While the coming together of one of my favourite chefs with one of my
favourite country house hotels is a huge cause for celebration, it does
represent a bit of a problem as far as reviewing goes, because I've written
about all the separate components here before. And while I hate to repeat
myself, I can hardly assume that you remember anything of my last piece on
Charlton House, or of my two previous reviews of Elisha Carter's cooking.
And even if you did, it is hardly your job to piece together a new review in
your head from the bits and pieces you can recall of previous reviews.
But is it mine? Can I get away with simply cutting and pasting some bits
about Elisha and some bits about Charlton House and calling it a new review?
I can certainly try.
The Charlton House Hotel is still, for example, as when I reviewed it in
August 2005, "owned by Roger Saul, founder of the Mulberry fashion
brand, and his wife, Monty, whom I met on a day out for organic food luvvies
at Highgrove, when I was spellbound by stories of the farm at their home,
Sharpham Park, which is in the process of organic conversion, is the first
spelt farm in Britain, and is home to a breeding project to provide rare
White Park cattle, red deer and Manx Loghtan and Hebridean sheep for the
restaurant kitchen and local customers."
Since then, however, conversion has been completed, Sharpham Park spelt flour
and puffed spelt mueslis are available in shops all over Britain, and Roger
has built a stone-mill and found (by accident) a way of producing white
flour (and thus lovely squishy, creamy white bread) from this ancient,
high-protein cereal, whose gluten is water-soluble and thus ideal for anyone
with any of the fancy new food intolerances, which, if you haven't already
got, you should try to get quite soon, or risk being the only person in your
street without one.
And if you're super-crazy-mental for spelt, like me, you can have a spelt
exfoliation in the hotel's spa, followed by speltgerm moisturisation. Plans
for spelt fuel, spelt cars, spelt hats, clock-radios and Mp3 players are no
doubt well under way, in advance of the planned move into spelt people, just
as soon as Roger can work out how to transfer the spelt nucleus into a human
cell and speltify the human genome.
More exciting for me even than the spelt has been the lifting of the 30-month
upper limit on cattle slaughtering, which means that Roger's White Park beef
is now coming from animals 36 and even 42 months old with results over
which I shall drool in a moment.
Now, the restaurant.
It is still true to say that it is. "Bright and pretty with flagstones,
billowy drapes on the ceilings, electric candle chandeliers, thick burgundy
and gold fabrics hunched like monks' habits on the chairs and the same
fabrics, under white linen, on the tables." And that, "In the
morning, big conservatory windows fill the room with the green of perfect
lawns." But now there is Elisha. I first encountered his cooking at
Lola's in Islington in June 2003 and thought it, then, every bit as
controlled and witty and beautiful as anything I had eaten at Tom Aikens,
which had just opened and which I had reviewed the week before.
Elisha moved on a year or so later (chefs didn't last long at Lola's, which
is now, itself, gone) and cropped up again at a bonkers project in a new
Soho hotel where he was encouraged to grab flavours willy-nilly from the
countries of the Silk Route (after which the restaurant was named) and
create dishes at random from this gastronomic culture clash.
It didn't work, and, having scored Lola's at 8.67, I couldn't find more than
4.67 for Silk Route. Fortunately, critics heaped no blame on Elisha, who, it
was assumed, was only following wacko orders. It was the very zenith and
nadir of the fusion craze, and the sound of its death knell was very audible
here.
So when Roger lost his chef earlier this year and got in touch to see if I
knew anyone suitable, I thought immediately of Elisha, into whom I had
recently bumped at my local butcher's, and who was doing fill-in jobs while
waiting for something to come up.
Roger couldn't find him (I had no number — I tend not to for chefs, it
doesn't seem right). A dozen or so chefs were interviewed, but none — to
Roger's despair — seemed to show any real interest in, or understanding of,
the business of proper sourcing, of organic farming, of rare-breed meat
animals, of spelt.
And then, one day, through an agency, Elisha showed up, like magic. And, just
like that, Roger had a chef. And Somerset had a black community. And the
rest is. Well, is what I had for dinner.
We ordered from the (not-cheap, I'll admit) three-course, £52.50 dinner menu,
and began with a crisp little pre-starter consommé served in an upside-down
bowler hat made of glass, with tiny cubes of foie gras and wild mushroom
heads bobbing in it.
Rachel started with the Summerleaze duck three ways, a keynote dish of
Elisha's which was every bit as cute and gutsy as when I described it as "foie
gras, rillettes, breast and sticky chorizo, all individually barded and
rolled in a dream, then sliced to produce a five-coloured cross-section of
ducky circles". (I have no idea what the "summerleaze" bit
means here, but I know it hath all too short a date.) The gravlax of
scallops was a new departure for me, though, and was joyful.
A cooked scallop is a ruined, a wasted, a blasted scallop, and these creamy
sweet slices in their pale mustard dressing were just perfect.
Roast woodcock (with its scary head offered on the beak for brain-sucking)
came with the most evocative, christmassy chestnut ravioli and a scattering
of braised crones, which turns out to be another word for Chinese artichokes
(I had half expected them to be served, just three of them, huddled round a
tiny cauldron, wondering what the weather would be like when they met again).
Plaice wrapped in venison ham is a dish I'll wager you won't see anywhere
else in the world. Great for the plaice, a little lonely for the deer, but
really good fun.
Saddle of Sharpham Park venison was served with a boudin of its confit
shoulder, crispy belly, and smears of a sharper, less cloying version of the
traditional chocolate sauce. A forestier version of a similar thing Elisha
does with pig.
The stand-out pudding for me was a pyramidal mulled wine jelly with very
little sweetness, that dark burgundy, almost black, and just humming with
cloves and cinnamon, served with hazelnut ice-cream and roasted fig.
Roger will never forgive me if I fail to mention how excellent the spelt
rolls were (have I ever mentioned rolls in a review? I don't think so), and
I'd like to put in a word for the spelt Yorkshire pudding I had for lunch
the next day with rare roasted beef from one of his White Park cattle. The
meat was as perfectly marbled, as full of flavour and as soft and fleshy and
mouth-filling as any beef I have eaten. But he is only killing one or two a
year at the moment, so if you get some, chew slowly.
Now, after last week's resolution to focus on environmentally sustainable
table water, you are no doubt agog to hear what they serve here. Well, they
serve Tufa Pure, which is sourced on organic land six miles away in the
Mendip hills, so it has a barely perceptible carbon footprint, and supports
indigenous flora and fauna. Hurrah.
Charlton House
Shepton Mallet, near Bath,
Somerset (01749 342008)
Meat/fish: 10
Water: 10
Cooking: 9
Other: 8
Score: 9.25
Price: Sunday lunch is good value at £27 for three courses.
The Good Earth
233 Brompton Road, SW3
(020-7584 3658)
Had a perfectly good, old-school Cantonese scoff here the other night, but
they served me a bottle of Voss. Chinese restaurant, Norwegian water.
Whyyyyyyyy? Boycott them until they move over to Belu. And for more
information on Tufa Pure go to www.whiteholesprings.com.
The Crab and Winkle
South Quay, The Harbour,
Whitstable, Kent
(01227 779377)
Susanne Darken writes: "They're knowledgeable, they source locally, they
serve amazing English wine and the food is delicious."
E-mail feedme2@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere nice. And please put "restaurant"
in the subject line
