Telephone: 01223 833128
Address: Whittlesford, Cambs.
Rating: 17/20
The last time he had visited the Tickell Arms, Tucker said, he had seen a man come in, sit at a table and order food and a bottle of the most expensive wine. As this man waited for his food to arrive, the owner, the theatrically eccentric Kim Tickell, had gone up to him and said, "You came into my restaurant a year ago and were exceedingly rude to one of my waiters. So fuck off. Get out. Now." And he went. That was about 30 years ago, long before Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay turned throwing out customers into a cheery ritual for drumming up publicity.
Tickell had run the eponymous Arms as a private kingdom along quirkily personal lines. It always had a certain rackety elegance, and the wine list had the grace of the days of cheap, top-class claret and burgundy, but the food could veer between the delightful and the deplorable, and the service was as individual as the owner. But it was always fun and it was always full, according to Tucker.
Tickell moved on to the great hospitality suite in the sky, and the Arms slid quietly downhill. Then, a couple of years ago, it was rescued by a chef, Spencer Patrick, and a maitre d'hôtel, Max Palmer. This has turned out to be the happiest of chances. Patrick is a young fogey of the kitchen, happiest when exploring the back catalogue of forgotten classics, where "sauce Albufera Cardinal", "en gelée de madère", "sauce bordelaise" and "à la forestière" are forever young; Palmer keeps a firm eye on the tables and makes sure things tick over with charm and precision.
In terms of the outward and visible signs, said Tucker, as we sat outside in the sunshine (and this was October, mind), sipping a pre-prandial snifter, watching some very decorative wood ducks motoring about the pond at the back, it was difficult to tell what had changed. The idiosyncratic medieval cerulean blue, in which the outside had always been painted, looked in mint condition. The graceful Gothic revival windows, the twilight gloom, the gleaming mahogany tables, the glinting glassware were all present and correct. Why, there was even a table of four students, as well as several groups of folk who could have been their parents and grandparents.
The menu, however, has changed, for the better, and the skill quotient in the kitchen has soared. The menu du jour gives two courses for £14.50 and three for £19.50. From this, Tucker had a soup of mussels and saffron; a pea and wild mushroom risotto with truffle oil; and a jelly of raspberries with a compote of summer berries. I would have chosen the warm salad of foie gras and haricots verts with hazelnuts, then roast guinea fowl with pomme fondant and creamed cabbage, and closed with the raspberry jelly, but I was working from the à la carte, which gave three courses for £34.50. So I took the panache of scallops gros sel with caramelised endive, sauce sauternes; roast Barbary duck à l'orange "Lasserre" and crêpes Suzettes.
From that, you can see what I mean when I say that Patrick is a young fogey of the kitchen (as befits a man who Marco Pierre White put in charge of the Grill Room at the Cafe Royal). With the possible exception of the risotto, all the dishes were classics from the glory days of French haute cuisine, and they were executed in a grand style as well. That is grand in the Lancastrian, rather than the architectural sense, with skilful attention to technical niceties; proper weight given to sauces and their bases; clarity of flavours; a certain richness of dishes (no fear of butter or cream here); and a formality of structure - all good stuff.
And some of it was very good stuff, indeed. The mussel soup - the lips of the blue shells poking up through a brilliant yellow foam - managed to be light, creamy and intense all at once, with the mussels themselves having an almost silky softness. The scallops were fat and firm and sweet, the emulsified sauternes sauce coating my tongue with seductive luxury. The duck à l'orange was a reminder of just how happy a marriage this cliche can be in the right hands, with the right duck, the right sauce (dark, deep and dense) and the right amount of orange peel to cut the richness. And the quivering raspberry jelly had that balance between sweetness and acidity that made it a perfect, refreshing pudding.
There were minor flaws: the risotto was not truly creamy; the scallop dish needed a little more endive to offset the sweetness of the seafood and the sauce; and the crêpes Suzettes, while gloriously indulgent, were a touch leathery. However, I am prepared to forgive everything for the style and substance of the whole - and in view of the fact that everything was cooked on a domestic Aga with a two-ring Baby Belling for support. It was just as well that the Baby Belling was there, because the Aga conked out two-thirds of the way through service, as Agas have a nasty habit of doing when the going gets hot (the absurd affection accorded these antediluvian and hopelessly inadequate cookers is incomprehensible to me). Soon, however, the Aga will be no more, and Patrick will have a modern kitchen in which to exercise his passion for the past. It is a passion that future generations of Cambridge students, and anyone else with a liking for fine cooking, would do well to indulge.
· Open Lunch, Tues-Sun, 12 noon-2pm; dinner, Tues-Sat, 7-9pm. Menus Lunch, £14.50 for two courses, £19.50 for three; à la carte, £34.50 for three courses. All major credit cards accepted.
