Moor Hall, Prescot Road, Aughton, Lancashire (01695 572511). Four-course tasting menu £70, eight courses £140, wines from £35
When booking to eat at Moor Hall in Lancashire, do pay attention to the terms and conditions. For example, while they minister to dietary requirements, they “cannot cater for dislikes”. As a restaurant critic I take this as a personal challenge: clearly, if I don’t like anything it will be my fault, not theirs. They ask that you arrive 30 minutes before the booking time “to experience the full Moor Hall journey”. You may have thought you were going for lunch, but no. In the age of X Factor we are all on a journey. A week before my booking, secured with a credit card, an email turns up repeating all of this and reminding me that if I cancel within seven days or fewer of that booking (a period which, given the date of the email, has already started), I will be charged £125 a head.
I should be anticipating a cracking meal at a restaurant which, earlier this year, was named the best in Britain in the National Restaurant Awards; which, just last month, made it into the Good Food Guide’s top five. Instead, I am on edge, fearful that I might let them down dreadfully, rather than the other way around.
Before I’m accused of lopping the head off tall poppies, let me cut straight to the vital information. Mark Birchall, who worked with Simon Rogan at L’Enclume, is a gifted chef. I will not quickly forget the smoothest of whipped cod’s roe, under a sheen of punchy chicken jelly, dotted with shimmering pearls of caviar, which came with crackers into which fronds of herb had been pressed, as if art-directed by Laura Ashley in her pomp. I will not forget a charcoal-black crisp pouch containing a liquid centre of black pudding. Given the many bejewelled accessories which attend the four-course tasting menu, stretching it closer to 10, I’d argue the price tag, now £70, is good value. It’s housed in a grand manor house treated with huge care; the modern, sharp-edged dining room, with its theatrically visible kitchen, is light and calming.
But there’s a gauche performance around it all which reeks of self-importance. Yes, I know: hello Mr Kettle have you met Mr Pot? But I’m not charging you 70 quid for lunch. The problem is it deadens the whole experience. Mostly it’s because the elements of the “journey” they highlight are not the best of what they have. To start you must be taken to the lounge whether you wish to begin there or not. It’s a nice touch that it’s one of the brigade who serves you the first snack, a wooden block with curls of their own charcuterie. He describes them reverentially. And beautifully presented they are too: gossamer sliced on a machine in the lounge, and kept at room temperature. The problem is that two of them, particularly the coppa, are just massively salty and not especially good.
After a few more snacks, a sombre waiter says our table is ready. It’s a tease. We’re still not allowed to go there. He insists we come out into the perfectly pleasant kitchen garden behind the building for the “start of our Moor Hall journey”. This might have worked if it had been done with any enthusiasm, but the narration – “These courgettes go on our monkfish dish, here are fruits we use in desserts” – is delivered in a bored monotone, like he’s an undertaker who has trained long and hard to say, “I’m sorry for your loss” to the daily throng of clients. At the end he’s about to take us on a “journey” through the kitchen. I call a halt. I’ve seen more than enough restaurant kitchens in my time. Please can I just go to my table? Apparently, yes.
Once there, another cook is dispatched tableside to prepare a dish complete with narration: here’s a poached oyster, there’s fennel a couple of ways, ooh, a bit of lardo, a squirt of dill oil, puffed quinoa and a buttermilk dressing. Tweezers are involved. It’s all robustly performative. But the dish itself is just a little bland. None of the ingredients punch through. You can throw in a floor show if you insist, but if the dish itself isn’t up to scratch no volume of “Ta da!” will improve it.
Eventually the meal begins and much of it really is exceptional. Warm, springy sourdough comes with cultured butter, the deep green of garden peas blitzed with herbs. The sweetest of carrots are interleaved with leaves of a crisp carrot caramel. There are dollops of silky purée and gratings of salty Doddington cheese. Pieces of warm, intense crab-claw meat come in a limpid smoked turnip broth, with a pillow of smooth brown meat; there are roasted beetroots under a snowfall of grated frozen horseradish. A deep-fried potato basket is filled with the oily hit of smoked eel, tempered by the acidity of fermented garlic.
There is a tartare of 80-day aged beef, with the sultry funk of barbecued celeriac and a dollop of mustard. Before the main courses, they bring the flakiest of onion pastries, which drops golden crumbs everywhere. These must be chased around the bare wooden table with fat fingertips before the fiercely suited man with the table broom comes. Alongside a solid chicken main is a pot of chicken “ragù” which is dark and sticky like the very best bits at the bottom of the roasting pan. The pre-dessert is a perfect scoop of gingerbread ice-cream, atop a little ginger in thick syrup, and laid with the finest sticks of crisp gingerbread tuile, as though a game of Kerplunk has collapsed. Wild blackberries come with a foamy woodruff mousse and crunchy sugarwork.
We have, at times, eaten exceptionally well, as we should when the bill for two with one glass of fizz each is topping £100 a head. But throughout I have been on edge, fearful that our nice lunch will be interrupted by another bit of that “journey”. Mostly what travels are the plates, which we get to watch being paraded around the dining room for multiple, prim inspections. Guys, just bring us the food. Don’t get me wrong. The cooking at Moor Hall deserves to be taken very seriously indeed. But it would be a much better restaurant if it stopped taking itself so damn seriously.
News bites
If the whole ‘food as story’ thing intrigues you, there are spaces available throughout October at the Fat Duck in Bray for what they call ‘The Journey’, a multi-course menu with nods to Alice in Wonderland, and sweeties dispensed from an ornate clockwork dolls’ house. The availability may be related to the fact it now costs £325 a head, prepaid. From November they are running a menu for the Christmas period called The Fable, at £375 a head. I am merely the messenger (thefatduck.co.uk).
To mark the Rugby World Cup, the Japanese-inspired conveyor belt chain Yo! has introduced a set of dishes inspired by the home nations. These include fish and chips nigiri sushi with wasabi peas for England and a haggis and carrot California roll for Scotland. Once again, I am only the messenger (yosushi.com).
Interesting development: the original Ivy on London’s West Street, famed for being one of the toughest rooms in which to bag a table, has started targeted advertising via Facebook. The business has also recently been brought inside the ‘Ivy Collection’ group of branded cafés and brasseries. Until now it had been kept entirely separate from the spin-offs.
Jay Rayner’s book, My Last Supper: One Meal, a Lifetime in the Making, is published by Guardian Faber at £16.99. Buy it for £11.99 at guardianbookshop.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
