Review: Oxheart, Long Compton

Sitting in the kitchen

Sitting in the kitchen

I know what kind of cuisine I like. I like powerful flavours. I like them sharp, sour, bitter, umami. Ferments and pickles. Charring and smoking. Herb and spice. I’m not so bothered by delicacy and cream, butter and elegant simplicity. I think this explains why sometimes my lukewarm reviews of places like Five Fields and Core – clearly superb examples of their type – don’t agree with what everyone else is writing about them.

Conversely, I will fall happily in love with places like Oxheart, a tiny place lurking in a rural Cotswold village cooking up the kind of place-based modern British food that I prefer. There are a couple of seats at the kitchen counter, which we were lucky enough to get, because then you can spend the whole meal watching Chef Mark Ramshaw cooking and chat with him when there’s time. And there are maybe 6 or 8 other covers, that’s it. The decor is dark and woodsy, the crockery nicely rustic local pottery.

Chalk stream trout

Chalk stream trout

Lots to enjoy in the food. Very easy to scoff was a starter of sticky onions and ogleshield cheese grilled together and topped with a friendly abundance of truffle. Gimme a trug of this and a huge chunk of bread and I’d be in heaven. Oh yeah, and the bread course was special in itself: a beautiful sourdough with smoky butter, a little jar of excellent beer pickles and some slices of absolutely superb pork charcuterie.

Pork, peas and pickled strawberry was a good main course; meltingly good piece of slow-cooked meat with the strawberry making a great relish. Loads of flavour in the gravy to boot. Fish course was chalk-stream trout, cured rather than cooked but still served with a very tangy beurre blanc.

Pork

Pork

First dessert was a proper savoury: a chunk of bitter-caramel-y spiralised tarte tatin, alongside a chunk of beautifully kept local rind-washed cheese (I didn’t note the name, sorry!). Truly great pairing. The main dessert included the dramatic flair of a strawberry sorbet set to look exactly – I mean EXACTLY – like a frozen strawberry. It was spookily good and of course it tasted great. Every dish was consistently good, which with such determined local sourcing and invention, isn’t easy.

The tasting menu at Oxheart was £65 before drinks when we went. The wine list is small but interesting, we found some good stuff. If you like the same kind of food that I like, you’ll love Oxheart.

Not a strawberry

Not a strawberry

Review: Endo at the Rotunda

Beautiful lobster bowl

Beautiful lobster bowl

Chef Endo has spoiled all other sushi restaurants for me. When your sushi is made by hand in front of you, and the piece of seafood is firm and perfect, and the rice is still warm and of perfect pearly grains with a hint of very friendly vinegar, and it is handed directly to you without touching a plate… well, it’s going to be hard to enjoy a chunk of cold tuna on cold rice off of a conveyer belt ever again!

Endo at the Rotunda is a dramatic yet meditative space, high up in the great circular room at the top of the old TV centre. There are a dozen seats in a wide semi-circular sweep around the preparation space where Endo performs culinary magic with the help of his team. Memo to self: this is a shared dining experience, so unlike most Michelin restaurants you will feel silly and self-conscious if you arrive 10 minutes late and find Chef Endo and ten other diners all waiting patiently for you!

Clever hands

Clever hands

It took the first two courses to get over our mortification.

Luckily, Chef Endo is a charming host. That’s actually a big part of the meal, and is an (admittedly expensive) echo of traditional restaurant culture in Japan, where local restaurants are small, many of the clientele go frequently, and the chef is as much host as cook.

So what can I tell you about the culinary wonders? Well, I never imagined that oyster nigiri would be so stunning, the shellfish a perfect combo of sweetness, ozone and cream. Another splendid revelation, monkfish liver nigiri had all the richness of foie gras but with a powerful underlying oceanicness (that’s a word, okay?) that the delicately sweet-and-vinegar rice balanced wonderfully. And the plated dishes between the sushi courses were way more than sideshows. A bowl of lobster pieces in a sharp jelly was deeply oceanic but bright and lively too.

Delicious goop

Delicious goop

Okay, I seem to be spewing adjectives like a love-sick fool. It was that kind of meal; every mouthful felt full of love and a minute attention to detail in pursuit of perfection. I have absolutely no doubt that the whole performance of the meal, dishes prepped and finished before you with precise and balletic movements, contributed a lot to how great the food tasted. But that’s rather the point. I say we should love and celebrate how cleverly our taste buds can be fooled by presentation, ambience, decor and service. I’ll remember this meal for a LOT longer than many other fine dining restaurants where the food is prepared in a kitchen out back and set before me by a waiter!

It was £200 each when we dined at Endo. I’d go back in a heartbeat (although doing that too often might start to hurt in the wallet!) because it was a magic experience and chef Endo is a very charming host. And I seriously doubt whether I’ll ever find sushi to match this, anywhere.

Charming host Endo

Charming host Endo

Review: The Small Holding, Kent

Peas

Peas

Well that was foolish. Go for a seven hour hike on a blazing hot day and then try to have an evening tasting menu at 8:30. Reader, I did very nearly fall asleep in my dessert.

So I’m maybe not going to do The Small Holding justice, which is a shame because what I absolutely remember is that it’s a gorgeous little place with the most excellent “posh garden shed” atmosphere and a lot of very good food that’s right up my street. Service was friendly and excellent, and we found some spiffy natural wine options to go with.

They go big on local, seasonal, forage, ferment and pickle. It’s the kind of modern British food that hits my tastebuds just right. Why not have a starter of smoked garden peas with pea puree and a pea crispy fritter? The smoky note was an inspired one. Another starter was a crunchy

Serious pork

Serious pork

tempura oyster and caviar, given a big jolt with a friendly dose of floral vinegar on top. Lovely to crunch through and the vinegar cut nicely into the rich oyster. Scallop tartare with crispy seaweed and neat little fermented currants worked out well, very funky and creamy. This all has the feel of a kitchen that really enjoys playing with what might work.

Local chalk stream trout was a decent chunk of fish, but the star of this dish was the bright and fresh lovage foam/sauce alongside it. Nicely piggy main course, in particular the breadcrumbed pork cheek and the sturdy chunk of bacon. A bit of roast beetroot and a tangy beetrooty ketchup paired nicely. I really rather loved the pre-dessert of macerated apricots and super-herby lemon balm ice cream, even if the ice cream was only just barely set. And… yeah… I can’t remember the main dessert. What a rubbish food blogger.

The menu is £85 before drinks, and I can definitely see myself going back. The Small Holding is a very strong representative of the best kind of modern British cuisine; paying very little attention to classic French roots, focusing on quality local produce, and emphasising clean, bold, bright combinations of smoke and vinegar and ferment.

Apricot and lemon balm

Apricot and lemon balm

Review: Meadowsweet, Holt

Jewel-like canapes

Jewel-like canapes

You can tell when a hotel room has been designed by someone (probably a woman) who stays in hotels a lot. There are a few telltale signs, but the most infallible is the full-length mirror. The first point: does the place even have a full-length mirror? Does it have any kind of useful mirror at all, for that matter? The second point: is the light good where the mirror is? And the killer third point: is there a powerpoint within easy reach of the mirror? For a hairdryer.

Our room at Meadowsweet passed the test with flying colours, being really thoughtfully designed and very comfortable. The dining room downstairs is calmly decorated and I loved the hand-built tables with a little cutlery drawer for each diner built into the corner. It’s a place to have a romantic meal and the very excellent cooking did nothing but enhance the mood.

Splendid scallop

Splendid scallop

We had about eight courses, beautifully plated, classically fine dining but never too rich or heavy. The jewel-like canapes made for a bewitching opener; chicken liver parfait encased in black cherry and baron bigod encased in beetroot respectively. The series of little seafood starters that followed were all magic, especially the breadcrumbed oyster with a dab of peppy jalapeno mayo. The real cracker was the caramelised Orkney scallop with a blob of strawberry jelly and a punchy verjus-infused beurre blanc. The sweet fragrant strawberry worked so well with the creamy scallop, burnt edges and tangy verjus.

The little veggie pasta dish with parmesan and asparagus was merely okay but everything was good about the halibut – delicately cooked – with peas and potato and a herby butter sauce. Beef with mushrooms was a good main and the jus really made the dish. First pudding was a delicate little vacherin of crispy meringue with a strawberry sorbet inside, pretty to look at and just okay to eat. I was in a chocolately mood, so the salty chocolate confection with a big honking tonka bean hit was a fine finale.

This was a £110 menu and I think that’s okay. I’ve had more exciting tasting menus this year at a lower price. But if you’re after a romantic weekend break in Norfolk then a stay and a meal at Meadowsweet is not going to disappoint.

Pretty vacherin

Pretty vacherin

Review: Chez Bruce, Wandsworth

Squid salad

Squid salad

So then I realised that I hadn’t been back to Chez Bruce since I started the blog, and that was twelve years ago. Which meant we finally got back here, to discover that it is still an effortlessly brilliant place to have a splendid meal in convivial surroundings.

I could spend the rest of the article trying to work out how they do it, because Chez Bruce regularly crops up high on “favourite restaurant” lists. Not “the best restaurant in the UK” lists, because that’s not their ambition. They seem to have targeted “favourite” as their ambition, and nailed it. But I spent a while thinking about this and I’m just not canny enough to work it out. It’s a magical formula.

My ox tongue-and-tail starter was superb. Beautiful oxtail croquettes, some slices of soft and deep flavoured tongue, bound together with a “dragoncello” sauce (a bit like Italian gribiche with lots of tarragon) and paired with beetroot. Maureen’s squid salad was an equally satisfying melange, with monksbeard, chorizo, chickpeas and aioli working wonders with delicately cooked pieces of squid.

Veal main

Veal main

For main course I was a sucker for “sweetbread, veal fillet and trotter sausage.” The beautiful medallion of rose-pink veal was perhaps the star, although every element was frankly lovely. Roast onion was a great accompaniment, as was the wild garlic puree. Maureen’s slow roast pork belly had a wonderful wafer-thin slice of porchetta draped over it and was served on a bed of crunchy fried black rice, with a sweetcorn sauce on the side. This was a really clever set of earthy and sweet flavours and went down a treat.

All a bit more classic to finish: a smashing creme brulee for Maureen and an assiette de fromage for me. But what an assiette! Ten cheeses… eleven, because they had some nice Gorgonzola they added to the middle of the plate. All well kept, and including various old favourites as well as some new ones on me.

The three course menu is £75 each before drinks, and I’d say that’s a spot-on price point. But I’d have to add that there really is a certain je ne sais pas about Chez Bruce, and it’s quite hard to put a £ value on that!

Pork belly

Pork belly