Andrew Kay: Dines Out
Fine Food & Fine Ethics At Silo
T he politics of food grows meal by meal. Right now I am fascinated by the city’s new Sugar Smart campaign and you will see that my column will carry that logo for as long as it goes on. Hidden sugar is a real issue, for adults yes, but most importantly for kids. This joins my enthusiasm for the Fare Share charity who redistribute food that would otherwise be sent to landfill. I shop wisely, have little if no food waste and although I do have sugar and honey, I use very little. Whilst making the Cook It! TV series for Latest TV I would cook with kids and wanted them to learn to enjoy home-made dishes and healthier alternatives to some of the junk that is paraded in front of them.
A real champion of zero waste is chef Douglas McMaster at Silo. His pre-industrial ethics are admirable, a passion that he is making work – but what of his cooking?
Now open for one year I was delighted to be asked along to celebrate the occasion, delighted and eager to see how the concept has developed. I admit to being slightly ambiguous at the start, would ethics outshine cooking? Well I was wrong to worry! Douglas is as triumphant as a chef as he is as an advocate of his politics. Let me expand.
Dinner started with a couple of plates that not only looked impressive but tasted great too. Dehydrated potato skins with a rich eggy sauce and moss was exceptional, a fabulous balance of earthy, crunchy and unctuous. Skin and blood was a marvelous Spanish style scroll of pork scratching with a deep blood red ketchup, again marvelous.
We moved on to pig’s ear, corn and egg. Well I have never tasted better corn, tiny, sweet kernels balanced with a confit egg yolk and strands of crisp pig’s ear that had all the flavour of bacon rinds back in the day when bacon rinds would crisp up like pork crackling. A crackling good dish.
I sat at the counter, a great choice as Douglas passed over the herbivore choices for me to try too and I loved the jerusalem artichokes dusted with grated liquorice root and a green apple puree – wow!
Next up for the omnivores a perfect piece of halibut served with salsify in roasted and pureed form. Wonderful fish, really wonderful and great salsify. Beneath an earthy and slightly sweetened broth and pickled wild mushrooms. Lovely as the mushrooms were they were a touch too lively for the rest of the dish in my opinion, but as ever that is only my opinion.
The herbivore option was ricotta and blue cheese dumplings with fennel salad. Oh my, what a delightful dish – and a generous one too! (At this point I would like to point out that I was sharing the extra dishes with Tom, who was sat to my left, a passionate cook and food blogger).
Next for the omnivores came venison. Game season is here and Douglas was celebrating that with slices of perfect meat dressed with pine oil and pickled brambles. Foraging here at its very best, wonderful sweet brambles and a deep green oil that had just the right amount of pine flavour to be fascinating rather than astringent.
As you will see there was a lot of food and we did pass on the herbivore dish of cauliflower with red onion and mustard. It looked stunning but was, we thought, a dish too far for us – and there was dessert to come!
I was served the sweetcorn, rye and lemon and loved it. The rye grains had been boiled, then dehydrated then fried and they were simply delicious. The corn once again sweet and perfectly appropriate as a pudding and the lemon came as a course granita. Tom had the sea buckthorn dessert with celery and rose and I admit that neither of us liked it – but one miss out of a list of so many hits can be easily forgiven. Throughout the dishes were matched with fascinating wines and breads and we finished with shots of cold brew coffee and chocolate and molasses truffles. I went home very happy and look forward to going back which is now far easier as they can finally open the restaurant to 11pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
39 Upper Gardner Street, North Laine, Brighton, BN1 4AN
01273 674259 www.silobrighton.com
