Match of the week

Spiced whitebait with sriracha and Chinon rosé

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on April 17 2017 at 13:51

As you’d expect many of the usual suspects featured in my pairings this weekend (chocolate, anyone*?) but the match I was most impressed by was nothing to do with Easter

It was an amuse or pre-dinner ‘snack’ as we must now call them of spicy deep-fried whitebait at Box-E, a local Bristol restaurant I impulsively popped into for a dish on Saturday in order to check out a rosé we'd been chatting about on Twitter. (As you do ...)

The wine was a delicious dark salmon-coloured Chinon rosé called Le Chic from Johann Spelty that tasted almost like roasted rhubarb but it easily took the whitebait which came with a wedge of charred lime and a dab of sriracha (hot chilli sauce) in its stride. Disproving the theory that oily fish and chilli are impossible to match with wine.

Box E got an enthusiastic review from the Observer’s Jay Rayner this week which given it only has 14 seats will make it even more difficult to into but it’s worth persisting. Elliot Lidstone’s imaginative food makes it one of my current favourites on the Bristol food scene.

*gratuitous excuse for a plug for my new ebook 101 Great Ways to enjoy Chocolate and Wine (and other delicious drinks) which is now available for download at the introductory price of £3 until April 30th, 2017. I hope you'll agree that's a bargain!

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