Cavendish Street, Cartmel, Cumbria (01539 536 362). Meal for two, including wine and service, £180
In the past dozen years I have visited a lot of places to eat, including Droitwich. It was rubbish. I have eaten in Cardiff, the Western Isles, an island off the east coast that gets cut off by the high tide, and Croydon. Even the people of Croydon thought this was remarkable. In all that time, however, I had never once reviewed anywhere in Cumbria. My excuse? Poor transport links. It takes less than two hours by train to get from London to, say, York. Or Lille. It's three hours or more to the Lake District and even then you're a good distance from somewhere nice to eat.
One of those who moaned at me, albeit sweetly, was Simon Rogan, chef at L'Enclume in Cartmel. Recently he opened an outpost in London called Roganic, giving those of us down here the chance to experience the small, precise and complex plates of food with which he has made his name. Being a contrary bastard I decided this was precisely the moment to go and try his food in Cumbria.
L'Enclume is French for the anvil, an example of which sits in the dining room of what was once the village forge. It is an attractive space of whitewashed but rugged walls, much like a Hobbit's cave, bigging up the building's age alongside slabs of modernism. There is a glass and wood extension and the tables are all elegant unclothed expanses of smooth, dark wood. It feels like a statement about natural materials being treated in a modern way – a notion one can extend to the food with little contrivance. L'Enclume gets much of its ingredients from its own farm and while there is nothing rustic about Rogan's food – it is modernist and unashamed about its interest in process – it does show a commitment to the good stuff. Indeed, the whole enterprise is defined by self-confidence. There is no à la carte, just a choice of tasting menus of between eight courses for £69 and 12 for £89, including one which, admirably, is entirely vegetarian. They'll note dietary requirements, but otherwise you are in their hands. It is a safe place to be.
To start there is a crumbly biscuit of aged cheddar with a dollop of broccoli purée, followed by a fingernail-sized deep-fried croquette of smoked eel with an intense pommes purée. It was gone just as we recognised how intensely delicious it was. From rich and oily to light and fresh: a porcelain purse filled with a mixture of beetroot and a snow made from mozzarella, the whole lifted by touches of cucumber and dill. Back we go to something stickier: a soft, doughy, suet-like pudding the size of a £2 coin flavoured with truffle, surrounded by an umami-rich truffle broth, which is translucent but deep and intense. Pearls of toasted puffed barley give texture. We chase the last drops around the plate.
A tranche of local smoked trout dressed with bright orange pearls of trout roe atop an oyster cream is a slap around the face with an unabashed fishiness. Pickled baby vegetables are so small as to be practically foetal and leave us wondering what the point of them is, save to prove that with the right vegetal obstetrician they can be delivered. Better still are two meat dishes. One is a tiny piece of intensely porky suckling pig with the sweet of apple, the vegetal of parsnip and the light bitterness of , chervil and ground ivy; the other a sliver of beef shortrib cooked for 72 hours and served with smoked marrow. But best of all are potatoes cooked in chicken fat and paired with white crab, horseradish and slivers of crisp chicken skin.
Curiously, given their commitment to their own fields, the down points were those bigging-up single ingredients – one involving carrots, another Jerusalem artichokes. They needed to make you look at these familiar ingredients anew and they didn't, not quite. No matter. There were desserts of blackberry and honey cake, followed by another of quince and buttermilk with damsons both as an ice and as slivers of meringue, which celebrated the abundance of autumn fruits in these Lake District valleys.
Service is slick, and the wine list doesn't make you feel like you are being punished for a nameless crime. But let's not pretend it's cheap, or even on nodding terms with cheap. It costs and big time. It's the kind of expense for which you would make a special trip; the sort I should have made years ago.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
