9.5/10
Telephone 0115-986 6566.
Address Lenton Lane, Nottingham.
Open Tues-Fri, dinner only, 7-9.30pm (last orders).
Price Dinner menu £47, tasting menu £65 (no reduction for bulk ordering).
This one you have to do, enthused a friend calling in a state of near hyperventilation a couple of months ago. "It's the most eccentric restaurant in history ... a Sikh guy cooking this astonishing sous-vide stuff on an industrial estate in Nottingham. You simply have to go."
Given this friend's record for reliable tip-offs (he once rang in an even more animated state to report a psychic acquaintance's conviction that terrorists would sail a stolen Soviet nuclear warhead up the Thames and detonate it at Greenwich on New Year's Eve 2003), I tended towards the sceptical.
The law of averages being the legislative powerhouse it is, however, even he gets it right now and then. There is indeed a Sikh guy producing some incredible cooking on what's admittedly the more rustic end of an industrial estate in Nottingham. His name is Sat (Singh) Bains, and despite recent success on BBC2's The Great British Menu, in which chef cooked against chef for the right to cook at a banquet in Paris, he even answers his own phone. "Stand by for the ultimate Sat Nav," he said with practised ease when I rang in a familiar state of navigational bewilderment.
On finally arriving, I found myself alone for a meal that proved a little less bizarre than the restaurant itself. Within two minutes of taking a seat in the bar next to a couple of cool young women teachers lured down from Sheffield by the TV appearances, I had set light to a newspaper by placing it over a candle, and then bamboozled Sat's wife, Amanda, who expertly runs the front of house, by ordering both the dinner and the tasting menus.
What followed, in a conservatory offering as fine a view of electricity pylons as you could wish for, was remarkable. Fabulous freshly baked rolls gave way to a weird but wonderful freebie pre-starter, introduced as "textures of corn" by one of the undergraduate waitresses who patrol the room in smart brown uniforms (textures of brown is the colour motif here), in which sweet popcorn and corn ice cream floated in a corn soup.
First came the dinner menu, and a starter of genuine brilliance in which pieces of juicy, crispy-skinned quail worked to perfection with artichoke hearts, asparagus and a salad topped with shavings of Parmesan. After a slightly bland chunk of John Dory with cockscombs, broad beans and, paradoxically, sweet lemon confit, a much appreciated hiatus took place, Mrs Bains having naturally assumed I was joking about the two dinners. But soon enough the cry of "Tasting Menu to Creosote on Table 17" arose, and this began with the starter given 10/10 by all three judges (my friend and colleague Matthew Fort among them) on the TV show. And no wonder, because the combination of runny-yolked duck's egg (cooked, the menu helpfully reminds us, at 62 degrees), wafer-thin ham and richly flavourful peas was a sensational mingling of textures and tastes.
A rectangle of foie gras rolled in hazelnuts drew an involuntary, "Oh my God, that's just bliss", which in turn enticed a look of panic from the wordless couple at the next table, and then came an ethereal bit of organic salmon with a crab croquette. It was by now becoming a struggle - what brand of imbecile, having ordered two meals, limbers up with three bread rolls? - yet failing to polish off a beautiful little medley of lamb (shoulder, shin-filled spring roll and a "sweetbread ratatouille") was out of the question.
And that was that. Even so corpulent and gluttonous a man couldn't cope with the three remnants from the tasting menu, or a pudding from the dinner one, and the only sensible response to the request, "Can I get you anything else, sir?" was, "The bill, please... and a crane to get me to the car."
This is clever, complex, highly imaginative, technically brilliant food served with warmth and charm in a restaurant (with rooms, for those who want to set about the wine list) that is splendid in every regard. It takes a bit of finding, and it's by no means cheap, but it is many years since I've come across somewhere more categorically worth the effort and expense.
