Chavignol is a gastronomic Site of Special Scientific Interest. Restaurants in the regions which stand or fall on the reputation of their food alone (ie, without the aid of a health spa or hotel rooms to provide support) are few and far between. Few have the culinary class or financial finesse to last the distance. The battle for better food outside the main metropolitan areas (and, in some cases, within them, too) has been led by the conversion of pubs to the cause of good cooking. But the ambition of a pub, however grand, is defined by its place in our culture. You're unlikely to visit one on the lookout for a senior dining experience. And, let's admit it, every now and then we like to dress up and go out for a treat.
If you're lucky, you'll live within striking distance of one of those plush countryhouse hotels that has had the sense to hire a chef of personality and panache. If you're luckier still, you'll live within striking distance of somewhere such as Chavignol, where a chef of considerable talent, backed by a front-of-house team of considerable charm, has created a stand-alone restaurant of considerable ambition.
The scale of Chavignol's prices, if nothing else, makes this ambition abundantly clear. First courses start at £8.50 and top out at £10.50. Mains go from £19 to £22.50. The cheapo lunch menu stands at £25, and a seven-course menu gourmand will set you back £48. The bill for Belladonna, Beryl and me topped £170 - but half of that was wine, in celebration of the success of Belladonna's novel. (Writing books is such a precarious business that it is the first duty of the author's friends to toast any and every occasion.)
But, whatever the excuse, when I'm paying that kind of money I have expectations to match. And Marcus Ashenford's cooking was equal to them. His cooking is of the carefully layered variety: a timbale of creamed skate was mixed with grain mustard and had a layer of tomato fondue running through it, a beignet of more skate balanced on its crisp top with a tomato "tartare" (their inverted commas) style vinaigrette. Belladonna had a terrine of wood pigeon and foie gras with a salad of leeks and hazelnuts, spiced fig sauce and brioche; Beryl a poached duck on buttered spinach plonked inside the roasted base of an artichoke, with bits of fried herring roe and a chive and beetroot infusion.
These dishes are wrought (if stopping just short of being highly wrought), baroque without being rococo. The plating arrangements combined the contemporary passion for a bit of height, with dishes rising like Mont-St-Michel from a flat plain zigzagged with sauces. This is difficult stuff to pull off. Flavours rarely match up to display, and, even when they do, keeping all the elements in play without leading to clash or clutter tests the most gifted kitchen whiz. I might take issue with some of the menu phrase-making ("pesto-infused spaghetti"?), the addiction to inverted commas and the tendency to name everything that's on the plate, but there's no doubt that Ashenford is abundantly talented. His flavours did not lead to clash or clutter. They mounted steadily one upon the other, building up the effects. The elements were properly structured, the textures clearly defined, the saucing thoughtful, the technical bits beautifully executed.
Braised pig's cheek on parsley mash with caramelised apples and a Madeira sauce, fillet of sea bream with the pesto-infused spaghetti, Provençal vegetables and soupe de poisson-style sauce, and fillet of halibut with a glazed orange sabayon and endless vegetables kept up the standards and the interest. These were thoroughly considered dishes. They might not redefine our understanding of taste. They might not have the explosive power or startling pyrotechnics of some chefs. But they pleased. The combinations were intriguing without being radical. Dinner was a deeply satisfying ramble through delightful culinary countryside, rather than a hectic scramble up some vertiginous gastronomic slope that afforded startling views at the end of it.
Dinner concluded with the massed ranks of puddings, affectionate cheer, hugs and kisses all round and departure into the night. With a bit of luck, my promise that we could do the whole thing again might persuade Belladonna into novel-writing mode again.
