Thyme, 32-34 Sandygate Road, Sheffield (0114 266 6096). Dinner for two, including wine and service, £90
There is something you should know about the city of Sheffield: its one branch of Pret A Manger closed down after just a few months due to lack of interest. It is proof, if proof were needed, that Britain's food revolution is still stuck in the Molotov cocktail-lobbing stage. Apparently, the idea of well-made sandwiches which don't contain flaccid ham and watery tomato was just too outré for the people of South Yorkshire's first city.
I am not claiming that Pret A Manger is the be all and end all. It has its faults. But doesn't the company's failure in the city suggest a large part of the populace has undergone a radical taste bypass? (Please address all complaints to 'That southern poncey git with the rocket leaves stuck between his teeth'.)
Of course there are good places to eat in Sheffield, just not a huge number. It means that anyone who is intent on doing things properly has a captive market. It may explain the bounce, the brio, the all-round enthusiastic buzz of Thyme in the Crosspool area of the city. Recently it expanded the clean, white-walled, wood-floored space into the old butcher's shop next door.
Chef-proprietor Richard Smith is running a class act. If his restaurant has a failing it is largesse, a very Yorkshire belief that more is so very much more. I'm not really complaining; it is a far better trait than parsimony. But it does mean that, to do the dishes justice, you should attend with an appetite the size of the Pennines. The menu is long and, while clearly fluent in the kitchen Esperanto that is modern European food - here a dribble of balsamic, there some toasted pine nuts - it also shoves one booted foot firmly in the dark Yorkshire sod. It is admirably full of references to meat pies, black pudding, mushy peas and parkin.
Even when the dish is from outside these shores, the ingredients are kept close to home. So my open lasagne featured thick flakes of smoked finnan haddock in a rich sauce of buttered leeks. It was deep and it was unctuous and it was huge. But I'm very polite (or very greedy) so I finished it.
My companion, Lesley the speech therapist who, among other things, teaches small children how to eat, proved her mastery of the art by polishing off a plate of chargrilled asparagus with rocket and pine nuts. For her main course she ordered 'The Yorkshire Fish and Chips' which, though it had a couple of smarty-pants restaurant touches - the lovely crush of minted peas in place of mushy, for example - was exactly what it said it was. The fish tasted just as you would hope it to from the very best of chippies. The chunky chips, sadly, were a little underwhelming, engineered more for their sculptural possibilities on the plate than their taste. There was also an additional disk of battered potato which was superfluous.
In my main course of braised shoulder of Derbyshire lamb, superfluity came in the form of a battered and deep-fried disk of black pudding. It added nothing. The meat, however, was grand: crisp and caramelised on the side, tender and fibrous within. I finished with a Black Forest trifle - the gateau deconstructed and shoved in a bowl - which was as outrageous as it sounds. Lesley's crème brûlée with Armagnac prunes was equally luscious.
We drank a bottle of Sancerre, water and coffee and the bill came to £90 including service. It isn't cheap, but no one could claim they fail to give you your money's worth.
