(ad – pr) Another week, another country estate to familiarise myself with… life certainly has its moments! This time it’s Swinton Park up the A1 near Masham and Ripon with its formidable reputation to check out. My main prior knowledge of this place comes from a friend who assisted Rosemary Schrager in running the cookery school there some years ago, which curiously enough was my destination this time too in its role as home to Chef’s Table by Josh Barnes.
The approach to Swinton Park on the Swinton Estate is suitably grand and features quite improbably picturesque herds of deer calmly surveying the scene while admiring one another’s splendid antlers, one assumes. Post meal we would get a tour of the wider establishment but first up we made our way over to the site of the Cookery School to make our acquaintance with Josh. It’s a relaxed space with a wide central island giving us plenty of space to sit side by side with a great view of the action. Before taking those seats we made ourselves comfortable in a snug corner area for snacks accompanied by a glass of local cider. The snacks were a puffed piece of beef fat coated in wild garlic and a dainty lozenge of salsify, both great precursors to the plates to come and more than enough sustenance to fortify us for the dozen steps to our seats.
We were greeted at the counter by a course that Josh had kindly thrown in and didn’t feature on the menu we’d been given. I’ve never been warned before to not eat something all in one go and as such was a little trepidatious as I breached the delicate sphere I’d been told held raw fish. What I didn’t expect to emerge was a puff of smoke! I’m not averse to a touch of theatre and the kiss of smoke wasn’t powerful enough to overwhelm the fish making this memorable and surprisingly well balanced. The first dish as we embarked on the menu was Lincolnshire Poacher with a leek veloute that pushed the cheese into a Dairy Lea like consistency for a tinge of nostalgia coupled with the formidable taste of the cheese, relieved by the alium sauce. Next up a pearlescent chunk of monkfish contrasted by XO sauce with kohlrabi and a sliver of pickled red cabbage to make up another punchy plate defined by delicate cookery and original flavour combinations.
The meat course showcased beef, with carrot and cabbage also on the plate along with a delicately constructed leaf and accents of both wild garlic and lovage. Again everything was allowed to reach its full potential but the starring touch was a lustrously indulgent beef sauce that used chunks of slow cooked beef tendon to give it a uniquely characterful richness. Tendon might not sound like the most indulgent ingredient but you’ve got to admire Josh’s boldness in leaving that word on the menu and not coming up with something more palatably euphemistic.
The first sweet dish was a mochi paired with kombucha and raspberry while a touch of luxury and salinity came from a dab of caviar. The texture of some mochi can be a touch gelatinous and unpleasant but this was a perfectly executed example, hardly a surprise at this stage of the proceedings, which set the stage for a final sweet dish. The use of savoury in desserts has picked up momentum over the last few years so the appearance here of chicken of the woods is less of a surprise than it might once have been, the mushroom notes rounding out the sweet milk ice cream and touch of bitterness from shards of brittle biscuit to come up with a truly impressive and original final course.
At £60 this lunch has to be one of the best value hospitality experiences of this nature in Yorkshire right now, not sacrificing the quality of the dishes in favour of showmanship or letting the environment compromise them. The menu was confidently put together and executed to perfection in front of us, with Josh never being knocked off his stride by our steady stream of questions. Chef’s Table by Josh Barnes deserves to be one of the key pillars of Swinton Park on the Swinton Estate’s appeal.
