Moat House Acton Trussell, Gourmet Dinner

You know when you’re going to The Moat House, in the pretty Staffordshire village of Acton Trussell, that you’ll eat very well. Whether you’re a guest at one of the many weddings which take advantage of its beautiful fourteenth century manor house setting, are eating in the informal, beamed bar or, as we did last Saturday night, dining in the Orangery Restaurant.

While other half (ID) and I would probably, as on our last visit, plump for the Tasting Menu, on this occasion we’d brought along my big brother (BB). He was up from London for the weekend and, while he does like his food, a no-choice menu wouldn’t suit him. BB doesn’t eat fish, doesn’t like egg and he’s not mad keen on cuisine from the entire continent of Asia either. The mere mention of a banana will have him wrinkling up his nose in disgust.

However, on Saturday nights, The Moat House serves a Gourmet Menu. For a set price of £39.95 per person you get a five course dinner including snacks and amuse bouche. Importantly, there’s plenty of choice for each course: on our visit there were seven starters, six mains and seven desserts.

SNACKS & BREAD

While choosing from the menu, we nibbled from little bowls of olives, vegetable crisps and smoked almonds. There were also two large and warm slices of sourdough apiece, one seeded and the other white. Unable to resist the very good bread, we gobbled all of it, spread with nicely salty butter, rather quickly.

GAZPACHO

Our orders taken, we were next served the amuse bouche. Thankfully, for my brother’s sake, no fish or egg nor, god forbid, banana, but a little cup of tomato gazpacho. This cold soup can sometimes be overly acidic, but the example here was just right for my taste. It had a silky, almost creamy mouthfeel, presumably from a decent amount of olive oil.

I liked the peppery notes added by a drizzle of rocket pesto which, along with basil leaves, brought a fresh zestyness. With smooth soups I always like to see some variety of texture and this was met by satisfyingly crunchy croutons.

QUAIL

Despite the choices on offer, we all ended up selecting the same starter of quail. We’re all fans of game, and we’ve cooked quail and partridge for my brother on previous visits, so it wasn’t really a surprise.

But this was a fair few notches above our homely flattened out, marinated and grilled version of quail. As with pretty much everything served in The Moat House restaurant, this was an extremely visually appealing plate.

The quail, two breasts and a leg, had had their skin nicely browned and a delicious aroma wafted off them. The cooking was expertly done, the insides juicy with no hint of dryness. Wanting to eat every scrap, we all picked up the dinky bones to nibble at.

The golden, richly flavoured sauce was extremely good. BB said we should’ve saved some of the bread to mop it up. But when a sauce is this fine, I’ll happily scrape up the last bits and eat them off my knife: table manners can go hang.

The accompaniments were equally first-rate. My favourite was a pickled walnut puree (just behind the rear quail breast in the photo) which was both sweet and sour. I’d love to see this very English pickle appear more often in restaurants. Also delicious were the blue cheese gnocchi. Not overpowering with strong cheese flavour, but subtle, soft and perfect for dipping in that meaty sauce.

Touches of freshness came in the form of crispy apple and celery plus pretty purple microherbs.

SORBET

The third of our five courses was a strawberry and lime sorbet.

We’d had a peach, raspberry and strawberry sorbet when we’d eaten The Moat House’s Tasting Menu around this time last year. Although I’d enjoyed it, I did comment in my review that it reminded me of a Strawberry Mivvi ice lolly and so maybe not ideal as a between-savoury-courses palate cleanser.

However, with its good dose of lime the latest version was nicely astringent, and I much preferred it. I’m still not entirely sold on the need for palate cleansers (other than water) but I’m not about to turn my nose up when one’s offered either.

LAMB

For our main course, my brother and I again chose the same dish: lamb.

I should have guessed. Incredibly, after we’d changed to go out that evening, we found ourselves wearing the exact same pattern of Black Watch tartan. At least mine was in the form of trousers and his a shirt, so it wasn’t too noticeable. But what are the odds?

Anyway, fashion faux pas aside, I think we both exhibited impeccable taste in choosing this delight for our main.

The two thick discs of lamb were expertly cooked: pink and tender. Cannon of lamb is a cut with next to no fat, so it needs to be quality meat if it’s to have deep flavour such as this. Tastier still was the pressed lamb belly with its crispy outside and meltingly soft layers within. Since its apparent makeover from breast of lamb to lamb belly, this fantastic but previously under used cut seems to be having a bit of a revival. Long may it continue, I say.

On top of the lamb belly was a tangy blob of airy goats’ curd. I love goat and sheep dairy, especially with lamb (think salty feta on spicy kofta) so was in my element here.

As well as the glossy tomato and anchovy sauce were two quenelles: an olive tapenade and a minty, herby salsa verde. Both went wonderfully well with the other elements on the plate, including charred spring greens and spring onion (or was it baby leek?).

Proof that I really need to take more photos, or more notes, (I’m usually too busy eating and thinking) is that I nearly forgot to mention the Jersey Royal potatoes that came alongside. A properly cooked Jersey Royal is a wonderful thing and these, with a drizzle of butter, were sublime.

CHICKEN

For his main course, ID opted for chicken. Creedy Carver chicken to be exact. Based in Devon, Creedy Carver are renowned for their quality free-range chicken and ducks. Like our own Staffordshire-based Packington Free Range pork, you’ll see it on lots of good restaurant menus around the country.

In the purely selfless interests of writing this review (ahem!), of course I had to try a little of what was on ID’s plate.

I thought the chicken breast very flavoursome and juicy. I loved the crispy pastilla pastry tube stuffed with the leg meat too.

Mushrooms appeared in various guises including a morel sauce and shaved raw button mushrooms. But my favourite was the mushroom gnocchi, subtly flavoured with wild garlic. Like the blue cheese gnocchi with our starters, it had me wondering why I’d hardly ever made these little Italian dumplings myself. Because I’d no hope of getting them as light and alluring as these was the likely answer.

PARFAIT

Surprise, surprise. My brother and I chose the same dessert too.

At its heart was a velvety iced lemon parfait encased in crisp shards of fennel pollen meringue. For me, the parfait had the perfect balance of creaminess and tartness.

I’m an absolute sucker for anything with fennel and I add the sweet, liquorice-tasting seeds to loads of savoury dishes. I’d only relatively recently tried pollen (via a bar sprinkled with it from Seed Chocolate) and loved the fennel pollen on the meringue. The sweetness of the fennel flavour was stunning combined with the slightly earthy taste of pollen

I can find lemon curd too sweet, but at The Moat House it was perfect. As I mentioned regarding the curd served with my lamb, I love sheep and goat dairy. So I think it was probably the sheeps’ yogurt sorbet that drew me to this dessert. Cool and smooth, tangy and subtly sweet it paired excellently with the lemon flavours on the plate.

And what lovely little things sat beneath the sorbet? Pieces of candied olive. With closed eyes, your first impression might be that you were eating raisins. But then comes the pleasingly bitter, but not too bitter, taste of black olives, moderated with sweetness.

PRALINE

Ploughing his own furrow again, and true to his chocolate dessert-loving self, ID chose the pud which included chocolate elements. Both the chocolate crèmeux (literally ‘creamy’ in French) and aerated chocolate were rich and dark. Lighter elements came from crispy pieces of milk tuille and another superb sorbet, also milk.

I thought the star of the show was the cylinder of light praline parfait. There was also a delicious crumb with macadamia nuts which brought a lovely balancing saltiness – almost always good with chocolate desserts, I think.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Even when you love a particular restaurant, it’s always a bit of a nail biter when taking someone else along. Will they like it? Will there even be something they fancy on the menu? Well, I’m happy to report that The Moat House got the thumbs up from big brother.

But I shouldn’t really have doubted it. The Moat House, like the other three Staffordshire venues in the Lewis Partnership, is consistently excellent. Dishes are balanced in both flavour and texture. Ingredients are carefully selected and handled with great skill and knowledge in the kitchen. There’s always a good range to choose from too, whatever your dietary needs or dislikes.

You’ll also find that, given the high standards, Moat House prices are extremely reasonable. When, the day after we’d eaten our Gourmet Dinner, I posted on Twitter an image of my dessert I received a reply that both irked and amused me.

Looking at the beautiful plate, the person assumed it ‘must have cost a fortune’. Gleefully, I was able to tell them that for the whole five courses it was only £39.95. In my book, that’s not a fortune but rather outstandingly good value.

In what seems like a rare occurrence on Twitter, which can be a deliberately argumentative arena, the tweeter very politely and graciously climbed down from their previous position. I even got a smiley face.

That’s what great food, reasonably priced, can do. Make everyone chilled and happy.

Highly recommended.

All images in this post © Moorlands Eater