Winter Tasting Menu at The Lighthouse Restaurant, Boylestone

We’d been bowled over by our last visit to the Lighthouse Restaurant in Boylestone, Derbyshire and wondered exactly why we’d left it so long between previous visits.

Admittedly, it’s a 45-minute drive each way from the Staffordshire Moorlands where we live but if you’d read my review of their Late Summer tasting menu you’d see that the magnificent food they produce is well worth a trip.

So, determined not to make the same mistake again, we resolved to return when the tasting menu changed with the season and that’s exactly what we did when their Winter menu appeared, with its themes of ‘rooted vegetation, local game, festivity, umami, warmth, family’.

As with the previous tasting menu, the current one kicks off with three lovely little snacks, served in succession and entitled ‘the chicken’, ‘the egg’ and ‘Kiev’.

‘The chicken’ snack arrived in one of the little wooden boxes we’re now familiar with at The Lighthouse, in this instance filled with decorative grains which served as a bed for a crisp piece of brioche, topped with two swirls of perfectly smooth chicken liver pate, a blob of clementine or mandarin sauce (our server said mandarin, the menu said clementine, but I won’t quibble as I’m sure I don’t know the difference), discs of red grape and a shaving of truffle.

In some ways, this little snack epitomises why I love tasting menus so much because, given a menu from which I had to choose, I don’t think there’s a chance I’d have ordered this one. Firstly, I don’t really get why brioche, which is sweet, is often served with savoury things (e.g. with burgers). Second, I’m not the biggest fan of chicken liver pate. Thirdly, I’d be concerned that the clementine/mandarin and the grape, in combination with the brioche, would be far too sweet in a dish which I’d expect, and want, to be savoury.

But the joy of the tasting menu, providing you’re eating where you trust the judgement of the kitchen, is that our expectations can be confounded and we may find we like something we never imagined we would. Such was the case here, where the slight bitterness of the liver and the earthiness of the truffle were enough to balance the sweet elements, resulting in a very satisfying snack.

We welcomed the arrival of ‘the egg’ snack like a familiar friend as it was served in the same porcelain half eggs and regular egg box as had ‘the most important meal of the day’ from the Late Summer menu. This time though, instead of smoky bacon with crispy bits of crouton flavouring the cured egg and light foam, there was the intense, salty and fatty deliciousness of good roast chicken, with crispy morsels of skin and pieces of diced chicken breast. Phenomenal.

The third and final snack, described as Kiev with chive butter and anchovy, was a lovely bread crumbed ball of minced chicken which reminded us not of chicken Kiev, but of Indian chop: comforting patties of minced meat and potato enjoyed from local takeaways when we lived in Leicester. However, this Kiev/chop was flavoured with lemon balm and its topping of anchovy mayonnaise gave it a wonderful intensity – not for nothing is umami’ listed along the top of the menu as one of its themes.

Snacks over, we were next served what in more workaday restaurants would have been brought to your table shortly after you’d sat down: bread and butter. As you’d expect at The Lighthouse, this was no ordinary bread and butter but crunchy, chewy sourdough made in the restaurant and served with wonderfully rich and distinctive raw, cultured butter, exclusively made in the UK by Fen Farm Dairy in Suffolk, alongside butter with seaweed and chilli.

The first of our two seafood courses was an elegantly simple-looking dish (although nothing of the sort in the eating): torched Cornish mackerel with radish, cucumber, peanuts, crispy wild rice and, kicking up those umami flavours again, seasoned with soy and a sauce based on kimchi whose wonderful heat and strong flavour crept in slowly without overpowering the superbly fresh mackerel.

The properly browned, hand-dived scallop which came next reminded us of the monkfish with cauliflower, mussel and curry we’d eaten on our last visit – no bad thing as it was probably my favourite dish on that menu. Here, the scallop sat on a brilliant (in both senses of the word) curried mussel broth that had us reaching for our spoons and not leave a drop of it.

I’m tempted to say that, for me, texture is almost as important as flavour and you get both in good measure at The Lighthouse. The scallop dish was a good example of that: soft shellfish and light broth both enhanced by roasted cauliflower, sultanas, puffed wild rice and crispy shallots.

The next two courses showcased the local game element of the tasting menu, represented firstly by ‘partridge from the village’ which, arriving at the table, looked nothing less than stunning.

Featuring soft and moist partridge breast from the local shoot, blanketed in a delicate brown bread sauce with trickles of, I think, a thyme-based dressing, plus ‘sprout trimmings’, a not-too-sweet cranberry sauce and crispy bits of bacon, this was a miniature masterpiece. And I haven’t even mentioned the browned celeriac yet…

Now, I do like celeriac, but it’s not something I’m likely to rave over, particularly when I’m eating an outstanding plate of food like the one I’ve just described. But this little square of root vegetable was utterly delicious, the expert browning ensuring that it was full of that all-important umami flavour and, actually, the best celeriac I’ve tasted.

As we’d arrived at the restaurant early so that my partner, a photographer, could take some pictures of the kitchen before service got into full swing, we were lucky enough to see the chef removing the whole, salt-baked celeriacs from the oven before continuing their preparation – a good reminder that we lucky diners are often oblivious to much of the work and attention to detail that goes on in the best kitchens and which can raise a lumpy celeriac into such fine food.

While the arrival of the previous dish firstly engaged the eyes, the next immediately put the nose to work with a heavenly, spicy aroma coming from tandoori roe deer, winter roots, kebab, mint and yoghurt.  However, not to be outdone by the previous plate, this one looked stunning too, with its sweep of squid ink and aubergine puree, bright butternut squash, deep red beetroot, starkly black and white squid ink cracker, droplets of golden, spicy sauce, strikingly green shredded mint leaf and yoghurt coloured bright pink from beetroot.

Bright pink too was the inside of the perfectly cooked cube of roe deer with its dusting of warming spices. At first, we’d thought the delicious, pronounced fragrance was due to the sauce, lovely as it was, but soon realised that it was coming from the coating on the deer which, very cleverly, was sufficient to flavour the whole of the chunk of meat without overpowering its intrinsic taste. Not generally a huge fan of deer, this plate completely won me over.

I mustn’t forget the kebab either; a deliciously moist skewer of minced venison which, with its slightly more gamey taste, we wondered whether it had any offal in, but which was made soft and sweet by red onion in the mix.

Altogether, another memorable dish we’ll probably talk about for some time to come.

We were gently shifted from savoury to pudding courses via the half-way house of a sweet and savoury tart of crisp filo pastry, generously filled with pleasantly funky Hartington blue cheese and topped with spiced currants and a port sauce. Reflecting the ‘festivity’ menu theme, this was a nice bringing together of Christmassy elements and tasted like a rather good, cheesy mince pie.

 

To go with the first, chocolate-based dessert, we were presented with a bottle of Thornbridge Cocoa Wonderland chocolate porter  which was heaven to me, a lover of porters such as Titanic’s Plum Porter, Neon Raptor’s Somewhere I Belong coconut porter and, just recently, Ilkley Brewery’s Fireside smoky porter.

The porter went perfectly with the chocolate dessert which was similar to the one featured in the previous tasting menu but, I thought, improved upon here by the texture of the ganache being much nicer – perhaps because it didn’t have the job of having to stand up the cylinder of chocolate this time around.

As with all the dishes I’ve eaten at The Lighthouse over several visits, there’s always a good balance of flavours which is certainly important with chocolate desserts as I find too much chocolate a little overwhelming. Here, the accompanying malted milk, ice cream, toffee and grapefruit lightened the whole thing up to make a very good dessert. I liked the way the umami theme was carried through too, with miso in the caramel, and enjoyed the warming spice flavour in the swirl of chocolate sauce (most likely cinnamon, we decided).

For the final course, I have to laugh looking now at the photographs because, incredibly, I didn’t notice that it was a snowman – not until after I’d broken off and eaten his crispy, tangy, lemon zest nose anyway.

The Lighthouse had converted me to passionfruit on my last visit and here it was again, in a sorbet and in a sauce, combined with one of my old favourites (coconut) and one of my newest favourites: tonka bean. In fact, the first time I went to The Lighthouse (late 2013 or early 2014) was also my first experience with the complex flavour of tonka beans – in a pannacotta with rhubarb, I think. The snowman’s lovely, chewy head was formed from tonka bean merengue and his lower body a delicious mousse-like structure also flavoured with tonka bean. The snowy pile of white chocolate powder he sat on was just right, having none of the sickliness it can represent in the wrong hands.

I absolutely loved this dessert – for its humour, the detail (click to see a larger image and notice the way the pithy side of the tiny piece of lemon zest looks like there’s snow settled on his nose) and, of course, for its great combination of flavours.

Our last course eaten we left The Lighthouse, as usual, on a high and were already, without wanting to wish the enjoyable season of Winter away, wondering what the next tasting menu would bring.

On the way out, I got chatting to the couple at the next table, initially checking that our photography light hadn’t disturbed them and, incredibly, found that they live in the same village as us. They explained that they always make the 1.5 hour round trip when the menu changes as they enjoy it so much.

If you’ve got to the end of this review, then it hardly needs me to urge you to try the Winter tasting menu at The Lighthouse and, like us, go on to become one of the band of regulars too.

 

All images © Ian Dakin Photography