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Restaurant and dining guide

Neil Sowerby

Rubbernecking from our Bentley (in our dreams – our transport’s sole ambition is the scrappage scheme) at the manicured Cheshire fields with their New Zealand-rugged steeds, breath steaming in the February air, I recalled days spent urging our kids on to gymkhana glory. With inevitable disappointment. The odds were stacked in favour of that spoilt little Jocasta whose Mummy and Daddy had invested serious lucre in bloodstock. Oh, how we awaited the inevitable tantrums from wound-up brat and flighty mount. The ultimate reward was the pinning-on of a winner’s rosette, be it for some serious fence leaping or the coveted ‘pony with the cutest nose’.

It’s the same in the restaurant game. Not the cutest nose bit, unless it’s rare breed snout marinated and plated up as a starter. More the hurdles serious chefs have to clear to establish their pedigree.
Michelin stars – those curious carrots the French dangle to maintain their precarious stranglehold on the planet’s tastebuds – are the high profile plaudits. But our own hard-earned AA rosettes are a tangible reward for restaurants that take their craft seriously.

No one has ever doubted the seriousness of the Alderley Edge kitchen, which has just scooped its third rosette. In the north of England, only Michelin-starred The Chester Grosvenor and Northcote near Blackburn, along with Aiden Byrne's Church Green at Lymm, share this three rosette status. The Hotel, owned by Middleton brewery JW Lees, stands proud on the hill linking the Wag Drag that is Alderley’s main street with the vertiginous Edge itself, where fellow veteran restaurant The Wizzard has now veered in a pubbier direction.

There’s a touch of the drive up to Fawlty Towers when you enter the hotel’s grounds, but the only basil you’ll find there is of the herb variety – among the flavours on chef Chris Holland’s varied palette as he paints as vivid a canvas of contemporary fine dining as you’ll find for miles. Only Ian Matfin at Abode in the city centre comes close. Since Chris took over as head chef four years ago (after eight apprentice years, originally under the legendary Duncan Poyser) he has been given his head by general manager Ahmet Kurcer as the conservatory-like dining room has also smartened up its act as part of a £200,000 refurbishment.

Surely a Michelin must be around the corner? The looks and tastes are in place. The Tasting Menu would certainly be the proof of the pudding, we thought. One of the puddings sporting a pliable chocolate garnache was not the only mission statement there. Our first starter on the six course taster (£54.50pp, £79 with wine) featured pineapple ‘textures’. The candied yellow cubes were obviously one texture, but the scroll of purple dust didn’t yield anything particularly pineappley (or lavender, which was the look). But all this offered a sweet counterpoint to the saltiness of a whirl of Iberico ham either side of plump roasted scallop and cured monkfish.

A similar sensory balance followed. Landes foie gras in two forms, a seared chunklet alongside a wickedly savoury ice cream. Texture contrast aside, it didn’t really need the Gressingham duck. Textures, oh yes. The fourth component was textures of Peter Ashcroft beetroot, providing a vegetal element. You see a theme developing here.

We let the sommelier provide (small) glasses of appropriate wine, the first of which was a blessedly restrained sauvignon from South Africa’s Vergelegen Estate, almost Sancerre like in its muted minerality. The foie gras met its customary match in a glass of Sauternes. Later we had a benchmark simple red Rioja from Muga. Wines by the glass start at £4.25 and house wines ranging the world cost a level £17.50 a bottle.

Foam on the starboard bow for our fish course! Tart apple cuckoospittle swathed a tranche of wild halibut and two robust langoustines on the obligatory narrow rectangle (we got our cheese on a slate later). A different coating for our meaty main, Madeira Wine Fluid Gel was more substantial in taste. Riding Reserve Fillet of Beef at 58 degrees C didn’t sing, but the gelatinous slow-cooked ox-cheek and smoked parsnip puree compensated.

It has been a sickly harvest this year in the Yorkshire Rhubarb Triangle, but some made it across to deepest Cheshire for playful deconstructed dessert no.1 which, as well as tender rhubarb and an intense champagne delice, sported rhubarb and custard bubbles. Chocolate garnache, lime and crystallised ginger sorbet was a slightly sickly combination to follow. Perhaps I shouldn’t have overdosed on a pre-pud tray of English cheeses with quince jelly and the like plus an extra glass of the Muga. But that’s tasting menus for you, even one as well judged and paced as the Alderley’s.

Three rosettes? Thoroughly deserved. A thoroughbred restaurant that’s galloping forward in this new decade.

Alderley Edge Hotel, Macclesfield Road, Alderley Edge, Cheshire, SK9 7BJ
T: 01625 586343
W: www.alderleyedgehotel.com