30/04/2023

Feasted Chef’s Table, Stoke-on-Trent

The Feasted Chef’s Table is a unique event. An outstanding 11-course tasting menu rooted in the heritage and culture of Stoke-on-Trent. Seated in the Feasted kitchen, a maximum of 10 diners watch their food being prepared, learn about its creation, and bring their own stories to the table. With exquisite fine dining that’s micro seasonal and hyper-local, it’s an experience not to be missed.

I don’t know how many eating out reviews I’ve written, either full blog posts or shorter pieces for social media. But none of them featured meals quite like the one I ate at Feasted in Stoke-on-Trent last weekend.

The brainchild of chef patron Cris Cohen, Feasted is not a restaurant. It’s the name of a studio kitchen at Spode Works, converted from the historic ceramics factory. It’s also the name under which inspiring training and education is provided. But the more I learn, the more Feasted seems like a philosophy. And even a call to action.

FEASTED

Feasted emerged in 2017. Cris, a former teacher who’d also worked as a head chef, was looking for a change of direction. What started as an offer of homemade soup and bread turned into private dinner parties. By 2019 there was expansion into corporate dining and, linking Cris’s two loves of food and education, Feasted was approached by Stoke-on-Trent College to deliver a course in Gastronomy.

When the pandemic struck in 2020 and virtually all hospitality shut down, Feast at Home offered meal boxes to create fine dining dishes at home. Most recently, the kitchen studio was opened up for the Feasted Chef’s Table.

But you might be surprised that, running alongside high-end gastronomy, is a focus on food poverty. Because the Feasted philosophy is that, ‘a chef’s job isn’t only to serve food to those who can pay for it, it’s to provide food and skills to help everyone eat‘. This commitment is shown in Feasted‘s work with local charities like The Hubb Foundation, and courses for the long-term unemployed, young refugees, vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

Learning more about Feasted, I found a huge belief in the ability of food and education to empower people. Not just to feed themselves, others, and promote positive change in the hospitality industry. But to build self-confidence and instil “a ‘can do’ attitude in people who’ve mostly been told ‘you can’t'”.

There’s also a will to work against the negativity that, as an outsider, does seem to dominate discussion about Stoke-on-Trent. For Feasted, that means recognising there are many people with hope and aspirations for something better. A few days after my visit, Feasted hosted Opposites Attract, an evening devoted to these ideas and the creation of a better food system for Stoke-on-Trent.

Another of Feasted‘s ingenious ways to bring this about is to celebrate the city through the Chef’s Table.

FEASTED CHEF’S TABLE

Seating a maximum of ten diners, the Feasted Chef’s Table is an intimate affair. Cris’s team prepares the food at one end of the kitchen table, you eat it at the other. On the Saturday night I visited, there were four sets of couples. I admit that, keen as I was to try Feasted‘s food, the idea of sharing a table with six complete strangers made me anxious. Not a naturally gregarious person (and that’s a huge understatement), dining out usually consists of myself and partner in quiet, detailed appraisal of dishes. So, when Cris suggested that, to encourage wider conversations, we sat opposite our partners at the rather wide table, my heart sank a teeny bit lower.

But just as one of the great things about tasting menus is that you often end up loving something you’d never pick given a choice, I found myself enjoying the sociability of the Feasted Chef’s Table.

Held Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the evening consists of eleven courses at £95 per person. I also had the drinks pairing at £45. Described as micro-seasonal and hyper-local, the menu changes monthly, albeit with some dishes being carried over to the next month.

I’ve heard Cris talk before on the irony that while Stoke-on-Trent was the centre of world ceramics production, its wares still found in top restaurants around the world, the city has largely been a fine dining desert. The Feasted Chef’s Table tackles that by not only bringing gastronomy but placing dishes in the context of the history, heritage, and culture of Stoke.

As each course was served, we learned about its creation and heard stories of its links to the city. There were lots of opportunities to ask questions and lively discussions took place among us diners as well as with Cris.

MOLLY LEIGH

Our first course linked to the story of Molly Leigh or The Burslem Witch. She’s apparently well-known to locals, but not to an incomer like me. Molly was a real person who died in 1748 and there’s a host of unlikely myths around her, including a blackbird or jackdaw familiar, hauntings and exorcisms.

Our dish of Milk bun, curds and whey, onion ash was a nod to Molly partly making her living by selling milk. While her legend includes accusations of souring beer, women charged with witchcraft were often said to cause milk to sour. Which is a neat reference to the splitting of milk into curds and whey.

But whatever the truth and the legend of Molly, she gave us a great start to the evening. The bread was light with good texture. Spread with a duo of tangy curds and whey, a contrasting deep flavoured but sweetish sauce, plus slightly bitter onion ash, it was a satisfying combination of textures and flavours.

CHEESE CUSTARD, BELLY PORK

Our second dish was Amino flapjack, belly pork, set cheese custard, brown gel sauce. At the base of the bowl, based on Japanese chawanmushi, sat a beautifully light, savoury custard. This was flavoured with cheese from the Staffordshire Cheese Company. Sprinkled over one half of its surface was the deconstructed flapjack: an intensely savoury, cheesy and crispy mix of seeds and oats.

Topping that was a skewer of wonderfully smoky belly pork and an umami-rich brown gel sauce. As previously ungregarious me was now too busy chatting, I forgot to ask what was in the sauce. But I can tell you that, if you’re a fan of local delicacy Staffordshire Oatcakes, then you’ll recognise the pairing of cheese, oats and brown sauce with something porky. The oats might even remind you of those bits of cheese that go crispy as they ooze out of an oatcake and hit the hot griddle. As we’ll see, oatcakes made their appearance twice more during the evening.

MUSHROOMS & SMOKY BROTH

One of Feasted‘s principles is sourcing ingredients locally. So, being in landlocked Staffordshire, it’s perfectly reasonable to me that there wasn’t much seafood on the menu. For our next course, what looked like a scallop was in fact king oyster mushroom.

Generally, I’m not a fan of the current diet trend that wants to convince you that swapping lower protein plants for high protein animal products is nutritionally ok just because they look like them. Please, no one ever serve me carb-loaded, imported jackfruit and tell me it’s equivalent to nutrient-dense local, free-range pork. However, I’m completely open to enjoying the results in a tasting menu. And what a dish Smoked broth, shiitake dumpling, King oyster scallop, foraged greens was.

The king oyster appeared to have been cooked as I like a scallop, with plenty of charring on top. Its satisfying chewiness, which you wouldn’t want in a scallop, was pleasant here. I loved the crispy fried dumpling filled with intensely flavoured shiitake mushrooms. But my favourite element, and one of the highlights of the whole menu, was the wonderfully rich, smoky broth.

CAULIFLOWER & CHICKEN SKIN

Our fourth course was Cauliflower, chicken skin, XO butter. The cauliflower came in three different forms, all top-notch in my opinion. There was a large floret of tender, charred cauliflower, a super-smooth, creamy puree, plus the acidity of nicely-not-overly pickled white and green Romanesco cauliflower. But oh. The other two elements of the dish will stay with me a long time.

Another of Feasted‘s principles is tackling the amount of waste in the food industry. This is part of its aim for sustainability as well as getting more people fed. Some of their waste is used by Wild Pickle who make fermented products. Things like onion skins might go to artist Katrina Wilde, also based at Spode Works, to be used in natural dyes. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the chicken, but I’m so glad its skin was saved and made into a deliciously salty and crispy contrast to the mild cauliflower.

Even better was smearing it with some of the knockout XO butter and popping it in the mouth. If you’re not familiar with it, XO sauce was developed in 1980s Hong Kong where XO is slang for something of quality or luxury (apparently taken from the XO brandy classification eXtra Old). As the sauce often contains expensive ingredients like dried scallop and a special type of ham, that’s how it got its name. Anyway, the combination of crispy skin and powerful, rich butter was exactly what I want from a tasting menu. Big, bold flavours that leave you excited for what’s coming next.

LEEK & POTATO

However, if you were told what was coming next was leek and potato, just how excited should you be? Well, as it turned out, the answer is: very. Jersey Royals, leek aioli, charcoal texture was described by the young chef who made it for us as like ‘the best leek and potato soup ever’. And he wasn’t kidding.

If you don’t love Jersey Royals, do you even like potatoes? One of the most potato-ey of potatoes, you know they’re going to be good. But to pair them with a glossy, rich, garlicky aioli packed with leek flavour, plus leek oil, took them to another level. Also inspired was the contrasting charcoal texture. The onion ash on our first course had been a powder. This was grittier, but in a good way. Almost a little patch of earth where the leeks and spuds had been grown.

ARNOLD BENNETT OATCAKE

Around the halfway point now, our next course honoured Hanley-born writer Arnold Bennett. Many of Bennett’s novels and short stories are set in ‘the Five Towns’, his fictionalised version of the Potteries. Famously, while staying at The Savoy in London, he would have them make for him an omelette with smoked haddock and cheese. At Feasted Chef’s Table, omelette Arnold Bennett became the Arnold Bennett Oatcake (Taco).

Did I detect slightly less enthusiasm for this dish, even before anyone tasted it? As someone who was ribbed mercilessly on social media for casually putting leftover chilli in an oatcake, I know that Stokies (and I think most, although not all, around the table were from Stoke) can have very strict ideas about which foods can be eaten with them. And fish most definitely isn’t on the list.

As for me, like all the other dishes, I found it executed well. The smoked haddock was nicely cooked and there was a good cheesy hit. But I thought it did stand apart from everything else. Although I enjoyed this course, I felt it lacked the ‘wow’ factor, not having the complexity and little surprises of flavour found in the rest.

HOGGET & WILD GARLIC

But we were back in gobsmacked territory with our main course. Neck end of hogget, farce, celeriac puree, wild garlic, oats, marmalade. I’m a big fan of hogget, which is meat from sheep that are between one and two years old. Lamb is usually from animals in their first year, meaning they haven’t had as much time to develop flavour. Here in the Staffordshire Moorlands, we produce both of them really well, and also mutton from older sheep. Read about Troutsdale Farm, my recommended supplier, here.

The tender medallions of meat were nicely pink. But my favourite thing on the plate were little shreds of slow-cooked hogget with big, bold flavour. These were stuffed into a cabbage leaf topped with crispy oats. Also on the plate were a perfectly smooth celeriac puree, pickled vegetables, a deep, sweet yet meaty sauce, and a powerful puree with seasonal wild garlic.

NETTLE CAKE

Wild garlic season is also young nettle season. But any qualms you might have about eating the famously stinging plant would be immediately dispelled if you’d had the first of our dessert courses. Nettle cake, ricotta, meadowsweet looked incredible. The deep-green-coloured sponge reminded me of moss or lichen.

Amazingly light, the cake itself wasn’t overly sweet. But sweetness was brought to the plate by birch sap, in season for a short window in March and April. Piped ricotta gave a little creaminess and I assume the dusting on top was dried meadowsweet whose intense perfume you might detect on summer walks. Something I’ve never seen before was the long, sweetcorn shoot on top. This was from new Stoke-on-Trent organic urban farm Seed Microgreens.

OATCAKE ICE CREAM

While the Arnold Bennett Oatcake might ruffle the feathers of oatcake purists, I’d defy any of them to turn their nose up at our second dessert. Oatcake ice cream, meringue, beetroot, tamarind. Just as chefs these days make ice cream from infusions of things like toast and even hay, Feasted has done the same with the Staffordshire oatcake.

The almost biscuity-flavoured ice cream certainly seemed to meet the approval of everyone around the table that night. Contrasting with its smoothness were shards of meringue and an oatcake crumb. Balancing the sweetness was a beetroot gel with faintly sour tamarind.

BULLER’S RING

The tenth course was Buller’s ring cheese, goats cheese, fermented cranberry. Having looked at the menu a couple of days in advance, Buller’s ring was a mystery to me. So I looked it up, vaguely assuming Buller was some make of artisan cheese. What I found was, they’re used by ceramics manufacturers to gauge the temperature of kilns. Doh!

Our Bullers ring was a wonderfully biscuity pastry. Flaky, light, and exceptionally cheesy. Topped with whorls of cheese plus tart yet fruity sauce, it was the most elegant cracker with cheese and chutney I’m ever likely to eat.

MARSHMALLOW & SORREL

The final course, gin and tonic marshmallow, sorrel, looked beautifully simple. A squidgy, dusted cube of marshmallow, topped with a dark red variation on the bright green sorrel I’d spotted on a woodland walk just that morning.

Popped in the mouth all-in-one, the sweet and tart flavours instantly reminded me of lemon meringue pie.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: LOCAL GASTRONOMY WITH A CONSCIENCE

If you’re into exquisite fine dining, and especially the surprises and delights of tasting menus, I think you’ll love Feasted’s Chef’s Table. While it was one hundred per cent the food that drew me there, and which turned out to be of an even higher standard than I’d hoped, I was surprised at how much I valued the other aspects of the evening. I’ve already mentioned that my fears about enforced mixing were unfounded.

It wasn’t just because I had nice chats with fellow foodies though. For me, not from around here, other peoples’ experiences helped put the food we were eating, and by extension the philosophy of Feasted, into the local context. The teacher who wanted more for her disadvantaged students. The NHS worker who sees daily the effects of food poverty. The man who, having lived in several places around the world, was now back home in Stoke and who talked about the importance of the ceramics industry to generations of his family. And then there was Betty.

Betty has become a symbol of what Feasted is all about. That’s quite something for a young woman who’s been with them less than a year. Given opportunity and support, she’s transformed herself. Previously having little confidence, she now has the start of a career in hospitality. She can also stand in front of a bunch of strangers like us and tell them her story. She’s even presented her own dish to the Feasted Chef’s Table.

As a council house girl who somehow became a food writer, the belief that good food and opportunities for personal growth should be available to all is one close to my own heart.

But whether you want to support its work and vision, are interested in the heritage and culture of Stoke, or just want the pleasure of enjoying superb fine dining, I highly recommend Feasted’s Chef’s Table, ‘where extraordinary food is placed on the very plates that first put our city on the map‘.

READ ABOUT FEASTED LATEST VENUE ‘STOCK BY FEASTED’ HERE