Giles Coren in The Times
The Curlew occupies a pretty white wooden building at a crossroads in the middle of some lovely, quiet countryside. It looks to have once been a pub but is now very much a restaurant (no bar, no pints of beer, cosy but not twee, in synch with its location and not egregiously Londonised) and a very good one at that.
The menu offers five choices at each course, which is quite the perfect ratio, and the headings suggest old-school simplicity – ‘Smoked haddock’, ‘Piece of cake’, ‘Beef for two’ – but the headings lie. My smoked haddock and ’slowcooked duck egg’ were slow-cooked in the modern, sous-vide sense, so that the white and yolk were both brought to the consistency of a gel; the ‘piece of cake’ was a ham hock terrine topped with foie gras that was served in the shape of a slice of cake with pickled red cabbage on a slate. The sirloin of Sussex beef had also been done in the sous-vide, so that it was even and pink throughout, with the edges just a little charred afterwards by searing heat, with blobs of smoked marrow and a rosehip ketchup.
These were all done very well and it’s good to see, out of town, an answer to the old question, “So how are the techniques of El Bulli/the Fat Duck going to filter down to real restaurants?” But I’ll come clean and say that, personally, I have yet to eat a dish cooked sous-vide that provides better eating than the same thing cooked the old way. I admire the technique with the beef here, but I’d rather eat a piece of meat cooked fast and crazy then rested long, blackened in parts, chewy sometimes, running with a little blood, with what Hamlet would call “all its imperfections on its head”. But sous-vide is great for a novelty, and terrific for forward planning, so I won’t quibble. Nor would anyone at the table.
Clive was besotted with his lustrous, potent double-baked cheese soufflé; his partner, Rose, was delighted with her Kilner jar of soused mackerel and cucumber jelly; Esther adored her Yorkshire black pudding in a nice, dry crispy turnover with a sharp apple salad, and so it went on. Clive’s daughter Charlotte, my second cousin (who used to work here), had a Romney mixed grill of lamb, liver and bacon all from the one lucky sheep, Esther had slim fillets of strong-tasting gurnard offset nicely by its bed of whole Pink Fir potatoes and capers, and some cuttlefish so unrubbery, she thought, as perhaps to have been sous-vided itself. Rose and her other daughter Kate both had the hotpot of slow-cooked Gressingham duck leg, and a very fine little pie it was. Puddings such as ‘junket’ and ‘parkin’ were old-fashioned in name but modern in execution, and at this time of year who could possibly argue with ‘bonfire toffee ice cream’?
The Curlew is an excellent spot and much to be respected. For if it is hard work surviving a Saturday night service with one Coren in the house, imagine what it must be like with a whole tableful.
Score:
Meat/fish: 8 Cooking: 8 Service: 8 Score: 8
Price: Price? You want me to put a price on family?
Okay, about £45/head with booze.