staff are spot-on and the form of service in which the chefs deliver their dishes directly to the diners works so well bringing an intimate triangular relationship between food, eater and cook which is far superior to our current state of general service where food arrives at the table brought by a charming but often inexperienced young person who whispers a rushed explanation of what is in the dish or indeed fleetingly appears at the table and disappears without a word being uttered. At Opheem a chef responsible for the rather remarkable creation lovingly held in his hand describes his culinary little work of art to the diner clearly and presents the diner with a clear knowledge of what they are about to eat and just what is  the story behind it.

  It is wholly wrong to go to Opheem, I have learned, and having anything less than the full tasting menu. Too many gems are missed by choosing any other option. That said it isn’t easy to remember the detail of every dish without the use of a notebook (and I have no intention of looking like an gastronomic equivalent of a trainspotter) so my recall, little grey cells now matched by the colour of my once luxurious brown hair and like it, thinning out considerably, of the full panoply of Opheem tasting menu delights is not full and so I present a gallery of those delights with less description than would be ideal and possibly with a mild amount of inaccuracy. Three fabulous - yes, fabulous - amuses gueules, ‘snacks’, are served in the comfort of the lounge while my Monkey 47 gets things stoked up (look at the magic in the photographs) and then the final amuse bouche, tabuk maaz,  is served in the chic, cool, dining room under its ceiling of lights - confit hoggat with a little bowl of dreamy biryani gravy, shorba, and a mutton rib. Pure delight.

  Then to the first starter proper introduced as”the carrot dish”. The following day I dined at Grace and Savour and there too one course was described to me as “the carrot dish”. Is “the carrot dish” now an accepted course in the flow of a multicourse meal? I ask myself. I don’t mind carrots, in fact I find quite pleasurable, but really, are they worthy of being a course in their own right? I think not. Regardless, Opheem’s version of ‘the carrot course’, gajar, was, as one might expect, quite special being a tandoori-flavoured sand carrot served with a lentil pakora and a cooling but spicy chutney. Then the shockingly delicious tisria, Orkney scallop, perfectly cooked with beautiful spices which allowed the flavour of scallop still to soothe the palate and well balanced with cucumber. Two macaroons for this dish.

  Then the old favourite of aloo tuk, refined further to its benefit and now magical - achaari pink fir potato and the cheeky sweetness of tamarind. I only remembered to photograph it half way through and it is therefore not illustrated here but it looked good and tasted better.

  Then more fish - allepy - accurately cooked, lovely cod with smoked aubergine purée and new season French asparagus. 

  The meal advances. Pao, milk loaf flavoured with cumin, now more refined and golden and glistening, with accompanying lamb butter to apply to the bread. 

  A new departure for me at Opheem - Chettinad - deliciously mildly flavoured Creedy Carver duck cooked perfectly with a turnip purée and a quite stupendously accompanying bowl of confit duck with pearl barley. The elements combine to make a faultless and memorable dish.

  And suddenly we have arrived at the desserts after a pretty little predessert. Firstly rewandchini, Yorkshire rhubarb of a good texture with stem ginger. Perhaps the flavours were not quite as strong as they might have been but the next dessert, rasmali, possibly what may turn out to be the prettiest dessert of the year, was gorgeous combining the flavours and textures of milk curd in a white chocolate sphere with almond and pistachio though some of the curd inside the chocolate was liquid which slightly detraction from the otherwise perfection of the dish.

  Back in the lounge the petits four were delightful - gloriously sweet fudge and fruity jelly and a lovely cake. 

  This was a near faultless dinner full of pleasures and great tasty dishes eaten in a very attractive and comfortable space. Opheem really does go from strength to strength.