Why Le Champignon Sauvage is one of the best restaurants in Britain

A return visit to Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham last week underlined why David-Everitt Mathias is considered one of the 10 best chefs in the country according to the latest Good Food Guide.

Here's the review I wrote five years ago. Scroll down to find out what we ate this time.

"He’s not in the world’s top 100 restaurants. You’ll rarely see him in a glossy magazine and never in a TV studio. In fact you quite possibly have never heard of him but he’s probably more highly regarded by his fellow chefs than anyone else cooking in Britain today

I’ve been eating at David Everitt-Mathias’ two Michelin-starred restaurant Le Champignon Sauvage for some 15 years (he’s been open for 22) and can honestly say I’ve never had a disappointing meal there. There are dishes, admittedly, that haven’t particularly appealed though I can count them on the fingers of one hand - but that’s inevitable given the cutting edge nature of his cuisine and they’re always outweighed by dishes that are quite simply stunning.

His imagination seems boundless; his intuition as to what unlikely ingredients will complement each other, uncanny. He treats offal like a luxury ingredient, turns vegetables into desserts and wild plants into sophisticated sauces and ice-creams. He doesn’t strive for effect, just the ultimate extraction of flavour. Eating there is still a conventional restaurant experience not an edible performance as is the case with contemporaries like Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal. (That’s not to detract from what they do - it’s just to Everitt-Mathias’s credit that he manages to make such an impact on the plate without any special effects.)

Because he knows us he sends dishes out that are still in the process of development (and no, we don’t dine free - we pay our way. Everitt-Mathias doesn’t believe in schmoozing the press!)

We kicked off our dinner last week with a trio of intensely umami dishes, a register with which Everitt-Mathias clearly feels comfortable. There was a simple but perfect mini-risotto generously topped with shavings of Umbrian summer truffles then two surf’n’turf dishes (a favourite Everitt-Mathias combination): Shetland scallops with carpaccio of pigs head and pickled pear pure (the sweet caramelised scallops were simply wonderful with the slightly sticky, gelatinous texture of the pork, crisp bits of crackling and soft, sweet pear) and deeply savoury crayfish with cocks’ combs and seagrass (I think) accompanied by a warm, umami-rich pea pure and crayfish jelly. All three dishes went well with our muscular 2006 Domaine du Pre Caboche white Chateauneuf-du-Pape (though I have to say that a full-bodied vintage champagne like Krug would have been even better. Dream on . . .)

The next course - a very zesty, Asian-style dish of halibut with dandelion and chickweed with a Yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit that tastes a bit like grapefruit) and coconut broth, was delicious but really threw our wine. I’m still struggling to think what would have matched it - a quality Torrontes or a German or Austrian riesling perhaps but I think they’d have to offer a specific by the glass pairing.

We were back in umami territory with rump of Cinderford lamb with wild garlic gnocchi, wild garlic, roasted garlic cream and early Scots girolles which was a perfect match for a half bottle of 2004 Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon - the roasted wild garlic stalks linking to the very subtle herbaceous notes in the wine.
I suspect Everitt-Mathias puts that on the menu because he has to have a relatively conventional meat course: it didn’t seem to me his heart was in it in quite the same ways as the other dishes. Or that he’s more interested in seafood than meat these days.

Next three very different desserts - Everitt-Mathias is surprisingly also a highly talented pastry chef, as you can see from his book Dessert. The first - the only dish of the dinner that didn’t really do it for me - was a Guinness bread porridge with buttermilk mousse which was a bit heavy. I felt it needed to be boozier or have a good slug of sweet sherry with it.

The next course though was a wonderfully creative reinterpretation of lemon meringue pie (on p. 66 of the book*) served with a sharp, refreshing sorrel ice cream, lemon jelly and cardamom yoghurt and the final dish - apart from some sublime petits fours - quite the best chocolate tart I’ve ever eaten: a bitter chocolate and black olive tart with fennel ice-cream (p42*), a inspired riff on a chocolate fondant pudding (though again probably a nightmare for wine. Maybe a Chartreuse . . . )

This really is the most remarkable food - not only inventive but delicious, amply paying witness to the hours of dedicated work Everitt-Mathias puts in in the kitchen, and, I strongly suspect, out of it. This is a home-grown chef we can be proud of: one at the height of his powers, cooking 3 Michelin star standard food (although he only has two) that practically everyone can afford. His set menu starts at just £25 for two courses. Do go."

September 2nd, 2014

Although we've eaten David's food a number of times since this was written, most recently during an amazing pop-up during Bristol's Food Connections festival back in May it just seems to get better and better. For Tuesday's dinner we decided to road-test the set-price menu which at £26 for two courses is barely more expensive than it was back in 2009.

Mains could justify that price on their own. A fabulous saffron-spiked fish stew of ling, with potatoes, coco beans and chorizo foam (right) made you wonder why chefs bother with pricier fish while a deeply savoury plate of Cinderford lamb fillet, boulangère of braised shoulder and roasted onion and rosemary purée seemed to have been designed to set off the sweetly mellow 2002 Château Cap de Faugères Bordeaux we ordered - extraordinary value for £40.

The dessert of the day - a pistachio parfait with poached damsons and damson sorbet - was worthy of the full price à la carte and David must be the only Michelin-starred chef not to impose a supplement for cheese.

Only the starters - a velvety butternut squash soup with fried spätzle and a venison cannelloni with celeriac cream, ground elder and pickled pear that David told us afterwards is made with venison offcuts - explained how he manages to keep the prices at this level but the attention and skill that went into them were the same as the rest of the menu.

He also sent out a couple of new dishes to try as if to say "just look what you're missing": some intensely umami dived scallops with roasted peanuts, charred little gems and 'cured jowl' (a scattering of crisp pork crumbs) and possibly the best ever potato dish: smoked potatoes, warmed through with ham fat and topped with grated summer truffles and potato truffle foam. (Pausing while I remember this . . . ) I'm sorry, you just can't write about Le Champignon Sauvage - or at least I can't - without gushing.

So, what can I say? Go if you haven't been before. If you have, go again. And again. As the Good Food Guide says, it's one of the best restaurants in the country.

Le Champignon Sauvage is at 24-28 Suffolk Rd, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 2AQ. Tel: 01242 573449

Timberyard - Edinburgh’s most atmospheric restaurant?

One of the main problems restaurants have is consistency. Keeping up the standards not only of the food but decor and service. So could Edinburgh’s Timberyard make an equally good impression as it did when I first went 16 months ago?

Then I’d loved practically everything about it - the big high-ceilinged room (it is a converted timber yard), the neutral colours enlivened by the odd splash of colour from the folded woollen rugs over the back of the Scandi-style chairs. The genuinely warm friendly service. The spectacular small plates of food - occasionally a bit over-ambitious - the young chef Ben, the son of the owners, had spent time at Noma I seem to remember - but all bang in season and impeccably sourced. This was emphatically a restaurant with its heart in the right place.

We decided to revisit for my birthday this year - easier said than done in the middle of the Edinburgh festival. We managed to snag a table online for 2pm - not quite what I had in mind so I dropped them an email to say we’d prefer to come in the evening if possible. A real person replied saying she’d managed to squeeze us in at 7. Special treatment? I don’t think so. I didn’t make a big deal about the fact I was a food writer or planning to review (so no freebies asked for or given either)

The room was unchanged - beautiful, dusky, candlelit, atmospheric. Hopeless for photography as you can see. I hoped the large party on the next door table - actors we were betting - weren’t going to spoil our evening but the room was large enough to absorb their noisy chatter. The menu seemed to have been pared down a bit with fewer options unless you went for the 8 course tasting menu. We decided to choose instead from the main menu which offers ‘bites’, small and large plates.

Wholemeal bread arrived, warm and crumbly served with whipped butter, tiny heaps of seasoning and a small pot of smoked (I think) goats curd. I was slightly concerned how minute my first plateful (pea, cucumber, truffle, fennel, hazelnut, spelt) was when it turned up but it was an explosion of flavours, textures and temperatures (the cucumber was a sorbet) - summer in a mouthful. My husband had something fashionably rubbly that turned out to be an umami-rich combination of quails egg, ham hock, st georges mushroom and dried cep.

My second plate - duck, celeriac chanterelles, tarragon, bramble apple - was more like a miniaturised main, a dress rehearsal for autumn. Duck can be flabby and tasteless but this, despite being rare was perfectly tender and great value for £11. The husband had a similar palate of flavours to my first course - a sublimely pretty plate of globe artichoke, courgette, pea, goats curd, carrot turnip and unbilled edible flowers (above) that I half-wished I’d ordered too.

He went for another small plate for his main - this time what was described as smoked sea trout, crab, courgette, beetroot, broad beans and fennel but which seemed more like a plate of warm smoky rich salmon - there was a lot going on in these dishes. I went for the comparatively conventional option of beef, shallot, cauliflower, leek, potato, onion and (a mercifully small amount of ) kale - the beef perfectly cooked, rare and braised, cleverly offset by the different styles of alliums. A technically perfect dish to flatter a good red.

Well into our stride by now we went for the pairings with the desserts, Gosnells delicately honeyed mead with a summery plate of strawberry, elderflower, woodruff, biscuit, frozen yoghurt and Sipsmith damson vodka with the inevitable chocolate option of chocolate, burnt milk, spiced bread crumb and marshmallow - both spot on. Our waitress who looked like a diligent A level student but for the big fierce tattoo on her arm sweetly brought extra glasses so we could share the drinks too.

She also took away our wine - a 2011 Gut Oggau Blaufrandisch without a murmur when we asked for it chilled suggesting we taste it first to see how cold we wanted it (other restaurants take note). Our only criticism is that at £62 (well, it was a birthday) it was slightly overpriced for the quality - probably by the producer rather than the restaurant - bringing our bill to a fairly extravagant £160 without service. We could have easily managed to pare that to £130. On the other hand you could spend £100 a head for the 8 course menu with paired drinks* and you might well be tempted to dip into the very appealing cocktails . . .

Timberyard might not be for everyone: it’s not grand, portions are still relatively small, especially for Scotland and service is on the casual side but it’s one of my favourite restaurants anywhere. If money were no object I'd fly to Edinburgh just to eat there. Next birthday I probably will.

PS I’ve since discovered there’s a shorter lunch menu and an outside bar on Fridays and Saturdays in the summer with interesting bar food - if it’s ever warm enough in Edinburgh to sit out

Timberyard is at 10 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh EH3 9DS. Tel 0131 221 1222 or email eat@timberyard.co.

64 degrees, Brighton

The mark of a ‘good ‘critic, my dad always used to say, is that you agree with them. This certainly applies in the case of the Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin whose view of what makes a great meal (good simple food, lack of pretention) I totally sign up to.

So when I knew I was going to be in Brighton last week I booked the restaurant she had glowingly recommended, sixtyfourdegrees or 64° as it calls itself.

The only thing her review hadn’t quite prepared me for was that it was so small. A few tables (with one you had to share), the rest at the bar. Although it might seem second best you MUST go for the bar which basically fronts the kitchen so you get a ringside view of the chefs at work and even chat to them.

The menu is based on small plates which may make you sigh but these are such clever delicious dishes of such inventiveness you won’t feel short-changed.

As we were beside the seaside we stuck to fish rather than meat and worked our way through all four options. Fabulously fresh scallops with romesco, tomato and almond was probably the highlight though I also loved a dish of plaice with mussels, spicy celery and capers and a bizarrely good combination of salmon with watermelon and wasabi. Sardines with fennel and lemon sounded slightly more exciting than it was. A touch oily.

We also tried a couple of the veg dishes which if anything I liked even better - a selection of summer veg - some tempura-ed, others pickled and some sweet little steamed peas in the pod with miso and cream cheese - and possibly the best dish of the evening - potato knödel (dumplings) with seared cabbage and smoked butter - or “little pillows of potatoey loveliness*” as the chef aptly described them. I avoided the egg dishes which I suspect would have been slow-cooked

We weren’t going to have pud but the cheese course of Barkham Blue with pickled cherries sounded too good to miss (it was) so we then felt we should try a dessert in the interests of ‘research’. Described as ‘cherry, white chocolate, Bluebird tea, it was a cherry and chocolate roulade (I think) with poached cherries and shards of white chocolate which I’m not normally that keen on but which was unusually delicious. I’m not quite sure where the tea came in (You can see why Marina is the Guardian’s food critic, not me …. )

As usual with small plates the cost mounts up so we ended up spending £50 a head sharing a bottle of dry rosé (made by the students at nearby Plumpton College) and a couple of glasses of sweet wine (a Tokaji) which we didn’t need and which didn’t really go with the dessert but we really didn’t care by that stage.

So, as anticipated, a great evening out. If you’re planning to be in Brighton over the summer, go. And book. You’ll need to.

* the menu changes every week so they won't necessarily be on when you go. Sorry.

64° is at 53, Meeting House Lane, Brighton BN1 1HB. Tel: 01273 770115. You can read Marina's review here.

The Dairy, Clapham: Smart, casual

I’d heard good things about The Dairy, not least from my son Will (of Hawksmoor*), one of whose favourite restaurants it is, but being south of the river it took me a while to haul myself down there.

In fact even longer than I’d anticipated. It was a tube strike the day I went so I had to take a bus which progressed in sedate and leisurely fashion from Marble Arch to Clapham Common, a not disagreeable experience on a sunny spring evening. As I was trying to avoid the rush hour and was early I also managed a brisk walk on the common to work up an appetite, a strategy I can strongly recommend.

The restaurant is much smaller and more rustic than I’d imagined, more like a gastropub or bar than the fine dining set-up you'd expect from an establishment with a tasting menu. Thankfully they don't impose that on you - you can also order dishes individually which is what we did. There’s some ambitious cooking though, no doubt about that.

The most memorable dish which has had me obsessing about it continuously since my visit was chicken oysters with a couple of little stacks of crisp deep-fried chicken skin, wild mushrooms and asparagus. It obviously looks a great deal more enticing than this shockingly bad photo. Make sure you order your own portion. Don’t share.

Other great dishes were a cracking chicken liver mousse (oddly on-trend at the moment) with rhubarb and apple, broad beans with smoked ricotta, house lardo and whey (at least I think that’s the version we had), a gorgeous dish of rooftop carrots (presumably grown in their 'urban garden') with goats cheese, oat granola and buttermilk, and Galician octopus with tomatoes, fried bread and rooftop herbs. We also, I see from our bill, had some squid. I can’t remember for the life of me how it was cooked. It was a catch-up meal with an old friend and we were yammering too much.

We also found room for two desserts: salted caramel with cacao and malted barley ice cream and that chocolatey 'soil' you see everywhere which I found a tad rich but I probably wouldn’t have bothered with dessert had we not felt we *should* do the menu justice. And something more refreshingly rhubarby - also good I seem to recall but which has vanished into the mists of time. And some warm madeleines or maybe that was somewhere else.

As is usual with small plate restaurants it’s easy to work up a fair sized bill without realising it. A modest drinks tally of one cocktail (a deliciously refreshing Fennel and Apple Hendricks, below), one ‘virgin’ version and two glasses of wine came to £28.25 + service - almost a third of the total £100.40 bill.

You could easily do significantly more damage to the short but appealingly quirky wine list which is divided up by style and mood (textured, intricate, mouth-filling whites and dark-toned, fleshy, energetic reds, for example). On the other hand you could drink beer - there’s a short but well-chosen list - and eat rather less or stick to the bar snacks. And there's a 4 plate lunch for £25 from Wednesday to Friday which is a steal.

Is The Dairy worth the detour? I’m not sure it is if you’re based the other side of the river. Not that it’s difficult to get to but if you're only in London for a short while there are plenty more central alternatives. But it's a fantastic place to have on your doorstep if you’re a sarf Londoner like Will or my lucky friend. I might just have to scrounge a bed for the night to re-taste that chicken.

The Dairy is at 15 the Pavement, Clapham Old Town, London SW4 0HY. Tel: 0207 622 4165

* never resist an opportunity to give the family a plug ...