Pip, Pearl and Josephine – forays into Prestwich, Chelsea and a certain Treehouse
Just 100 metres and a whole decade apart – Aumbry and The Pearl. But there’s a palpable bond between them on a balmy night along Bury New Road. For once this week Prestwich is spared the not-so-distant rumble of Oasis in Heaton Park but the rival shishes are sizzling in the Istanbul and Anatolian Grills. This is polyglot dining territory, but there’s a place for a ‘Modern British’ restaurant.
Until 2015 that role was occupied brilliantly by Mary-Ellen McTague’s award-winning Aumbry. After it closed, the site on the corner of Church Lane became burger joint Solita and is now Wallop cafe bar.
Change happens. Back in those days 425 Bury New Road was a computer repair shop. Now it’s a self-styled ‘British Dining Room’ called The Pearl, its dazzling blue exterior punctuated by founder Sam Taylor’s little Florentine peccadillo, a ‘wine serving hatch’. The bijou interior owes more to the classic Parisian bistro.
I’ve been rolling with that French bistro renaissance recently, taking in terroir-driven establishments in Lyon, London’s Bouchon Racine, Camille and Café Francois, Bavette in Horsforth and more recently Chelsea’s Josephine Bouchon, of which more later. There is an Entente Cordiale with Prestwich’s Anglophone heritage going on here, I believe.
The Pearl – from Arnold Bennett to Matt Bennett
I used to come to The Pearl just to eat chef Ian Thomas’s Omelette Arnold Bennett. Now the kitchen has a new regime featuring three young chefs who’ve all seen service at Manchester’s Michelin-starred Mana. Head chef Matt Bennett looks impossibly young to have also worked at the legendary Gidleigh Park in Devon, but he has.
On Fridays and Saturdays, 5pm-9pm, Matt, George Webber and Jae Haney switch to à la carte. Their new summer menu was the perfect excuse to see if the Pearl remains a jewel. Saturday lunchtime (needs must as a suburban restaurant) the lunch ‘special’ was to be Oasis themed with involving pie specials and a pudding called Cigarettes and Alcohol, consisting of whisky, white chocolate and charcoal ash. On a fashion note, their ‘Yeah, Oui’ limited edition red cap in Isle of Wight red, celebrating the new menu, is preferable in every way to an overpriced bucket hat.
Pip the sustainable showcase for Mary-Ellen?
That band from Burnage came up in conversation two days before in the beyond-quirky environs of the Treehouse Hotel. This is a thrilling transformation of the brutalist Ramada Renaissance at the Cathedral end of Deansgate. Serendipitously, we were dining in its ground floor Pip restaurant, which is under the stewardship of the aforementioned Mary-Ellen McTague. Like The Pearl and Shaun Moffat’s wonderful Winsome Pip showcases great local suppliers and a very British culinary tradition. Her new hotel home is also committed to championing low-waste cooking.
No, fans up for the BIG GIG weren’t primarily popping in for Mary-Ellen’s deconstructed Lancashire hotpot or the heavenliest of treacle tarts, but as our early evening server reported: `’quite a few will be in later”. A few days earlier Oasis ticket holders were also sighted in Hawksmoor, enjoying the remarkable value three course lunch for £26, which includes rump steak. But then Oasis has long been about the beef between two brothers.
It has taken a while too for Mary-Ellen McTague to find the right stage. I’ve known her since she arrived back in her native North West after working for Heston Blumenthal. While she was still at Ramson’s in Ramsbottom I had the good fortune to dine with her, and get a kitchen tour, back at The Fat Duck. Then came Aumbry and later The Creameries in Chorlton, which heartbreakingly didn’t work out. A constant triumph for her, though, has been Eat Well, which she co-founded with friends Gemma Saunders and Kathleen O’Connor five years ago. It delivers around 2,500 meals a month, made by Manchester’s hospitality community. Meant to be a temporary response to a global pandemic, this fund-raising initiative continues to feed people in need.
Josephine Bouchon – near perfect Lyonnais corner house
Fulham Road Chelsea is hardly synonymous with deprivation. Michelin groupies may associate it with Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, which has held three stars for nearly a quarter of a century and where the Carte Blanche menu will set you back £260. The best of the rest on the scene had seemed to consist of swanky gastropubs. Until Josephine. It’s named after serial star gatherer Claude Bosi’s grandmother and is a slick but sympathetic homage to those bouchons (bistros) originally frequented by Lyon’s silk workers. Today’s real ones don’t offer the heritage glamour of Josephine but Bosi’s incarnation more than matches them, with less heaviness.
After starters of terrine de campagne with cornichons (£17.50) and dorade marinée aux olives and citron (aka sea bream crudo, £15) we had the lapin à la moutarde – (rabbit in mustard and tarragon sauce) to share for £68. Definitely consisting off more than one whole bunny, it could have fed four, all of whom would have been swooning in delight, as we were. A £17.50 chocolate mousse to share, alas, just seemed one gustatory challenge too far. Next time. And surely will be… if we can tear ourselves away from our perennial Racine fetish. I liked the fact that the menu attributed that terrine, the equal of many I’ve had in Lyon, to London charcutier George Jephson. How very French.
The metropolitan bargains to be found here are a ‘Menu de Canut’ featuring simple Lyonnais specialities (£14.50 for two courses, £29.50 for three). There is also a daily changing Plat du Jour for £16.50). Stick to the £28 a bottle house wine and you won’t ‘faire sauter la banque’ as they say in French. In a further homage to the Lyon bouchons they measure that house wine (we had a very acceptable Rhone red) with a ruler to decide how much you pay.
So did The Pearl live up to Josephine’s folksy finesse?
The red wine that accompanied our four à la carte courses in deepest Prestwich hailed from Sicily, but was prime example of local sourcing. Borgoleo is a 14 per cent Syrah produced from the vineyards of Filippo Zito’s family. These days you’ll find the former Midland French sommelier at the Failsworth wine shop/tasting room he runs with his wife Natasha. They provide other wines for The Pearl, but this, his own, is the one to go for, a complex bargain even at £60 a bottle.
It fitted our evening, which featured a large ‘snack’ of glazed lamb ribs with an exquisite red wine jus and a later main of lamb rack and loin, a fine dish but eclipsed by my ex-Dairy sirloin with hen of the woods mushrooms and a beef fat potato terrine. It was sourced inevitably from Littlewoods of Heaton Chapel. Incredible stuff.
I should by then have been ‘steaked out’ after a beef tartare. Despite the presence of lovage and smoked eel this dish was surprising unassertive; the same could not be said of its fellow starter where a slash of black garlic added oomph to a glorious croquette of Bury black pudding with apple compote and nasturtium. Modern British? Yes.
Milk bread is having its moment so no surprise when a few dinky slices of the kitchen’s own arrived with marmite butter; toasted it partnered, the tartare. Perhaps a raft of French toast under a chantilly blanket that came with Prestwich honey and peaches was a carbfest too far. But it was a generous feast.
Did Pip at the Treehouse climb the heights?
As at The Pearl, I kicked off with oysters – each time a modest trio. In Prestwich they were Scottish Cumbrae with a mignonette dressing and a squirt of Tabasco (£10 for three); at Pip I took the ferment liquor option with my Carlingfords (£4 each). We had considered the affordable four-course ‘Pip Mini Tasting Menu’, available for dinner at £30 a head with a generous optional wine pairing at £20 each, but couldn’t resist the lure of the à la carte, which felt classic McTague.
Each dish is recognisably a model of clarity. Nothing superfluous on the plate, core flavour the foremost consideration. I had wondered if all this might be diluted in the context of running a whole day hotel catering operation (there is a separate team for events).
Not on the evidence of this particular meal, an antidote to ‘fine dining’. Sardines on toast as a starter is almost an act of daring, but it feels just right. Deconstructed Lancashire hotpot sounds a mite Masterchef poncey? None of it. The regional one-pot dish is translated into a huge, beautifully seasoned Barnsley chop on a bed of melting hotpot potatoes, the dish given seasonal vigour by an abundance of minty peas and broad beans. Classic cauliflower cheese went well with this and my open lobster and crab thermidor pie, topped with a lemon hollandaise, its lushness offset by grilled gem lettuce.
Among my fondest memories of Aumbry were the puddings and here both a treacle tart, earl grey and bergamot and a flourless chocolate cake with fennel cream were sublime.
Little things linger. So many vapid amuse bouches about. But here we had kicked off with split pea chips with mushroom ketchup. All the ketchups, pickles and ferments are made in-house; it’s symptomatic of what today’s new wave Brit cooks are up to. Who needs an elaborate over-reduced sauce? Not that well-grounded Josephine Bouchon dallies with such Cordon Bleu niceties either.
After three such well pitched meals, what is the French for common ground?
Fact file
While in London to review Josephine Bouchon I stayed at The Z Hotel Leicester Square, 3-5, Charing Cross Rd, London WC2N 4HS, latest site for this stylish but affordable boutique lodging group. You couldn’t be closer to the West End action, yet the 95-room property nestles in a quiet corner beside the National Portrait Gallery. Indeed our extra comfort Club Queen room looked out on the Gallery entrance.
