Telephone: 01580 714 666
Address: 23 Stone Street, Cranbrook, Kent.
Open: Lunch, Weds-Sun, 12 noon-2.00pm; dinner, Tues-Sat, 6.45-9pm.
Price: £23.50 a head, plus wine.
Wheelchair access and disabled WC.
Seven well-spaced, linen-covered tables. Salted and unsalted unpasteurised butter on a rectangle of polished slate. A choice of handmade wholemeal, onion or white bread rolls, warm from the oven. New season's asparagus, foie gras, ceps and morels on the menu; premier cru chablis, Chassagne-Montrachet and Chteauneuf-du-Pape on the wine list. Your meal cooked by the former private chef to Paul Getty Jr and served on expensive crockery.
Sounds like the sort of potentially ruinous place that would send your credit card into meltdown and rob your children of a university education, doesn't it? In fact, paying the bill at Apicius (named after the Roman epicurean and cookery writer Marcus Gavius Apicius) feels disconcertingly similar to mugging the owners. Despite the luxury, three courses will set you back just £23.50.
With more than 20 years' experience in the business working for the likes of Gary Rhodes, Nico Ladenis, Roger Vergé and Andy McLeish at Chapter One, you have to assume that chef/proprietor Tim Johnson knows what he's doing when pricing a menu. He certainly knows how to write one. Warm buttered Frogshole Farm asparagus, black truffle dressing, fillet of Scottish salmon, ragout of Jerusalem artichokes, ceps and new potatoes and warm chocolate tart, confit orange and pistachio Anglaise indicate an agreeably straightforward, ingredient-led approach.
While Johnson appears to be happy to let his ingredients do the talking, he is not above adding a well-judged measure of technique to help them get their point across. Take carpaccio of locally smoked duck breast, foie gras bon bon and duck liver velouté. In one corner of a large, square, glass plate are overlapping, paper-thin slices of the meat. A thin stripe of port reduction leads down to the "bon bon", a crispy coated deep-fried nugget that, as you cut into it, releases a rivulet of liquefied liver. Next to that, a demitasse of frothy soup so packed with duck flavour it almost quacks. It's a complex dish of contrasting temperatures and textures, but all that finesse is employed in the name of flavour and not cheffy indulgence.
By contrast, osso bucco was a shamelessly robust and comforting bowl of food. The meat had been taken off the bone and wrapped around a spine of pancetta to simplify both the cooking and eating of it, while the all-important bone marrow was included as a fritter. A pillow of truffled mash, some spinach, a rich veal jus created from the reduced braising liquor, and job done.
Johnson uses herbs and spices with restraint, often as building blocks early in the preparation of a dish, rather than for a last-minute burst of flavour. Roasting monkfish on a stick of dried fennel infused the meaty flesh with a mild anise scent. A bed of caramelised cauliflower added an earthy counterpoint to both the natural sweetness of the fish and the lobster vinaigrette, which itself brought a dash of vibrant red to the dish. Cumin made a belated and somewhat unwelcome appearance at the end of the meal, adding spice to a smoothie accompanying an otherwise delicious dessert of honey-roasted black fig and iced fig mousse. It was, along with some unseasonal pheasant in a starter of ballotine of guinea fowl, one of only two false notes all evening.
More successful was a cinnamon-poached apple served on a beautifully light apple sponge (just like your mother used to make) that had soaked up a calvados syrup to pleasing effect. Crème fraîche sorbet added some palate-cleansing acidity; a dried apple crisp, some crunch.
Lovers of fine British and French cheese in perfect condition should note that Apicius does not levy a supplement for its plated selection. On the night we dined, it included Sainte-Maure, Munster, Morbier, Tomme de Savoie, Coulommiers and Lancashire Blacksticks Blue. Shared as an additional course, we were charged just £4, bringing the bill to a decidedly inconsiderable £91.50 for the food, two glasses of champagne, a bottle of Rully Gresigny 1999, a glass of Brouilly and one coffee with homemade petit fours.
Service mixes casual friendliness with some of the more formal mannerisms of the three-star establishments whose menus adorn the walls. A chat about the weather might be followed by the presentation of the wine for label inspection or a plate of food delivered ceremoniously to the table from a butler tray. But the effect is pleasingly unaffected; welcoming yet reassuringly professional.
There is an inherent integrity to this husband-and-wife-run restaurant that is very appealing. In a world where top chefs can demand haute couture prices for off-the-peg food, it's good to know that you can still find a truly bespoke meal. If Shaun Hill's inability to sell the Merchant House as a going concern is anything to go by, it seems there are very few people left in the country who are willing to invest the long hours a small restaurant requires. For that reason alone, Apicius should be cherished. The fact that it's so good makes that task all the easier.
