By Neil Sowerby
WHEN is a Christmas dinner not a Christmas dinner? That’s a question of expectations. It is no crime to abjure the turkey on steroids with the texture of sawdust or consign the soggy sprouts and goosefat incinerated spuds to history. In the safety of your own home you can cook what you blooming well like. A whole salmon, nut roast, Santa’s Seasonal Sushi.
But out there in the restaurant world the Christmas carvery still holds sway and a set-price feast with second helpings, lubricated by mucho booze, can seem strangely attractive (much like the flirting colleague you always found dowdy and dull until this works do).
Which brings me to 4244’s special Christmas menu. Not the flirting bit. Unless, with a helping of panto innuendo, your fancy runs to a Three Bird Roast. That’s the centrepiece of the Edge Street pop-up’s £55 ahead seasonal menu, available from December 2 until December 23 – the date Aumbry’s temporary residency at the back of Teacup has been extended until. Renovations at the Prestwich mothership were never going to be ready before Christmas (it’s a long story).
In the past there has been a choice of Aumbry Christmas menus, more expensive, running to 10 courses, but at 4244 everything has been pared down. So it’s £55 for six courses, a further £38 a head if you want to pair each dish with a (mostly Croatian) wine selection?
I was road-testing the meal before it is properly available, so any caveats should be taken with a pinch of rum butter. I have never been a fan of their Royal Roast – a Russian doll of a dish involving boned pheasant, partridge and mallard. To me it emasculates the gaminess. Again here. The presence of bread sauce had me pining for a bloodied grouse.
Still it is the most substantial element in a dinner that won’t appeal to trencherfolk, who’ve never been a target audience for Fat Duck-trained chef Mary Ellen McTague. It’s just that question – can an array of miniature culinary delights carry off the Christmas cheer thing?
Our exquisite amuse bouche of home-smoked mackerel, strewn with a wisp of sheep sorrel, on a soft crunch of celeriac, is gone in the flutter of a fairy’s wings. A more earthbound starter of mealy game sausage with sharp game sauce and a Nordic foragey feeling turnip seedling, then a velveteen Butternut Squash Veloute follow. Judicious food but not celebratory somehow. Still after the three bird Royal Roast we get to the plummy, mincemeaty rum and brandily placed treats and I finally feel I’m opening my presents. We are still in November, which makes it all feel a bit disorienting.
This was aided by an excellent bottle of Pecchenino Dolcetto di Dogliani (£42), with vivid red fruit and food friendly acidity.
God bless us one and all, the modest mound of Christmas pudding in brandy sauce was just right, while I was happy that Mrs Beeton’s Mincemeat Pie (main picture) was ethereal but intense, the rum butter served liquid in a posh china teacup. Lovely both offerings.
Now all 4244 needs to do is order in the Crimbo crackers and paper hats, swap Cliff’s Mistletoe and Wine for their Black Keys’ loop tape and let Christmas commence.
4244, Edge Street, Northern Quarter. Book via www.4244.co.uk