Review: Wilder, Nailsworth

Nailsworth officially has a restaurant empire. Just like Rick Stein in Padstow or Heston in Bray, chef Matthew Beardshall has now got no less than two… count ’em, two… restaurants in town! There’s the brilliant and relaxed Wild Garlic where we’ve always enjoyed great meals full of straight-forward good cooking, and now there’s Wilder which offers a higher-end tasting menu experience just a hundred yards down the road.

The menu is £70 for eight courses and, kinda like the Wild Garlic, the decor and the tableware doesn’t really flatter the menu. It’s pretty ordinary stuff and (I hate myself for saying this) ultimately I think some of the excitement and pleasure of an expensive tasting menu is where it’s served and what it’s served on. It might be that they’re planning on investing more when they know they’ve got a hit? Or that they just don’t have the touch for that aspect of dining.

Still, they certainly know how to dish up good food! The first amuse was a cup of jacket potato soup. And that’s exactly what it was. Absolutely no mistaking the rough earthen flavour of a jacket potato coming through the smooth gulp of soup. Clever. Paired with a tiny sobrasada toastie that absolutely hummed with its own deeply earthy pig flavour.

There were a trio of good starters with some neat ideas. Salt-baked parsnip with curd was lovely, the parsnip having a richly creamy texture to go with with its sweet/funk flavour. Home-cured salmon was delish, so was the roast and spiced cauliflower, though I wasn’t 100% certain the two really went together. Sweetcorn tortellini with a truffle emulsion made for another gently amiable dish, although the pasta was a bit thick; didn’t detract from the flavour at all, but I guess I had my “fine dining radar” on and this wasn’t refined.

The main was a beautiful piece of pork tenderloin, still toothy and pink but nicely glazed without. The five-spice gravy was good, though subtle. Butternut puree, cavolo nero and a blob of transparent apple sauce accompanied well.

The rest was a bit anti-climactic. The cheese dish included a few nuggets of spicy Hampton Blue served with pickled pear plus roast, crisp and puree’d jerusalem artichoke. Creamy puree was just weird with cheese. The pear had lost its sweetness in the pickle. Pre-dessert of coconut sorbet with charred pineapple was better, though a very sweet sorbet indeed. Dessert was from the blob school of tasting menu desserts. A quenelle of (good) chocolate ganache, a quenelle of very sweet blackberry sorbet, and two dollops of chestnut mousse. I liked all three flavours in combination but this was a texture-free plate and after a few mouthfuls just too sweet and rich to love.

The wine pairing was very reasonable and the wines very good and intelligently paired. Service was also lovely. But really I’ve got: starters that I enjoyed but didn’t knock my socks off, a main course that was pleasant, and a disappointing pud. That’s not a great investment of £70 per head without drinks. I’m going back to the Wild Garlic for an unfussy dinner I know I’ll love, and will wait quite a while before checking whether Wilder has turned up the volume on its tasting menu.