Restaurant Sat Bains

 

We went across from our accommodation to the bar area at about 6.15pm for our 6.30pm sitting. We began our meal with drinks in the bar. I opted for a sugar-free Elderflower pressé and Drew a Ginger beer.

Our room was on the left opposite the restaurant

Tonight's menu is a 10+ Course, I add the + as there are little extra treats along the way in addition to the advertised 10 courses. 

The restaurant follows the theme of the five tastes: 

Salt, Sweet, Sour, Bitter and Umami. 

The first taster, called Introduction includes these five tastes in delightful little morsels. I'll let the photos tell the story. 

The samphire and seaweed, along with the balsamic and bread were my favourite two. Following the tongue tingling experience of the five tastes we had a little extra 'treat from the kitchen' which was a small tart with a light shortcrust pastry, nasturtiums, lyonnaise onions with mustard cress and other fresh greenhouse herbs, we could see the greenhouse through the window and were invited to explore it before we leave in the morning! The flavours popped as we eat the tart leaving a refreshing flavour on the tongue.

Following the tart we were served bread. Sourdough and Treacle were the flavours. I stayed with the sourdough and Drew with the treacle. It was lovely white sourdough with a robust sourness that was missing from the bread last night, which had more of a milky texture. During the meal we had another three servings of the sourdough, though Drew only managed two servings of the treacle bread. 

The next course was confit salmon served with vegetables a la grecque (i.e Greek Salad vegetables including radish, cucumber, peas, broad beans, red pepper and tiny mushrooms) it also had wasabi, alioli, pollan and topped with Schrenckii caviar  with a Tuscan olive oil poured over the top. The caviar gave a rich saltiness to it that suited my taste perfectly. Drew, who does most of the chopping at home when I am cooking, made clear that if I ever wanted cucumber, radish and red peppers cut this small I was going to have to eat out for it. [Co-pilot's note: I think I was a bit more "robust" than is reflected above.]

The next dish was another delight. Called 'From the embers' It had Jersey Royal potatoes and Smoked Eel cooked in barbeque ashes topped with hollandaise sauce and delightful potato straws. This was one of the amazing dishes which plays with your mind. The smokiness was so intense it confused my palette into thinking I was eating smoky bacon, never had a tiny baby potato tasted so smoky in my expereince. The eel was delightful too, it was Drew's first time eating it and he enjoyed it as much as I did. A very simply description for a lovely dish - it was really really yummy or as Drew had it: "Eelly, eelly, yummy."

We next moved on to a veal sweetbread with a sauce Robert. The sweetbread was lightly fried and the sauce was a veal and chicken reduction with Dijon mustard, wow what a flavour. The sweetbread was served on a coleslaw with hisbi cabbage on top and horseradish on the side. [Co-pilot's note: this was veally, veally good!!]

Next was a dish of which I had never heard. It was called 'Chawanmushi' which it was explained is a Japanese word for ‘steamed in a tea bowl’. It was a light and delicious dashi egg custard with raw cauliflower flaked to the same size as the flakes of 60-month-old matured Parmesan, wow what a flavour, and black truffle on top. The earthy flavour of truffle and rich delight of the dashi made this a memorable dish. 

On today's menu we were able to choose our mains. I opted for 'A plate of lamb' which had lamb cooked five ways. Loin and lamb belly on the main plate and a delicious pot of lamb ragu, lamb kidney and lamb sweetbreads that had such an intense flavour that I felt I should so something special to celebrate these often wasted bits of meat that could make such an impact on my taste buds. I liked the fact that the menu also told us how old the lamb was -  Spring 2021. My sister, who buys a haggot carcus once a year or so is very fussy about the age of her lamb, haggot, sheep meat, so it is good to see others who feel the same. The plate also included a black olive tapenade, this is a bruiser of a flavour, don't get me wrong I loved it, but you felt that if the tapende had been a person he would have been a heavyweight boxer, even this morning I can reflect on its power, yet oddly it was not overpowering the loin or belly, indeed was perfect at bringing out their deliciousness. There was also a lovely black garlic smear with real zing. I wonder if they sell the tapenade and garlic as I'd buy lots of it to get those intense flavours alongside meats or vegetables.  The lamb was served with red peppers and aubergine, lightly fried, which offered a nice crunch as a compliment to the wonderful meat and sauces.

Drew opted for the Monkfish “Tikka”. This lovely piece of Monkfish was served with three sauces: courgette, coriander and mango underneath and pickled cucumber on top all brought together with a buttery curry sauce. Drew absolutely loved this dish. A perfectly cooked piece of fish with a crispness on the outside yet being soft and delicate within. The main curry sauce was pleasant and worked well, yet differently, with each of the three smears.   

Following the 'main' course was a dish called 'The crossover'. This was puffed rice and caramel rice with marinated raspberries and granita snow on top. While this was too sweet for me Drew was happy to help consume both small pots which tingled on his tongue. 

The next dessert was called 'Lenton Lane' the name of the somewhat broken path that leads from the main road to the restaurant. Thus makes a good pun on being inspired by Rocky Road. While I've never eaten Rocky Road, Drew tells me there were links between these flavours and the dish. It has a Passion fruit sorbet, chocolate in multiple ways (chocolate granita, chocolate crumb, chocolate tweel, aerated chocolate pieces and rocks of dark sour chocolate) all of this came with two pieces of  honeycomb. The aerated chocolate was crunchy and delicious, the honeycomb puffy and light, Drew was glad that the chocolate included lots of sweet stuff as it meant he got more than his share! [Co-pilot's note: Once more unto the breach, always happy to help, I'm a martyr etc. etc. etc.]

The following dessert was called 'Pelargonium' an Elderflower ice cream with strawberries in balsamic under a biscuit. The strawberries were sour and delicious, for the ice cream and the biscuit I'll rely on Drew's description. Drew liked the sweetness of the biscuit(s) which were exceptionally crisp. The elderflower completed the strawberries in his view. He was a bit put out that I was able to eat my strawberries, as he thought he might get both desserts again!!

The final course (well, almost) was called 'Conclusion'. This linked back to the introduction to the meal with another five tastes to draw us back to the flavours. You can read what each was in the photo.

My conclusion from the exercise is: give me lots of salty and sour, quite a bit of bitter and leave the sweet and umami to others!! Both the introduction and the conclusion had three absolute delights (for me) on them and two I would happily not have eaten, not nasty in anyway, but not flavours I really enjoy.

You note that I said the conclusion was almost the final course. Of course being in the Vale of Belvoir we had to taste the Cheese Board which had Vale of Belvoir cheeses, these were: Long Clawson, Colston Bassett, Tuxford and Tebbutt and Cropwell Bishop which came in blue, white and beauvale. The Tuxford was a bit mild for me, but all of the others were a rich delight. The Cropwell Bishop beauvale was so sharp that I was allowed an additional piece from Drew's plate in reciprocation for all the desserts he'd had from mine!

I was delighted that the cheese was served with more of the delightful sourdough, there were home made garibaldi biscuits and some oatcakes, but who needs those when you can have bread!!

We ordered two espressos and as a surprise a chocolate log came with it. There were five different flavours of chocolate of which Drew was able to identify Bee pollen, Matcha and Sichuan pepper. Two he couldn't identify, I was happy to leave him to it. The coffees were sharp and tangy, perfect to round off a delightful meal.

Having started at 6.30pm it was again 10pm before we left the restaurant. Sat Bains was one of the first chefs whose Great British Menu experience made us want to try his food, it has taken a very long time to get here, but it was worth it now we have. 

From Malmsbury to Nottingham or from Niall Keating to Sat Bains

 

Today was a relaxing day when we gently travelled from the Cotswolds to the Midlands. The somewhat eccentric route, more about the details later, looked something like this.

Breakfast

I woke, as I often do on holiday, just before 4am and got up and completed the first of yesterday's blog posts. After showering etc (lovely powerful shower here in the hotel) the day really began with breakfast. 

Drew suggested that after eating so much last night we might not have space for breakfast, but I reminded him it had been 9 and a half hours since our last morsel of food. He didn't need any more convincing.

Drew ready for breakfast

The breakfast room at Whatley Manor is large and airy, there was plenty of space for all the residents to be socially distanced from each other, as we were the first to arrive we had a choice of seats.

Breakfast consisted of a cool course, croissants, yoghurt, cereal etc followed by a selection of hot dishes. We opted for the English Breakfast declining the baked beans which neither of us like. The breakfast consisted of a fabulously plumb pork and herb sausage, a piece of black pudding, two rashers of bacon, a mushroom, half a tomato and a fried egg (I like mine over-hard, as the Americans say, Drew's was sunny-side up). It, along with four pieces of wholemeal bread, was delicious and set us up for the day - well until dinner time anyway.

Haydn's English Breakfast

After breakfast we went back up to the room, I wrote the blog post about last night's dinner, and we packed and left the hotel at 11am. 

Shipton Mill

From the start of lockdown, like many people in the UK, Drew began to make his own bread. After a successful white sourdough he venture out into a tasty rye sourdough and has now made a wide range of sourdough and yeast based breads. At the start of the pandemic shop shelves emptied of some staple items including flour, so after ordering a first batch of basic flour from Lakeland Drew found out about the items offered by Shipton Mill who deliver across the UK.

One of our bags of Shipton Mill flour in the kitchen at home

As we travelled towards Gloucestershire yesterday Drew, jokingly, said "As we are going to Gloucester perhaps we could have a look out for Shipton Mill". We laughed and reminded ourselves that Gloucester is a big county (1,220 square miles to be exact). 

Well last evening we decided to look and it turns out Shipton Mill is only 4.5 miles from Whatley Manor. So we couldn't leave the area without having a look. 

Shipton Mill

While deliveries from Shipton Mill have always been speedy, even in the midst of the pandemic, I can now see a case for coming and collecting our own flour and treating ourselves to another Niall Keating meal before going home the next day. Seems a very good idea to me.

Visiting Old Friends

When I outlined the plans for our trip in the first blog post and shared it via Facebook, one of my oldest friends, we were at college together in the early 1980s, who is also a Facebook friend made the point that we would be travelling very close to where he and his wife lived. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So we visited Wappenham, a quaint village which looks quite untouched by the modern age.

Having met Andrew Kirkpatrick at his school in the final year of A levels, the year before he came to college, we have remained friends, though not always with more regular contact than Christmas cards, since then. I first met Sara Pickering when visiting Andrew in Budapest in 1990, they had met in the city when both were working for the UK government out there. The following year (or was it the year after?) it was a pleasure to celebrate their wedding with them in the Catholic Church in Brighton. 

We last saw each other in 1998 when Andrew and Sara visited me in Tongwynlais and 23 years later it was like we had only seen each other a few weeks ago as they welcomed us to their home with a lovely few mugs of tea and we did lots of catch-up chat. What an enjoyable way to spend some time and break the journey up to Nottingham.

M1

After leaving Andrew and Sara's place at 2pm we called at the Sainsbury's Petrol Station in Northampton to top up. Given we are getting a Electric Car from September 1st, a Honda E, I wonder how easy it will be to top that up in comparison to using petrol in this Honda Jazz hybrid, time will tell.

From Northampton in was straight up a busy Friday afternoon M1. Drew was impressed that there were lorries three abreast on the motorway. Lots of Welsh motorways aren't even three lane, let along have enough lanes for lorries to be three abreast.

Lorries on the M1

Restaurant Sat Bains

From the M1 it was a short distance to the outskirts of Nottingham to Restaurant Sat Bains where we are staying and eating tonight.

Sat himself was standing at the kitchen door when we arrived as his team ran through the rain to pick the next herb that was needed for their dishes.

Our next post will tell the story of another delightful two Michelin star meal.

Dinner at The Dining Room – Whatley Manor

 

We first saw Niall Keating on Great British Menu and enjoyed him even more when he competed on the Christmas Special - Great British Menu Christmas 2020. We liked both the look of his food and the way he brought unusual flavours, especially Japanese flavours, to the food and, as long term fans of Lisa Goodwin-Allen and regular visitors to Northcote we also liked the fun interactions between the two. 

Well, I can tell you, with that great build up, we were not disappointed!

Drew ready for dinner in the lounge

We began with drinks in the lounge, while there we were able to enjoy the first two courses.

First came the very simply described ‘Charcuterie from the manor’ – the simplicity was only in the name as the rich flavours which were here to compliment the dried meat were truly sublime. A light hint of red wine vinegar and oregano ran through the meat. 

The Charcuterie was accompanied by what the menu called ‘Cherry tomato, vanilla, garden herbs’. This little basket of delight was crisp and, to my mind, best eaten as one bite, the little herbs and flowers, all picked fresh from the garden as the waiter was pleased to tell us, were full of little hits of flavour, the vanilla was a background flavour but the star of the show, the little marinated tomato was rich with tastes of tomato and a subtle sweetness from the marinade. I love tomatoes but hats off to a chef who can make tomatoes even tastier that they usually are. 

Our next delight, and an unexpected treat, was to be invited to the kitchen for a few little delightful tastes. The kitchen is well designed and laid out and Chef Niall greeted us on arrival and moved on to orchestrate the brigade in a personal and quite way – no shouting chefs in this kitchen.

Strangely, and I assume deliberately, the kitchen was cool and well ventilated. The air-conditioning provided cool air, so though busy the temperature for us guests, but also, I assume for the chefs, was very comfortable.

While at out kitchen table we were treated to a Citrus tea, miso and citrus tonic served from an old Asian style tea or coffee pot. I have said in the past that what makes a great chef is taking simple ingredients and getting new and appetising flavours out of them, and this tea was another example of this as the citrusy rush of lemon seemed to dance on the tongue and was immensely refreshing.

We were next served with an oyster each this was flavoured with a tangy whipped vinegar; little pearls of caviar and small spring onion leaves along with nori across the top. The sloppiness that oysters [co-pilot's note: Bogies in a shell!] are sometimes associated was not existent and the oyster flavour provided a sealike taste to hold the associated condiments.

The next little morsal in the kitchen was a real showstopper. It was a squid ink star, yes black with the colour of squid ink, but crisp like a cracker shaped ever so delicately and decorously into a star and topped with little pieces of razor clam nashi pear and yet more tasty garden herbs and flowers. 

We could almost dance with joy at the flavour, but instead we restrained ourselves and went on to the next little treat. beef tongue in tempura. This was Drew’s first taste of tongue, he doesn’t really do offal, but he was happy to taste this and really enjoyed it. I, who had grown up with cheap cuts of meat as my Mam eked out the value from her weekly ‘housekeeping’ always like tongue. My Mam had the ability to convince us children that the cheapest bits of meat were the best ones, so for years I’d have turned up my nose at a steak compared to some delicious brawn, tongue or liver!!

[Co-pilot's note: I found eating in front of a two Michelin star chef a little nerve wracking - what would I do if I hadn't liked bogies in a shell or beef tongue when the man had access to a vast array of sharp knives - luckily I liked them both!]

The kitchen treats over we said farewell to Chef Niall and followed the wait staff to our table.

Embossed Table Linen is a lovely touch

At the table we were served first with a sourdough loaf (each) and with some cultured decorated butter the loaf, unlike the hearty Rye and Wholemeal versions I have at home, was delicate and fluffy. I suspect there was milk involved in its production as the taste was subtle. The butter on the other hand was not subtle at all, but full flavoured. A 3% salt butter with onion ash and garden herbs on top and tiny marigolds, it was rich and tasty. It had been layered so delicately on the plate it seemed a pity to mess it up, but we ended up with most of it gone on one or other of our loaves. 

Yes, this is butter, but still a work of art - it didn't stay that way long!

Alongside the bread, though to be honest we liked the bread and butter so much we didn’t get on to it until we had finished the bread was a tiny tofu and white miso terrine, with a shitake mushroom gel on top in a light trout roe infused sauce on the side. I sometimes find tofu rubbery and find it takes quite a while to infuse flavour into it – this tofu was anything but rubbery, soft and delicate, almost like a cream jell in texture, the mushroom and trout roe had its own delicious flavour, but for me the Tofu was the star of this show.

Next came an, unfortunately, tiny bowl of puffed rice risotto and scallop with a chorizo vinaigrette, caviar, parmesan and creme fraiche. I don’t know who had the idea of using puffed rice in a risotto, but it was a divine inspiration. The crunchiness meant the delicate pieces of scallop sat happily alongside the rice and the zingy, tangy (add your own delicious adjective here) chorizo vinaigrette was astounding. Drew liked it so much that he suggested next time we come we might bring our large pasta plates and ask them to fill them with this delicious item. Every mouthful had a different tingling sensation on the tongue. This was my favourite dish of the evening and I’ll remember its flavour for a long time.

I was so excited by the smell that I'd started before I remembered the photo

The next dish was called ‘Tortellini Black’ and was a tortellini made from squid ink filled with pork belly and chicken, a lovely combination, with lardo and spring onion on top and a pork jus and garlic vinaigrette sauce. If we hadn’t just had the chorizo dish, we might have been overwhelmed by the flavours of this tortellini as it was absolutely delicious. But even something as nice and tasty as this couldn’t complete with what had gone before.

Our next course, I seem to have stopped counting, was called ‘Lobster, spring peas, black truffle’ the small chunks of lobster were served with equivalent number of black truffles on top of a delicious pom puree, it was pureed to perfection and all three together were a delight to eat. This was served with a spring pea and dill oil sauce with complemented the fish, mushroom and potato perfectly.

Really pretty - before sauce was added

Even nicer with it

What might have been considered our main course but was just one delight among so many was called ‘beef from the manor, dill pickles and horseradish’ The beef was tender and lightly barbequed in flavour, the horseradish was served as a cream with dill oil in the middle of it. The dill pickles were more finely chopped than I have ever seen but retained all their crisp pickledness. Drew who used to serve dill pickles on McDonalds’ burgers in his early career said that he didn’t think these dill pickles and the pre-chopped mass-produced ones at McDonalds were related in any way. The other delightful, to a man who loves pickles, tastes were pickled lettuce and picked cauliflower with a crunchy dehydrated cloud mushrooms with a Japanese seasoning and Sichuan pepper. Flavours layered and balanced this well are indeed a masterpiece. The red wine jus which was poured over the beef added a salty zing. We like our salt, so this was perfect for us. So perfect that I’d have liked a bit more bread to mop it up, but I managed as well as I could with my fork and fingers!!

Then came the desserts which in turn were: ‘chocolate, buttermilk, passionfruit’, ‘umeboshi, umeshua, pickled sakura’ and chocolate frog with toasted rice ice cream and furikake. While I’m not a huge fan of desserts, unlike my other half who loves them, each of these were within my preferred taste range – i.e. not to sweet. 

The first desert was like a sandwich of two pieces of 72% dark chocolate with a layer of buttermilk cream between them topped with little droplets of passion fruit jell and gold-leaf. The lovely wince of dark, dark chocolate was well balanced with the gentler flavour of the buttermilk.

The second dessert was a pickled plum gel, plum sake cooked into a custard served in a cherry blossom sauce with hibiscus gel, dried apple shaped like little leaves and crunchy sesame seeds. It must take hours to make something that looks and tastes this good. Who knew dessert could be sharp and pickled and still delicious – I think from now own pickled dessert is the plan for me.

Finally, we had the chefs memorial Great British Menu dessert of Harry Potter inspired chocolate frog on a lily leaf plate with a side of toasted rice, an ice cream that was more like a jell in texture than like an ice cream and crunchy furikake over the top. A fitting and delightful end to an amazing meal. One espresso, served in vacuum glass cups, so the cup is cold to the touch with the coffee hot inside, and we were replete. 

 

Having sat down at 6pm we left the table just before 10pm four hours of absolute delight.