Dessert on Fire

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog front. This is mainly because I have been training to become a retained fire fighter with Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service and so my focus has been on smoke, fire, ladders and sweat. This has now been successfully completed and my new clothing accessory, a small black alerter with flashing lights, now accompanies me wherever I go. Literally. I have no idea how well it would work if it fell in the toilet bowl but I’m trying my best not to give it a go.

Being on call for 90 hours a week has big implications for eating out. Its local restaurants only as I need to be within 5 minutes of my station so before I finished basic training Mr H and I made it a bit further to The Wild Garlic restaurant in Nailsworth. It was an excellent Groupon offer of £55 pounds for two people plus a glass of Prosecco for a six course tasting menu and we’d wanted to try it for ages.

The food was excellent, each course memorable and portions just right with the only negative being occasional heavy handedness with truffle oil for my taste. Not for the other half though – he can’t get enough. The menu included creamed Sunny Ash goat’s cheese accompanied by celeriac cannelloni and a Waldorf salad, smoked salmon with blood orange caviar served on a blini with crème fraiche, white bean and truffle cappuccino and duck with rhubarb and pomme dauphine.

However the stand out course was the dessert. Normally when I read reviews or watch food programmes and people are banging on about balance and aromas and ‘cutting through things’ with lots of gesticulating and being unreal and poncey I switch off and reach for the wine. But I’m afraid to say that with this particular dessert I got it. I almost understood where these people are coming from. It was a square segment of rich chocolate cake topped with a significant layer of shiny chocolate icing and accompanied by a shot glass of ale jelly nestling under brown bread ice cream. The cake was not too sweet and the jelly had a strong ale flavour, just these by themselves would have been quite odd but the star was the brown bread ice cream. It literally brought the cake and the jelly together and acted as a flavour bridge between the two. I’ll get my coat.

Other things I liked: the benches running the edge of the room had cushions and were the APPROPRIATE HEIGHT FOR THE TABLE. This may not seem like much but when you’re six foot tall you get pretty tired pretty quickly of wedging thighs under table edges and sitting hunched with crippling back ache when trying to enjoy a meal. The staff were attentive but no overly so – it’s very difficult to reply honestly to the question ‘is everything okay?’ when the first bite is only halfway to your mouth. They also knew their stuff – where the food was sourced, how it was prepared and how it was cooked. It felt like a nice relaxed place to eat, so often with smart restaurants the atmosphere feels slightly tense.

Things I didn’t like: Nothing.

Would I eat here again? Absolutely.