MADE BY BOB, THE CORN HALL, 26 MARKET PLACE, CIRENCESTER (01285 641 818). MEAL FOR TWO, INCLUDING WINE AND SERVICE, £75-£90
My maternal grandparents are buried in a Church of England graveyard on the edge of Cirencester, a curious place for a couple of old Jews to end up. I have visited only once, to check that they were definitely in the ground. My mother broke off all contact with them when she was in her teens, and made it clear they were not a lot of fun. I never met them and took her word for it that I had not missed anything. Perhaps as a result, Cirencester sat on the map as a place to remain ignored, the sibilants of its name hissing warnings at me from an unvisited past.
Ah, but appetite is a wonderful thing. I had heard tell of a former chef from Bibendum in London called Bob Parkinson, who had moved here to do interesting things in a smart open kitchen, situated in a smart redevelopment of the city's old brick Corn Hall. Made by Bob is part deli, part restaurant, all brick and spotlight and glass walls and appetite. Intriguingly, the menu also has a dish on it that reaches back to a far more satisfying history than my own. That dish is a classic French fish soup, and a splendid fish soup it is, too.
It is smooth, emulsion-paint thick – whole canteens of cutlery could stand up in this one – and the colour of an autumn leaf fall. Most importantly it tastes of all its many constituent parts, as though the entirety of a fishmongers' slab has been cooked down, then blitzed with enough pungent aromatics – fennel, wine, orange peel – to humble a shoal of gurnard. Which pretty much describes the process. I watched it being prepared once by Henry Harris of London's Racine who, like Parkinson, once worked at Bibendum, and the memory is mostly of fine fishy bits caramelising on an iron hot plate.
They both learnt this soup from the head chef there, the great Simon Hopkinson, author of Roast Chicken and Other Stories. He in turn says he first cooked it at Terence Conran's house in the South of France, having read about it in one of his host's many cookbooks. The point being that this soup along with the accompaniments of perfect crisp croutons, grated Gruyère cheese, and an aioli soothed with saffron, is one of those robust threads that pulls long and hard through Britain's post-war restaurant history. To see it here executed so perfectly in a lively but unassuming joint tucked away on England's western fringes is enough to give a greedy man faith. Hopkinson's culinary progeny are spreading far and wide.
Made by Bob is, much like its name, a straight-up place serving straight-up food. There's nothing flashy here, just a lot of very precise cookery. You can even sit at the blonde wood bar and watch them doing all that precise cooking. A salsa verde with still warm bread was lots of fresh green herbs, capers and anchovies with hobnail boots on. A salad of finely sliced ox tongue came with chicory and slivers of beetroot and a mustard dressing which didn't overwhelm any of its parts.
A fillet of halibut, alongside a dome of mash and oven-roasted tomatoes, had been introduced to both a searing hot pan and enough butter to give it a beautifully nutty and well-seasoned crust without over-cooking the fish. Most surprising of all was a grilled chicken curry. I didn't want to order it, not least because it looked out of place, but once I'd crossed off the linguine with seafood and bouillabaisse sauce, because we'd been there with the fish soup, and turned my nose up at the red pepper, fennel and green olive risotto because, well, I would, wouldn't I, that left only the steak which is just a steak.
A menu crisis produced a rather fine dish of a chicken leg with crisp salty skin, underneath a dense, nut-thickened sauce that managed to stay the right side of sweet. At the end both a perfect panna cotta with autumn fruit compote and a rhubarb sponge, proved the kitchen has all the bases covered. With a couple of glasses of wine, the bill for a meal like this mounts up, though it is an adaptable place, which allows for cheaper options. Or you can just shop at the deli and take home one of their ready-to-cook duck confit, in its luscious overcoat of creamy white fat, and spare the tip. Would my grandparents have liked it? No idea. They're dead and I never met them. Their grandson liked it, though, and that's what matters.★
