The Times
By Giles Coren
The food rocks. We ate from a bowl of gull’s eggs (black-headed gulls, not Brighton bin-rummagers) that were boiled till the yolk was just thinking about firming up, and then chilled hard. With great hollandaise and home-made celery salt.
And then a slab of cold rabbit brawn terrine (mostly paw and pig trotter, just a tiny bit of head, all stacked in aspic); a soft-boiled Gladys May duck egg with lewdly engorged St Enodoc asparagus soldiers, whose swollen buds lean in and suck up the orange yolk like greedy brontosauruses; a salad of shaved raw asparagus with sweet wood sorrel, fatted out with creamy Gorwydd Caerphilly; and a little plate of the salmon Hix smokes in his own back garden, just round the corner, cut thick, quite dry so that the fishy fats melt in your mouth without cloying, and with a cool woody flavour. (I’m conflating two visits here, by the way, I didn’t eat all this in one go – I went back for dinner with a couple of dolly birds a week later to get the evening buzz, which is a good one.)
And then a four mutton chop curry, meaty-slick but sometimes crunchy with fried spiced onions, and so sweet and spicy-hot you’d think a grand old ram was singed by lightning while bathing in treacle and chilli. The best curry I’ve ever had. A mixed grill of spring lamb with all its liver and kidneys and sweetbreads and the sweet, sweet softness of its fat.
The puddings look good; I tried only the excellent Jersey creamed rice with prunes. The wine list is fun. The staff are nice. And one of the waitresses is just knock-out. I cannot think of a place I’d rather eat just now.
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