The Times Magazine 69Cooking alongside Scotsman Mitch
are his head of food, the brilliant Aled
Williams from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerych-
wyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, who cooked
me one of the best steaks of my life at the
Cennin in Anglesey years ago, and Samira
Effa, the only bona fide Yorkshirewoman or
man in the team, a Huddersfield lass with
an Iranian mum and a Nigerian dad. The
sommelier is Hugh Carruthers (Anglo-French
and another Truefoods man) and Latvian
Karina Kusca from the tech department, who
is responsible for food safety in the factory, is
on wash-up and general hygiene standards.
The space is reminiscent of the plating
kitchen at Noma or a shrunken version of the
El Bulli kitchen in its prime, but the people are
nicer and the vibe is cooler and the food, well,
it’s food I’d rather eat than either of theirs,
any time. And some of it is just as surprising.
Like the first bite of the night (after ras
al-hanout hazelnuts with the champagne):
two tiny meringues made with a cep-infused
Truefoods stock, stiffened with egg white
powder and xanthum gum (then dehydrated
so that it disappears in the mouth), glued
together with a little Yorkshire goat curd.
Then scampi and chips: a morsel of local
langoustine wrapped in potato spaghetti,
pepped with powdered malt vinegar and
served on a tartare sauce built from a roasted
langoustine mayonnaise.
Then a dark chocolate-coloured mousse of
humble button mushrooms with a madeira jelly
on top, pickled walnut, pickled shimeji and three
discs of Wiltshire truffle. A beautiful thing.
You have to remind yourself, sitting here,
that this is a real factory. Not a hipster joke.
Not repurposed industrial chic in Shoreditch.
A genuine flavour factory, not a figment of
Heston Blumenthal’s imagination (though it
could be). You go out to the staff loo and come
back through a heavy steel door plastered with
blue and yellow safety warnings.
And you find Samira, tall, elegant, masked
of course, meticulously laying out slices of
Morteau sausage on a tray, which Mitch
tops with a nugget of glazed pork cheek
from Taste Tradition, the pork specialists
next door, and finishes with grated honey
truffle, a Hungarian fungus I confess I had
never heard of, which tastes not fungal at all- though it looks like an alba truffle and costs
around £45/100g – but purely sweet, its honey
notes pricked by a distinct aniseed tang. The
little pork dish is a wonder of stickiness, big
gravy and smoky length.
There is great fresh sourdough from a
three-year-old starter with four fats including
a miso cultured butter, a whipped foie gras,
a herb butter made with garden herbs from
the Evogro cabinet behind them and a beef
tallow candle infused with thyme and star
anis that not only lights your space but nods,
of course, to the Yorkshire tradition of bread
and dripping.
Then a wonderful tartare of Scottish red
deer, egg yolk puree and hazelnut mayo
blobbed on by Samira with a squeezy bottle,
and also wild garlic picked by Aled and his
young family and used three ways: its capers
pickled, the leaf freeze-dried (I told you
they had kit) and powdered and the stem
sweet pickled with miso. Oh, and there’s a
crispy brik pastry tuile filled with creamed
celeriac on the side.
And this parsimony with the wild
garlic goes further in the next course with a
“cauliflower cheese” that again uses every part
of the vegetable (“nose to tail” for veggies, you
might say): the top shaved for a cauli “risotto”
cooked in a Truefoods stock infused with
the green leaves, pickled florets, dehydrated
purple and yellow cauliflower for colour
and texture, finished with crispy Yorkshire
pecorino and chive flowers. A visually
beautiful, truly delicate thing, with a cheese
and onion horseshoe in the silky glove.
A huge 3kg monkfish tail comes down off
the rotisserie where it has been turning all
evening and is cut into rounds to be dressed
with a salsa into which Samira slices fat corn
from a giant cob that has been turning in front
of the fire too and slivers from a pineapple
that has had the same treatment, going in
there with blitzed red and green tomatoes
from their polytunnels, red onion, red peppers,
garlic, coriander from the Evogro, splash of
red wine vinegar, blob of pureed avocado on
the side – boom, Yorkshire meets Mexico.
Then Charollais lamb is rolled and stuffed
with a chicken and sweetbread mousse (in
the style of Marco Pierre White’s pig’s trotters
Pierre Koffmann) with a nod to petits pois à
la française (the peas mushed and centrifuged
to produce a consommé, a butter and a
puree) served in a leaf of Roscoff onion
with a sauce of the most mind-blowing lamb
stock reduction I have ever known.
Desserts included a local yoghurt, lightly
salted to pick up from where the lamb left
off, with the first manifestation in a restaurant
I have ever seen of Japanese wineberries,
which I grow myself at home, here both
freeze-dried and centrifuged then jellied. And
then there was Samira’s traditional Yorkshire
parkin with elements of black cardamom and
a lemon and saffron sorbet glazed, naturally,
with Yorkshire tea.
This was a dazzling and beautifully
balanced meal. It was real food, rendered new
and exciting by the immense skill and charm
of everyone concerned. And so, so relaxed.
Entirely unique in that sense. In non-Covid
times, guests who arrive at 6.30pm hang
in there till well after 11, but even with the
curfew there was a party feel. We were invited
to connect our phones to the stereo and
play our own music, Hugh’s wonderful wine
flowed (though I went for the ingenious
“driving flight” of 5 x 25ml servings), there
was laughter, there was a guy from Emmerdale
on the other table, it was all... just exactly
what you’d expect from an industrial estate
in North Yorkshire. nChefsTable at
Truefoods
9 Hallikeld Close,
Melmerby, Ripon
(01765 640927;
truefoodsltd.com)
Cooking 10
Service 10
Vibes 10
Score 10
Price £75 (£100 in
non-virus times, when
the menu is longer).
The best value I have
ever encountered
anywhere.