Well no actually We felt rather envious of them Printed on L'Enclume's menu is the request, "Can you be sympathetic to local residents when leaving the restaurant." Well, no actually We felt rather envious of them. Service comes with stakeholder pride - the chap who took our booking offered to find a local babysitter for us - and the napery is so crisp it must keep Mrs Tiggywinkle busy round the clock. God knows how anyone makes it through the 15-course Taste and Texture menu.At least coffee looked normal, and wasn't served in a syringe or a cube of jelly. But it was a bit cheeky to charge £5 for it and some (totally redundant) petits fours Still, that was our only grouse. My notes read "jasmine br?, blood-orange mousse, wild strawberries, chocolate thing ..."; understandably, everything was starting to get a bit hazy at this point. We both felt weak and a little bit tearful to be then presented with a platter of miniatures which sampled the entire pudding menu. Local beef was perfect, as was the silky pur?of star anise-scented parsnip which came with it.After seven savoury courses (and seven glasses of wine) we were relieved to see that dessert was manageably small - a mini pint of lager, with apricot as the beer and vanilla mousse as its foam But no, this was just the pre-dessert. Bresse pigeon was lightly poached in cumin-flavoured milk, and impeccably accessorised with a matching boudin, celery ravioli and pur? broad beans. As each new wine arrived, sommelier Stephen Wilcock invited us to guess its identity, an exercise I abandoned after hazarding "white Bordeaux?" for the first four glasses, all of which turned out to come from Germany or Alsace.Our banquet ended with two more substantial - and conventional - main courses which proved that Simon Rogan's high-wire acrobatics are grounded in solid technique. Probably the strangest taste sensation was a three-in-one assembly which teamed a single oyster in artichoke jelly with a sugar-dusted cube of beetroot "Turkish delight" and a shot glass of creamy Reblochon cheese.The first six courses were all nibble-sized, but the accompanying wines by the glass were coming thick and fast - much faster than we could drink them. Among the highs, slim and crunchy cheese croquettes flavoured with the Asian herb perilla; the delicate jelly containing leaves of the herb woodruff that partnered a thimbleful of flaked crab, a couple of beads of caviar and a ring-sized hoop of caramelised calamari; and the milky-sweet frogs' legs which propped up tiny slices of crisp-skinned bass roasted with myrtle and fennel. And for £25 a head extra, you get a different glass of wine with each course, selected from a lovingly compiled list by the vastly experienced sommelier.The feast that followed - a parade of deconstructions, reductions, foams and jellies - was variable, but never dull.
There's a glorious riverside garden, and a buzz in the air quite untypical of most British country restaurants.Much on the all-singing, all-dancing menu is unfamiliar. How to choose between duck roasted with mugwort and beef with Good King Henry? To do it justice, we went for the eight-course tasting menu, a £65-a-head pas de deux across Rogan's most fanciful creations. Dishes might be flavoured with bark, grasses or long-forgotten herbs. This is as far from comfort food as it's possible to get.Rogan's modernist mission is signalled by L'Enclume's interior, a Philippe Starckadder mix of rustic and trendy, with tan leather bucket chairs beamed down among the original features of what was once the village blacksmiths. Then he gave it all up, and relocated his family to a village in the Lake District, where he sank his savings into his own restaurant with rooms, L'Enclume.Here, though, is where the story gets really interesting. |
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