Salt, 8 Church Street, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6HB (01789 263 566). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £70-£110
Paul Foster is living other chefs’ fantasies. He has the thing they all want: the small but perfectly formed restaurant where he can be himself. From a distance he has made this look effortless. I’m sure it wasn’t. I first ate his food at a hotel in Suffolk I had never heard of back in 2011, where he was ravaging the river banks for ingredients, pairing roasted chicken wings with brown shrimps and laying pieces of hake on swollen beads of bright green tapioca, flavoured with fiery wild watercress so it looked like frogspawn. There was a poise and balance to his cooking that won him a bunch of awards, including the Observer Food Monthly young chef of the year award. Which is obviously The Only Award Worth Winning.
He went from there to a country house hotel and onwards to this spot in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is his own, or the modern version of his own, which means it’s crowdfunded. Friends chipped in. Money was found down the back of sofas. Promises were given and cash spent sparingly. They opened in March.
It is a hobbit’s space, tucked into one of those black-beamed Tudor buildings that Stratford-upon-Avon must have bought wholesale and which my builder would call “put up on the piss”. Its misshapen walls are whitewashed. The floors are stone flags. There is a tiny half-open kitchen at the back and enough bare filament lightbulbs to fill an east London warehouse. The nearest things they have to design features are banquettes upholstered in caramel leather and a wall clad in narrow strips of timber.
It is a reflection of the unfussy food. Foster may be using modern techniques, unseen, behind the bar. I suspect a dehydrator is involved; perhaps a bit of sous vide. But he understands the technology and only uses it in the service of the ingredients rather than some misplaced assessment of his own cleverness.
Three courses from the à la carte costs £37, though there is a short set lunch menu at just £19.50, again for three. Or to put it another way, a full meal for two at Salt costs the same as two category B non-member tickets at Arsenal, just over half the price of a single general admission ticket to the 2018 British Grand Prix at Silverstone or two-thirds of the price of two tickets to see The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House, but only if you order one of their more expensive bottles of wine. And with all of those other things you’ll still be hungry at the end. I know where I’d rather be.
Aside from smoked almonds and olives, delivered swiftly, it begins with warm malted bread rolls, the glass-like crust glazed with malt and served with some of the cheesiest daffodil-yellow butter I have ever been served. Some may find its funkiness too much. For me, one spread on the other constitutes a bread course of uncommon depth and seriousness (Pseuds Corner, come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough).
Starters are various plays on raw and textured. Two pieces of mackerel are only lightly cured, and paired with the sweetest of skinless English cherry tomatoes, in a light vinaigrette, with puffed rice for crunch. A finely chopped tartare of venison fillet is dressed with what they call a BBQ mayonnaise. But that’s mayo from a very classy barbecue indeed. It is smoky and deep, the kind of thing you could spoon neat into your mouth. Texture comes not just from a dark toasted rye crumb but from cubes of salt baked swede and rings of lightly pickled onion. There is attention to detail here, an ability to build flavours in layers.
Nowhere is that more evident than in an extra starter we order off the tasting menu. It is sold as a bunch of ways with carrots. Some are cooked in chicken fat. Some are pickled. Others are in raw shavings. What arrives is so much more than this. At the bottom is a deep well of the kind of chicken gravy that has you wondering whether you can lap at it with your tongue, like a cat. There’s a fried bread crouton and curls of crisp chicken skin. It is a roast chicken dinner, without the bird. It is the best of Sunday lunch in a few mouthfuls. It costs an extra £7.
A piece of cod, seared to golden on top, is laid on a light, frothy, lawn-green parsley sauce blitzed through with oyster, so that one element of the dish appears to have leaked the essence of itself into the other. Alongside is a fresh tangle of greens and cabbage. It manages that trick of being both invigorating and indulgent. In a dish of roast rump of lamb with braised and glazed lamb neck, the killer detail is the dollops of creamy whipped smoked cod’s roe. It’s a logical extension of putting salted anchovies with lamb, the big whack of umami from the roe only punching the flavour of the meat. Some dishes are cooked to be admired. Others are to be eaten with vigour. This is both.
Dessert risks sending me off on one of my tiresome “where’s the pastry work?” rants, for they are various takes on creamy things. Happily, they are very good creamy things. A scoop of a dark chocolate ganache is joined by another of banana toffee, like the killer layer in a banoffee pie. The trio is finished by a miso ice cream crusted with shaved chocolate and with just the edge of salt. There are panes of tempered milk chocolate and of a dark tuile to bring crunch. In another dessert a knobbly textured brown bread ice cream, served as a sandwich between two golden sugar tuiles, comes with a blueberry sauce, fresh blueberries and sorrel granita. I find myself wondering whether the blueberry side of the dish had much to say to the ice cream side. Then I look down and see I’ve cleaned the plate.
Which is also what happens with Foster’s passing shot. In place of petits fours, we are served an immaculate, glazed choux pastry bun each, filled with cream sweetened by a syrup flavoured with Douglas fir pine. You think I can’t do pastry? Well chew on this, friends. Except it melts away to nothing. I won’t pretend. Having been so taken by Foster at Tuddenham Mill I have skin in the game. I wanted his first stand-alone restaurant to be great, to vindicate my previous opinion. The good news? It’s terrific.
Jay’s new bites
Brighton’s Salt Room looks like a simple urban brasserie, but there’s some serious cooking going on in this space locked on to one of the city’s less lovely hotels. Try the pig’s head with salt baked parsnip, plum and miso, the vast fruits de mer, served either hot or cold, or the whole grilled fish for two. Save room for the Taste of the Pier dessert (saltroom-restaurant.co.uk).
Following news that Notting Hill’s trattoria Da Maria is threatened with closure comes an existential threat to the India Club, on London’s Strand since the 1940s. The freeholder plans to redevelop the building in a way which could cause the venue to disappear. A petition to save the club had almost 5,000 signatures at time of going to press. Go to thepetitionsite.com and search India Club.
Staff shortages in the restaurant sector are beginning to bite. A survey by the Institute of Hospitality has found that 93% of restaurateurs are having problems finding staff and half of those expect the situation to worsen after Brexit.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
