Another one of them there boxed up restaurant offerings for the cooped up.
Inauspicious start. Box was delivered with very prominent ‘Haworth at home’ wrapping/livery but no ’ This way up’ or ‘fragile’ markings. Consequently box was given to us upside down and some of the contents ( hummus, egg wash ) had leaked. Scraping your hummus off the inside of a cardboard box is not really the ‘fine dining experience at home’ I was hoping for when unpacking it. You can imagine the fun of dealing with the eggwash.
Once we were all rinsed, however, things looked up.
The hummus was ‘served’ ( by me ) with sourdough bread ( a mini loaf ) and caramelised onion butter. Lovely jubbly.
This was eclipsed by the second course of salmon loin wrapped in butter puff pastry ( sort your own eggwash ) with smoked leeks, caviar cream and pickled cucumber with dill. This really was like being in a restaurant. Proper ‘well, we couldn’t do this if we tried’ territory. It was just lovely. All of it. Even the cucumber was transformed.
‘Main’ course was free range ( obvs ) chicken breast, truffle butter, braised leg meat, hen of the woods mushroom and red emilie potato. Flippin eck, it was lip smackingly lovely. Not as pretty on the plate ( I blame the waiter ) as the salmon but just comforting in that ‘everything in its right place’ kind of way that is a perfect late winter meal. If Id been drinking it would have gone lovely with a good beer. The hen of the woods and the leg meat ( with gravy ) in particular were a lovely flavour which pulled the whole thing together ( as they say on the telly ) in a wonderful meaty way ( as they don’t say on the telly ).
We moved on to a pud of rhubarb and rosewater meringue, white chocolate and blood orange. In the ( very easy to follow ) instructions this is stacked in a beautiful delicate way. Our presentation was a touch (okay, a lot ) more agricultural but again this really did remind us of what we have missed in not being able to eat out. The right amount of zing from the rhubarb and orange, the right amount of aaaaah and ooooh from the chocolate .
There were a few artisan chocolates to finish. They were nice in an artisan chocolates kind of way.
The portions were decent ( we in fact ate this over two evenings to eke out the pleasure ) and for 90 quid for two it was good value. Have just ordered another for next week, but price has already gone up to 110.
Will be interested to see if that is down to posher ingredients or just popularity/ extra money making. Hopefully the former, probably the latter. Nevertheless- recommended.
May also try Reid at home after reading John’s review this morning.