Lumiere, Clarence Parade, Cheltenham (01242 222 200)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £125
Help! Come quick! I am sinking beneath a tide of press releases. Big ticket, overblown, massively hyped new London restaurants are opening at such a speed - here comes Hibiscus, here comes Ducasse, here's the new place from that nice chap who used to feed Princess Di - that even with my profane, herculean, gold medal-winning appetite I have not a hope in hell of keeping up. I can at least watch a lot of rich people risk their money. The investment to launch these places was pledged a while back when everything was gilt-edged; now, house prices are falling, negative equity is the new dinner party topic (if you can afford to hold dinner parties) and £100-a-head meals are going on to the back burner. I can't claim to know who it will be, but in the next few months some big investors are going to lose a shed-load of money. Which is nice.
One obvious effect of new restaurant fever is that it draws attention away from far more deserving causes, which is to say good places which have quietly been doing their thing for years. Lumiere, which has been in Cheltenham for the best part of a decade, is one such place. It has been recommended to me a number of times, not least by David Everitt-Matthias, chef at the nearby two-star Champignon Sauvage, and recommendations don't come much more sturdy than that.
I'm very glad I finally got there. Though it has all the gloss and polish of the modern restaurant - cream walls, downlighters, banquettes - at its heart this is a mom and pop affair, run by a couple with an enthusiasm for feeding people well. Lin Chapman does front of house, Geoff Chapman is in the kitchen, producing food which occasionally reads overwrought, but on the plate makes total sense. This is a man who is convinced that more really does mean more, that flavours should be punched, and that very few things can't be improved by the addition of a little animal protein. For example, an amuse of creamy sweetcorn and mushrooms became something so much more luscious with the addition of pebbles of seared, crumbly chorizo. Each night there is what Geoff calls a soup 'creation' and, God delusions aside, it too shows his love of the animal. The night we went it was a dark broth of oak-smoked, thyme-roasted mushrooms with a quenelle of herb mayonnaise. Oh, and a few slices of beautifully tender venison. Because, as we know, more is more.
The starters proper were equally robust: some truffle-dressed salad leaves came with rosy pink slices of partridge breast and, on the side, a little partridge hot-pot with a long-braised leg perched on top. A wobbly Parmesan souffle with a slightly heavy crust was accompanied by a little French onion soup, of the sort you could eat with a fork. Here, in the deep midwinter, we were being fed as if the virtue of our souls depended upon it. We were eating against the darkness.
And so it went on. Perfect duck breast was plated with a crepe pulled up to look like a lady's purse, in this case filled with sauteed mushrooms tasting brightly of themselves. Pink lamb chops came with an artery-clogging potato cake, mined with shards of crisp bacon and, just to please matron, a fricassee of vegetables.
At meal's end there was even a touch of whimsy, in a plate of what was described as 'jelly and ice cream', but in the most adult sense of the word. The boozy jelly was made from kir royale and there was a wobbly panna cotta to accompany it. Between these two, upended as though it had been dropped by a distraught child, was a tiny ice cream cone, the ice cream itself sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Geoff Chapman is a serious cook who does not take himself too seriously. Better even than this was a scoop of salt caramel ice cream to accompany a dense chocolate torte, which had my companion scraping at my plate with such ferocity I was tempted to slap her wrist for fear she'd go through the glaze.
It seems bizarre to say this of a place that has so many years on the clock, but Lumiere is a find; a little eccentric, but the genuine expression of personality. At £38 for three courses (soup creation extra) it seems pretty good value. The only niggle is the wine list, which has little in the £20s and then breaches the £30 mark and heads northwards without ever looking back over its shoulder. The list needs to be balanced. The rest, though, works. Fancy new restaurants looking for the secret of longevity, beyond the rocket-fuelled launch, could do worse than come to Cheltenham for a masterclass.
