Waverex peas, onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel. Minidor yellow, summer savory, pickled nasturtium, white Vienna, Yew tree Herdwick Hogget. Chenopodiums? Sea buckthorn?
I have no idea what half of the things on the menu are.
Can I blame it on not being a native speaker? I just will.
Then there are some things that I would not necessarily choose. Duck sweetbread? No thanks. Stout ice cream with liquorice? Doesn’t sound very appealing to me.
But hey, it’s all about trying new things, experiencing new flavours, taste sensations, isn’t it? And besides, there’s not much choice at L’Enclume. There is no à la carte. You can choose between 3 Menus: 8 courses, 12 courses or 12 vegeterian courses. So 12 courses of mostly unknown ingredients it is then.
L’Enclume is in the Lake District, in a cute little village called Cartmel. Cartmel is probably most famous for the horse races that take place here once a year, but it is becoming more and more of a food destination. To cater for the crowd that L’Enclume attracts, the other local pubs seem to have brushed up a bit and a few fancy food shops have opened. A lovely baker, a wine shop, a great cheese shop, the Cartmel sticky toffee pudding company. All really nice.
The restaurant is pretty much right in the village centre, in what looks like an old farmhouse.
Inside we encountered the slightly off design that seems to be common for Michelin starred restaurants.
It’s a nice old space with crooked, white walls and some old wooden beams. But they tried a bit too hard to make it “modern and elegant”, with some awful art and rather random table decorations made of sticks and stones, that looked more like they belonged in a cheap spa. Maybe a design consultancy for posh restaurants would be a good business idea.
We waited for our table in the lounge with a nice glass of rosé Champagne and were presented with some duck scratchings and cheese crackers – a bit random and not really worthy of being ceremoniously presented and described by the waitress.
We then got taken into the dining room. The amuse bouche was a cheesy biscuit with broccoli puree and freeze-dried raspberries. Sounds interesting, but the biscuit was so cheesy, that you couldn’t really taste anything else.First course, Waverex peas with crab and calamint. It came in what looked like a little bag made of porcelain and I was expecting a cold soup. It turned out to be a nice, creamy mousse though with big chunks of crab and fresh peas at the bottom. Really lovely.
Cod ‘yolks’ and rocket, garlic, salt and vinegar. A bit Heston Blumethal. Something that looked like a small egg yolks but actually was cod mousse and came with a garlic foam. Nice, soft flavours.
Vegetable dumplings in beef broth wispy leeks and fennel sounded great but were rather disappointing. Three ravioli with different fillings that got covered in a watery gravy. Not very exciting.
Raw squid and black bulgur, artichoke and radish was fantastic. A bit like a ceviche.
Heritage potatoes in onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel sounded a bit strange but tasted amazing. A little portion of comfort food.
The next dish I had been dreading. Minidor yellow with duck sweetbread, corn cream, summer savoury.
I eat pretty much everything, but am not a fan of sweetbread. And the thought of duck sweetbread does not sound appealing at all. Little bits of duck thymus gland? Not so sure about that. But it actually tasted fantastic. The sweetbread was crispy fried, the minidor yellow (a kind of runner bean) nice and crunchy and a rich sauce to go with it.
The grilled crystal lemon with prawns from Gairloch, fresh yogurt and pickled nasturtium I can barely remember.
A plaice fillet and white Vienna baked in salt, kale greens and razor clams was much more memorable. And the Yew tree Herdwick Hogget, turnips, cider and chenopodiums was even better. Incredibly soft and tender meat.And now the deserts. Damson cake, honeycomb, mint and sweet cicely. Quite enjoyed that.
The Coniston oatmeal stout ice cream, liquorice and sea buckthorn though was just plain awful. A round patty that looked like a defrosted piece of breaded chicken breast and tasted like that too. We really wondered what the chef was thinking when he put this one together and if no one had ever dared to tell him that it was just wrong. I finished it, expecting that I would eventually get some interesting taste or texture, but it really didn’t work.
The sweet cheese with walnut, gooseberry and Douglas fir made up for it again. Nice and tart gooseberry cutting through the sweet cheese. Lovely.
As a final treat we got an aniseed milkshake with an apple meringue. I really enjoyed it. Dewi though thinks that aniseed and milkshake should stay away from each other. Well, if it was up to him, aniseed should probably stay away from everything.
Some of the dishes were excellent. Interesting and creative, local ingredients, fantastic presentation. But overall the style of the dishes was somehow a bit too similar. A lot of them came with what almost felt like the same foamy, creamy sauce.
The service was very good. They only had 3 people looking after about 15 tables, but still managed to be incredibly attentive and made it feel more personal than at other places where there is always an army of people milling about.
But rather than just reading out the long list of unknown ingredients in each course, they could have explained a bit more what they actually are.
I wouldn’t mind knowing what a pickled nasturtium is before I put it in my mouth.
Would I go again? Probably not.
There are plenty of other good places in the Lake District.
The next evening we went to a pub / restaurant / hotel called The Drunken Duck. Imagine very posh gastro-pub meets hunting lodge. Really cosy, excellent food, fair prices and overall a much more satisfying experience.
Next week though it’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saison. Quite looking forward to that.
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