Review: Moor Hall, Lancashire

The Cheese Room, Moor Hall

The Cheese Room, Moor Hall

This is our first big splash-out meal since lockdown began, and we’ve kicked off with a truly great one. But I want to start by applauding all the front of house staff in all the restaurants around the country. I hate wearing a mask for 30 minutes to do a supermarket shop. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to wear a mask for a whole, hot, busy evening service. And keep smiling behind it. Bravo. Seriously.

Moor Hall is a magnificent country house in a pretty random patch of south Lancashire. It looks an absolute picture, arriving at dusk with all the lights on, magical. And of course that ought to be a big part of the experience when you rock up for a 2-star tasting menu in the country; you want to feel just a tiny bit like you’re in a fairytale.

Cured meats

Cured meats

The food begins with a serving of four different home cured meats. This really sets out the stall. The powerful aged meat flavours of the braesola and the copa are about the best I’ve ever had and showcase just a really fierce level of care and attention to detail. This runs right through the many courses to the very fine piece of herdwick lamb in the main. Oh… and one of the appetisers, a bite of black pudding in crisp batter, it tasted like nothing more than a visit to a really good butcher shop.

I love sea buckthorn, and after enjoying it in a pre-prandial cocktail I also got to enjoy it in a dish of tiny baked carrots with sea buckthorn sauce and a very fine Doddington cheese that seemed to live somewhere between parmesan and pecorino. The sea buckthorn added zip but wasn’t overwhelming.

Perfect oyster

Perfect oyster

Some of the most standout dishes were somewhere in the middle, among the seafood. My absolute favourite was a great fat oyster, poached in buttermilk, served in a bed of beautiful white beetroot carpacchio and livened up with dill oil. Totally faultless. The cornish lobster with heritage tomatoes was just as epic. The tomatoes were almost chewy and intensely flavoured, and a rosehip gel added a fresh zing. The main fish was sea bass, excellent in a foaming mussel sauce with courgette and sea veg, just a very satisfying dish, perfectly balanced and a standout piece of fish.

Seabass

Seabass

The desserts were each delicious, albeit not such stars as the savoury courses. The gingerbread icecream with crisp “pine needles” of pastry was great. The peregrine peach was a bit disappointing, as the sole flavour was the strong (albeit nice) lemon verbena sorbet. Blackberries paired with the distinct country flavour of woodruff cream was a fine finale.

Moor Hall sits up there with some of the best meals I’ve had, and I think I’ll particularly remember the splendid setting. The wine list has good range, and their house cocktails (at least, the two we tried) are smashing. The menu is £155 although going up to £185 later this month. For me that’s getting a little steep, but that’s what 2 stars allows. You certainly can’t be disappointed by a visit to Moor Hall.

Herdwick

Herdwick

Review: Stockwell Continental, Stockwell

We stop in here for lunch as it looks inviting. It’s a cheerful looking no-frills room decorated with Italiana and simple furniture. It goes back a long way too, all the way back to the bright yellow pizza oven. We have various antipasti, one pizza to share, and a small glass of wine.

Allow me to digress into a rant about wine servings. If you eat at any fine restaurant, 125ml is the size you’ll be served. It’s about the same alcohol as a half pint of beer and there’s six in a bottle of wine. For me it’s the perfect size. Especially if I’m just having a quick lunch and wasn’t planning on drinking, for instance. So why do so many restaurants, bars and pubs insist that the standard wine measure is 175ml? I guess because they want to shift volumes.

If I specifically ask for 125ml it’s almost always fine. Some waiters will say no, but if you politely insist then the manager will say yes and the waiter will have an expression of “oh, I didn’t even know we could do that?” on their face. Because – trivia moment – it’s actually the law. 125ml is a legal measure that you have to offer. But you’d never know it, looking at the drink menu at 90% of all restaurants and bars.

Sure enough, after I’m told that they’re “not really set up for 125ml glasses, but I’ll see what I can do,” I do get my small glass of wine.

We also got some really excellent antipasti. The polenta was perfect, crispy on the outside and softly corny within, dribbled with truffled honey and parmesan. The arancini were perfect too, the rice stained purple by red wine and gorgonzola. A shot glass of chopped pepperoncini was a fierce but excellent relish. There was a perfect mozarella in carrozza with little flavour-bombs of nduja hidden in the oozing cheese. Oh… and let me tell you about battered aubergine parmigiana bites. Filth. Absolute filth. I’ll take ten plates, please.

The pizza was splendid as well; thin and crisp base with nicely burnt flour flavour, quality mozzarella, stabs of n’duja and some very good pickled red onion.

All pretty great really. About £14 each for two as a light lunch. Lucky people of Stockwell, to have the Continental around the corner.

Aubergine parmigiana bites

Aubergine parmigiana bites

Review: Caractere, Notting Hill

Risotto drama

Risotto drama

Caractere was our last meal out before lockdown began, and I lost the urge to post reviews while every restaurant in the country was closed. But it was written, so it’d be a shame not to finally put it up. Especially as Caractere was aces. And so…

I gotta congratulate the folks at Caractere for putting some character into their menu; instead of Starter, Fish, Main, Cheese, Dessert their courses are named Curious, Subtle, Delicate, Robust, Strong and Greedy. Kinda like an alternative Seven Dwarfs? Except there are only six. Anyway. Fun with menu writing aside, the food at Caractere lives right up to it’s name. Loved it.

I did something a bit different here. I asked for a vegetarian menu. I’ve got no plans to go plant-based, I was just feeling overloaded from a bunch of meaty meals in Germany. Everyone else had the fish ‘n meat. I probably perplexed the staff by trying a bite of every other dish, even though I was “the vegetarian”!

Pappardelle

Pappardelle

So. Curious was a perfect little pappardelle stuffed with soft ricotta and set in a pool of gently lemony cream. Meat-eaters had smoked herring roe and a little caviar with theirs. Didn’t need it. The pasta was delicate and silky but still kept its bite. This dish vanished fast.

Subtle wasn’t very. It was ribbons of celeriac styled like tagiatelle and still with plenty of earthy bite, covered in a heap of pecorino and black pepper, and set to humming with a few drops of some wonderfully sticky 25 year old balsamic. One of those real “why the f*ck can’t vegetarian restaurants cook vegetarian dishes as good as this?” dishes.

Delicate was for me a pair of beautifully roasted jerusalem artichokes topped with a salad of various bits and puddled with a delicate veloute whose flavour I couldn’t catch. J-chokes are fairly dominant. And there was nothing delicate about my trumpeting later that night. Monkfish and stone bass alternatives were both splendidly seared pieces of fish.

Celeriac signature

Celeriac signature

Robust for the meat-eaters was a very splendid piece of rosy veal, packed with flavour, lovely jus, paired with sturdy mushrooms and confit potatoes. I was equally happy with a wonderful risotto, dramatically coloured black and white and orange. The rice had perfect bite, the red wine reduction added a velvety strength, and the blackened crumble of burnt parmesan was just vile cheesy naughtiness! Robust indeed.

Strong was a fine piece of stichelton. Well-kept cheese can develop such an enormous mouthful of flavour and a whole world of scent. Greedy came for me in the shape of a white chocolate mousse in a delicate shell, light and amiable with flavours of bright pink rhubard. Must admit to envying the bergamot tartlet with preserved lemon across the table – really magical flavour in just one mouthful.

The tasting menu is £80 at Caractere. We were warmly looked after, helped to some good wine choices (the wine menu is strong on Italian), and generally had a great evening. I think they deserve to do well and I wish them all the best through the horrible COVID-19 crisis.

Rhubarb pud

Rhubarb pud

Review: The Anchor Inn, Hartfield

Roast beef

Roast beef

Time for Sunday lunch. And this time it’s a pub in the green Weald, in the heart of Winnie the Pooh country, the Anchor Inn at Hartfield. Lovely old building, plenty of character within, friendly service and Harvey’s on tap. A classic beer that deserves to be known far wider than its Sussex home.

We didn’t mess around with starters. Maureen’s roast beef was excellent meat, served very pink, meltingly soft to eat and with good flavour. Fine specimen of Yorkshire pud. Decent mix of veggies and some very sturdy roast potatoes. Gravy worthy of a nod.

Concrete tart

Concrete tart

My venison was even better. Great flavour on the roast loin, made more deluxe by the boozy prune gravy. Big stems of broccoli soaked this up well. And then a friendly slab of properly naughty Dauphinoise potatoes.

Puddings were a mixed bag. Apple and pear crumble was a decent specimen, though no different from what I’d knock up at home. My chocolate tart was a sad brick. It really was a brick. Twice while trying to break mouthfuls off I ended up firing them across the table or onto the floor. PING! Useless. No sense of luxury when I did eventually get to munch through some, and the accompanying raspberry ripple icecream was equally lacking in flavour or texture.

The cook a mean roast at the Anchor. Maybe try a starter instead of a pudding, though.

Venison

Venison

Review: St Clair, Clapham

Ceviche

Ceviche

St Clair is an interesting new opening in Clapham. From the outside it’s looking like a refined French fish restaurant, with dark blue walls, marble tables, comfortable chairs and a wet fish counter at the front. But the sign on the window says it’s a cevicheria, the dishes on the menu stir in some Brazilian names, and a lot of the ingredients are straight from Japan. This is Nikkei cuisine and these are all things that I like though, so let’s see…

Okay, service is a little shambolic. Maureen’s main arrives (with apologies) when the rest of us have almost finished ours, and they also manage one wrong dessert (but they leave this for us to enjoy as a freebie and replace it in a few minutes). They’ve not even been open two months, and as I’ve said before: I’m much more interested in how a place reacts to cock-ups and complaints. They react generously and helpfully.

Tataki

Tataki

Starters are all colourful and exciting to look at. Crab salad looks stunning, and the causa-like beetroot coloured potato is a great base. Flavours of watermelon jelly and tiny green tobiko give the dish some pep, as does the wafer-thin and ozone-y seaweed cracker. There’s a lovely tuna tataki as well, generous slices of very good fish and a really splendid addition of fermented physalis. My only quibble: these are meant to be sharing plates, so what use is one physalis?

The St Clair ceviche is a thing of joy. Really great, sharp, fierce and yet creamy tiger’s milk, beautiful pieces of fish and good accompaniments of big corn and sweet potato. The only disappointing starter is the mackerelmole, which I’d be perfectly happy with for lunch at the office, but if it’s any more complicated than guacamole and smoked mackerel mashed together then it doesn’t reveal it.

Mains are good. My bavette is cooked sous vide and then seared, which in this case produces a perfectly toothsome piece of flavourful beef for a charming £14. That’s using the right technique to good effect in my book. Mash, gravy, pan gratata and vivid little piquillo peppers are all spot on. On the other hand, I can’t stop myself stealing spoonfuls of moqueca from the dish next door. The sauce is packed with all the flavours of salty seafood and earthy palm kernel oil I remember from Brazil, but it’s also satin smooth with sheen of sheer luxury. Maureen’s duck is excellent too, though jolly big.

Crab and potato cake

Crab and potato cake

Mochi ice creams are an easy pud for some of us, and I’m in love with the yuzu flavour. The mistaken pud was a roasted plantain with dulce de leche ice cream. The caramelised plantain had an interesting almost leathery flavour, but the ice cream was oddly unindulgent for dulce de leche. The final pud was a mont blanc, in name at least. It was actually a lovely concoction of broken-up soft dark chocolate cake, clementine, delicate sake cream and exceedingly moreish salt chocolate brittle. I just couldn’t connect it to the name.

Coming in around £45 each before drinks for three courses (plus, really, more side dishes than we needed) I’d say the price is on the high side but not excessively. There’s top-notch inventive Nikkei cooking here. There were a couple of less successful dishes and a couple of service hiccups, but I’m hoping that will polish out when they’ve been open for a bit longer. Great to have this just down the road.

Octopus

Octopus