This was our fourth visit to Wood, although we’ve not been since summer 2019. On that last visit, we decided we’d eaten the dishes we most fancied and found them OK. Before a revisit, we’d leave it a goodly while until they changed the menu again. In the event, the change was to scrap the original traditional three course concept and introduce a fixed tasting menu. Now, it would be fair to say that we understand why restaurants do this but, to be frank, we don’t think it’s progress, so we didn’t go back. . Tasting menus often seem something more to endure than enjoy – a four hour marathon, as Wood’s website warns you. So, why were we there? Well, it’s because in January, they were discounting the tasting menu by 50% and, like many people, we love a bargain.
It didn’t take four hours to eat the meal but there were some significant gaps between courses. Gaps long enough for you to start finger tapping. It does suck out some of the enjoyment of the evening and, of course, with course sizes being so dainty, you’re likely to feel peckish until well into the meal. Chefs bring the dishes and explain them to you and front of house staff are very much on the ball, clearing plates, serving drinks, etc
You start off in the bar area and are served three snacks with your aperitifs. First up, there was a shot of sweetcorn dashi broth that was probably the nicest thing we ate all evening. A really rich flavour – earthy yet sweetish at the same time. A single bite Chicken Kiev/Kyiv had a good flavour but was overly chewy. And a sliver of toast was topped with a truffle and duck egg mousse. You’re then taken to your table where you’d usually expect to get some more food pretty quickly. They have control of the timings here but it took twenty minutes for the first of the five courses to be served. There are three extra courses that can be ordered, with additional charges, but we declined them – bread, a potato dish and cheese.
First up was described as “Lamb, cabbage and bacon” and that was a pretty accurate description. Lamb sweetbread, lightly cooked; some shreds of cabbage; diced bacon and a little indeterminate sauce. Then beef, cured in koji (a Japanese rice fermentation, so Google tells me) but otherwise raw, served with little balls of pickled radish for a texture and flavour contrast and a charcoal tuile, which looked pretty.
Next up, a little bit of hake, nicely cooked, with smoked maitake mushroom and sea vegetables, both a tad chewy. There’s also a little sauce and foam to moisten it up. The final savoury course approached being a “proper plate of food”. Flavoursome steak, cooked sous vide and then given a charring on the grill. It came with finely sliced onions, given a slight and very pleasant sourness, by being cooked in whey. And there’s a really good sauce to go with it.
The not too sweet dessert was a “pumpkin spiced chai” – a lightly spiced disc of mousse, topped with something or other crispy. It’s a tiny portion, gone in two spoonfuls – so quick that you can’t really identify flavours but I do know that I wasn’t at all keen on it.
So, an interesting evening and one that was arguably very good value at £55 each, although drinks and service charge doubled that. There’s some effort gone into the cooking although it doesn’t always hit the mark and, of course, there were those delays. I think our disappointment would have been greater had we been paying full whack not least in the knowledge that it would have been only £10 more to eat at Adam Reid’s excellent restaurant just down the road. The culinary gap between the two is marked.
