Artisan
22 The Weir, Hull (01482 644 906).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £110
Artisan is the kind of restaurant that makes me anxious, though not for obvious reasons. There are no shovel-faced bouncers on the doors, or stupid design features which make me want to punch someone. The room, which seats just 18, is low key and comfortable: dark wood tables, modish but unchallenging wine-orientated images on the walls, a view out into residential Hessle, a suburb of Hull hard by the Humber bridge. There is also nothing painfully overwrought on the menu. With just two choices at each course it is admirably short. The worst you could call it is unsurprising, but we don't all want to be surprised when we go out to eat. Most of the time we just want dinner.
What makes me anxious about Artisan is that it is such a complete labour of love. This is the restaurant business as passion. This is running a restaurant because nothing else could possibly be as satisfying.
I visited on a Tuesday night when the staff numbered but two. Out front is Lyndsey Johns. In the kitchen is her husband Richard. And that's it. I imagine that on busier nights there might be a few more hands about the place, but not on our service. And all I can think when I visit a restaurant like this is: 'Please, please let it be good.'
For the truth is that, were it not good I would not have written a review (at which point you can probably hear an audible sigh of relief emanating from the banks of the Humber as far south as Devon). And then I would have travelled a long way for a mediocre dinner, with no copy to show for it. I have no problem taking down big, expensive restaurants which are delivering far less than their pricing demands. But an operation like this, built on obsession? Believe me, if it were bad it would fail all by itself. And, just so I'm not accused of hypocrisy, I will acknowledge that I have done so once before. I won't name the place because it is gone, but I would argue that there were extenuating circumstances.
Back to Artisan, though, which prides itself on the quality of its ingredients, and rightly so. Seared scallops with cauliflower purée may now have about it the whiff of cliché, but when the scallops are this sensitively cooked and the purée this silky I'm not complaining. The challenge is to avoid dryness, here solved by the addition of a little oil flavoured with lemon and apple. A warm salad of rabbit with wild mushrooms, dressed with truffle oil, also did its job. I know. I'm meant to sneer at truffle oil, call it ketchup for the middle classes. But, carefully used, it has its place and tonight its place is on this wild rabbit salad.
A generous portion of local lamb, served pink, came atop a swirl of good herby mash, with a fine red wine jus to keep it moving and some tiddly vegetables. Nothing to scare the horses but a lot to gladden the heart. The other main was, texturally, a deconstructed kedgeree. At the bottom a dollop of saffron risotto. On top of that a tranche of smoked haddock that fell apart easily into salty, ripe flakes with just a nudge. Finally, on top of that, a perfectly poached egg. So yes, food as tower, but it made sense. All the various parts needed to collapse into one another.
The only criticism is reserved for the risotto, which was not quite rich enough. A great risotto should not merely be soothing, but carry the hint that it might not be very good for you. This one spoke a little too keenly of virtue. At the end there was a choice of crème brûlée, which we didn't try but which made a point on the menu of its lack of adulteration. It was described as 'classic'. That can only be a good thing. A chocolate pot was dark and hefty and came with a scoop of Bailey's ice cream.
Three courses here cost £34.95, and are accompanied by a short but smart wine list. I have no doubt that this is a lot of money for dinner in Hull. It's quite a lot of money for dinner anywhere. But if you saw the place, understood the commitment of the people behind it, you would not begrudge a penny. If Britain really is to boast about its growing restaurant reputation, it doesn't need more outposts of the Ramsay empire (to which I will return next week). It doesn't need more gastro palaces and designer food temples. It needs more places like this.
