Best Western Abbey Hotel, North Parade, Bath (01225 461 603). Meal for two, including wine and service: £100
Like "butcher's choice" and "luxury flat", "Best Western" before the word "hotel" is a promise already broken. The flats advertised as luxury never are; the sausages allegedly chosen by the butcher are a defamation of the pig. And a Best Western Hotel leaves you musing on what seventh circle of hell merely "adequate" would offer. I write from experience of drab, over-heated rooms smelling of despair and yesterday's breakfast; of creaking plumbing and demoralised staff waiting to erase this period of their life from the CV; of breakfast buffets where rubberised eggs pucker and tense. Nothing good has ever happened to me in a Best Western-branded hotel. Until now.
For hiding away in the Best Western Abbey Hotel in Bath is something very special. It is a kitchen run by a gifted chef called Chris Staines. The last time I ate his food it was at the Michelin-starred Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge. His dishes there – a glorious melon soup with a shard of crisped Parma ham on top, a plate of sweetbreads with a sweet onion compote and garlic caramel – were deep and intense and clever. They were ruined by the self-conscious poncery of "faine dining" which made the whole experience about as much of a laugh as having verrucas removed with a blow torch. It was all waiter faff and bother. Suddenly the idea of Staines in a Best Western, where he landed after a journey around various grand hotel gigs, sounded promising. His terrific food, without the hassle? Could it be?
Yes, it could. While the bedrooms at the hotel are roughly to type – I stayed the night – the public areas down below are light and bright and airy. Tables in the Allium Brasserie are free of cloths. There are splashes of tasteful modern art. There are breezy, unobtrusive staff who know the difference between service and stalking. What matters is the food, which is mostly good and in places very good indeed. To nibble there is a plate of pickled peppers and thin slices of Iberian ham; good serviceable stuff and a bargain at £4. There is a more showy nibble of mandarin segments filled with a punchy "jam" of dried shrimp with peanut and chilli.
There is a lot of this playfulness. Pieces of Loch Duart salmon are cooked sous-vide with a smear of miso then crusted with sesame seeds, and served alongside a wasabi cream and crisp pickles. There is a leg and breast of quail glazed with a chilli caramel, and a Thai-inspired salad of peanuts and coriander. It is showy food, which would quickly become profoundly irritating if the technique wasn't spot on. It is.
Main courses retreat back to the European tradition. A pearly tranche of hake sits atop a mess of what can only be called a quinoa persillade, the grain a deep, vegetal green. There is a dribble of properly reduced chicken jus and a few chestnut mushrooms. Only some skinned grapes are redundant. Another plate, of slow-cooked pork belly, the meat falling apart, comes with a mess of swede and carrot, a glorious spiced black pudding and curls of deep-fried pig skin. The only letdown is the curse of the over-sized, under-crisped, triple- cooked chip. You could have played Jenga with these – which is a shame, given I only wanted to eat them.
We finished with a perfectly balanced mille-feuille of caramelised apple, with cider jelly and a caramel ice cream and an iced peanut parfait, with a dribble of salted caramel and buttery popcorn. The dish descriptions do their job for them. For Bath this food is not cheap. Starters are around £8 and mains near the £20 mark. Though for the sheer quality and attention to detail it is impressive. There is also a set-price menu at £19 for three courses, served until 7pm.
That, combined with a keenly priced wine list, makes the Allium Brasserie more than noteworthy. Bath has a lot of restaurants, but for a long while the tight economics of the tourist trade has meant that it has too often been about the lowest common denominator. Now it has something worthy of a journey. It is in the least likely of places. It is burdened by a garish marketing logo. Happily, what matters is what Chris Staines is putting on the plates.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
