Reviews
Made in Masham
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| SWISS-TRAINED: Jon Vennell with his wife Laura |
YOU know how this column manages effortlessly to perform a high-wire act on gastronomy's leading edge? How we've spent all these years in the critical vanguard? How we lead and others follow? There follows a U-turn of which even 10 Downing Street would be proud.
Though open for less than two years, Vennell's restaurant in Masham is decked with earlier, and unequivocally enthusiastic, reviews. The Independent thought it the best Sunday lunch in 2006, the Yorkshire Post the best country restaurant of 2005. (2005, for heaven's sake, talk about quick off the mark.)
There are successive "Big gourmand" awards from Michelin, encouraging mentions in the Good Food Guide, glossy magazines giddy with superlatives.
Had there been a North Yorkshire edition of the War Cry, there'd probably have been a review in there, too. As they say in Shildon, you can hardly stir for them.
One of the reviewers was even banging on about molecular gastronomy. I've no idea what that is and, quite possibly, neither had she.
The restaurant is named after Jon and Laura Vennell or presumably, unless the apostrophe is less careful than his cooking, after Jon. He trained in Switzerland and spent ten years as head chef at Haley's in Leeds before buying a place of his own.
Had it been Vennels - there's a Vennels in Durham city centre - it might have had something to do with narrow lanes and blind alleys, since "vennel" is another word for what Yorkshire folk call a snicket. The two may, indeed, be interchangeable.
For 19 years previously it was the Floodlite, run by Charles and Christine Flood and for several years in the Good Food Guide. This family still tells the story of a lunchtime visit when both restaurant and younger bairn were in their infancy, an "orange" pudding so wickedly laced with Cointreau that, upon regaining his baby seat in the back of the car, he'd flung wide his arms and for the entire return journey slept the untroubled sleep of the innocent.
Twenty years later, the bairn still unable to handle his drink, Charles does a bit of gardening - and cookery instruction - and Christine works in the Co-op.
Masham's a pleasant market town a few miles beyond Bedale, about 25 minutes from Scotch Corner. We took Sunday lunch with Raye and Kathleen Wilkinson - he well known in Middleham racing circles - who were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary.
"What's the name for 35 years' marriage?" we blithely asked.
"Agony," said Raye, though the old boy looks pretty well on it.
What in the Floods' time was a downstairs dining room is, post-diluvially, a very pleasant little reception area with a stove, a piano and a lot of these earlier encomiums, duly framed. A review bar, as it were.
That the set lunch was £19.95, including coffee, should not - must not - act as a deterrent, for the setting is civilised, the service unobtrusive and exemplary and Jon's cooking of a high order.
Since we've been muttering on of late about the impossibility of getting a good Yorkshire pudding and about the boring predictability of most vegetables, it should also be said that Vennell's, straight and narrow, scores highly on both counts.
The surprise was that, apart from a few family friends, just two others ate. Much later in the year, just 24 covers, it's fully booked.
Both weekdays and Sabbath, each menu section is limited to three or four choices, a move of which the column has always approved on the grounds both of fresh thinking and of fresh cooking.
Sunday lunch offered cream of celeriac soup with truffle oil, a nicely dressed salad of bacon, globe artichoke and beetroot that was an unexpectedly compelling combination - topped with a piping poached egg - and "home-smoked" sea trout with raisin and caper compote and rocket leaves. "Wonderful," said The Boss. She'd followed with pan-fried halibut with meuniere butter and roast chick peas - "bit curious, that" - delicious wilted spinach and the year's first Jersey royals. She also asked for a roast shallot from the other menu and was granted it without demur.
There was beef, of course, and richly flavoured pork belly - fat of the land, much in favour just now - with apple sauce, pureed carrots, some luscious leeks and creamed potatoes from another sphere.
The food's said to have "traditional roots with a modern take." They could have been talking about those carrots.
Like school dinners, however, the best had been left to last. The chocolate fondant was a confection from paradise, crispy without and melting within, served with peanut butter ice cream. Quite wonderful, Swizz inspired if not Swiss made.
There was also a vanilla and grand marnier panna cotta and a local cheeseboard with Wensleydale, smoked Ribblesdale, Old Peculier - Masham beer - and another couple, all from Yorkshire.
We thought that the pudding section might have been a bit wider, and said as much on the comments form. Coffee came abundantly, freely refilled. We tarried.
Since Masham has two breweries they diplomatically offered Theakston's bitter on draught and Black Sheep - £3.50 - in bottles, the second simply to toast the wedding anniversary.
It's strongly recommended, anyway - and remember, you read it here last.
n Vennell's, 7 Silver Street, Masham, North Yorkshire 01765-689000. Open Friday-Sunday lunch and Tuesday-Saturday evening. The dinner menu is £21 for the first two courses. No smoking; unsuitable for the disabled.
Since Saltburn is curiously unnoted for either good restaurants or good pubs, a green light for Signals - 50 yards from the railway station - where there are plenty of daily specials but pie, mash and mushy peas (£4) proved incorrigibly irresistible.
Busman's holiday, we bump in someone else's pub into Peter and Karen Hinds of the Crown at Manfield - five miles south-west of Darlington - whose beer festival is this weekend.
It marks their fifth anniversary in the multiple-award winning pub, the tenth anniversary of the Crown's refurbishment and, they reckon, the 2,500th different real ale which will have been pulled there. Someone's been counting.
Last year's biggest howking was probably reserved for the Tindale Crossing, a Brewer's Fayre pub near Bishop Auckland - "prosaic, formulaic, damn-near archaic." It's thus pretty brave that Peter Thompson, the manager, should ring with an invitation to try their new dishes. When the column returns from a week off, we might just do it.
....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a mad young octopus.
A crazy mixed-up squid, of course.
6:03am Tuesday 1st May 2007
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CommentPosted by: carolyn, Masham on 1:45pm Tue 1 May 07
Vennells provides consistently excellent food - the best I've had in a restaurant for a very long time. Highly recommended.
Vennells provides consistently excellent food - the best I've had in a restaurant for a very long time. Highly recommended.
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