Fifty Two at the Rudding Park Hotel, Follifoot, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG3 1JH. Tasting menu £85-£115, drink pairing £35-£50
I discover the giddying power a restaurant reviewer wields, not over restaurateurs, but over my husband. “We get a free meal!” I tell him, provoking great rejoicing. “It’s an ‘immersive’ experience,” I add; silence. “The chef was on Great British Menu, you know, that show where they serve liver in pencil cases and stuff,” I inform him, sadistically; there’s a guttural sound. He shouldn’t be so stricken. Watching people cook elaborately is our hobby; we spend an unhealthy number of hours watching split bearnaise drama and fondant jeopardy. There’s nothing unusual in that: fancy food has become entertainment; we’re all sofa sous-chefs after three seasons of The Bear and 9 million of MasterChef. But there’s entertainment, and there’s dinner. But our only haute cuisine experience – a po-faced Michelin-starred marathon in an Alpine barn – was traumatic. My husband still talks sorrowfully about the groaning cheese trolley he was too broken-spirited to tackle after 20-plus tortuous courses, featuring liquefied tartiflette served in a milk carton and sea urchin meringue.
So onwards, with apprehension, to Harrogate, where GBM alumnus Adam Degg’s new baby, Fifty Two, is hidden somewhere in a labyrinthine country house hotel complex (the kind offering the triple threat of conferencing, golf and spa). We blunder round a squat black shipping container with no obvious entrance until we reach a glass-fronted, blond-wood and copper suggestion of a restaurant, where we’re handed an aperitif and superior cheesy biscuit and sent to wander the kitchen garden. It’s this garden and its 52 raised beds of organic produce that Degg’s new concept celebrates, and the ravishing mosaics of greenery and corn, thickets of flowering chive and broad bean and espaliered cascades of currants are certainly spectacular.
The crowd is Harrogate-smart (stealth wealth with a touch of sparkle) and palpably tentative about embarking on a 10-course, £115 “experience” where the only choice is whether you want your drinks pairing (£50) to be alcoholic or not. In a post-The Menu world, the spectre of a murderous Ralph Fiennes casts a chill shadow over immersive gastronomy. Will we have to scan QR codes? Forage our own garnishes? Fight to the death with microplane graters? But once we’re seated at shared tables, expectantly facing Degg and three colleagues, we’re only asked to immerse ourselves in a Sylvanian Family-chic apple blini with cod’s roe and hot pink radish, wearing a nasturtium leaf hat.
That’s reassuring, but the real exhalation comes when one of the chefs delivers what he calls “chips and dip”. It’s ultra-luxe: a floofy cloud of sour cream and dill (esprit de Pringles) over a chunky ragout of jerusalem artichokes, which are also deep-fried as the “chips”. There’s something comfortingly familiar about watching people cook while troughing down crisps; so much so, I almost absent-mindedly dredge the bowl clean with my finger. Dark-golden fermented potato brioche rolls, ceremoniously pulled from the oven, destroy our last shreds of reserve; we duel over who gets first dunk in the whipped sunflower seeds, cultured butter and salsa verde; we squabble over who finishes each. Now we couch potatoes can relax, watching our food take painstaking shape, then demolishing it. There’s too much for a blow-by-blow, but a riff on eel, mash and liquor is a standout: a smoked, bronze chunk on a confit potato in a pond of silky green beurre blanc, topped with thistledown-thin crispy potato filaments and tongue-tingling powdered vinegar and parsley.
An unpromising-sounding pre-dessert – nuggets of last year’s chewy beetroot in blackberry juice under a scoop of goat’s milk ice-cream – is bafflingly brilliant: earthy, clean, sweet and tart. You can tell Degg used to be a pastry chef. His dark-crusted, brown-butter custard tart dusted with star anise and nutmeg sugar shimmies, threatening collapse, at the slightest spoon nudge; pine caramel adds resinous complexity. Not everything works. A deep-fried gherkin served with other sour bits and piccalilli is a pickle too far, the batter not crisp enough to offer contrast. Cod with overly sweet magnolia blossom is texturally off, and the accompanying magnolia blossom overly sweet; it tastes like a work in progress (Degg confirms it’s a new dish).
The non-alcoholic drinks pairing is admirable, but needs tweaking: as designated driver, if I’d finished the first three large, sweet offerings served – a sakura soda, blackberry-elderflower-lemon, then apple-cucumber-dill juice – I would have been sloshing with liquid and hyperglycaemic before pudding. Some of the vegetarian options (which I order, also tasting my husband’s omnivorous version, since I am A Professional) deliver: a “take on Branston pickle” sounds ominous but offers the crunch and sweetness of new season green things; the freshest garden leaves with chewy croutons are astonishing. But I get the same amuse bouche twice and while it’s nice hearing that the gardener produced a sole early cauliflower that was slow-roasted just for me, it’s seriously under-seasoned. And on a £115 menu, don’t charge £6.50 for water; serve tap, for goodness sake.
But we visit in week seven after opening and all that is eminently fixable. There’s so much more right than wrong, not just with food, but with everything: Degg cooks and hosts with disarming charm and generosity. The “signature sharing” lamb is gloriously, almost ridiculously, OTT: there’s slow-cooked saddle and a hibachi-charred kebab, and spiced navarin topped with a wild garlic foam and crunchy sweetbreads over smoked rosemary. Plus, a salad. It’s tasting menu vibes, Yorkshire portions.
But what Degg has nailed above all, is that elusive beast, the experience. He’s obviously deeply serious about his food (at one point I count three chefs tweezing away simultaneously), but equally so about atmosphere. You can’t be too po-faced when you’re toasting meringues with naked flames: this is as far from chilly, ego-driven cooking-as-theatre as you could imagine. The quality and quantity of food and drink (boozers get three excellent cocktails and two wines, regularly topped up) means that by dessert, cheeks are pink, smiles broad and belts slackened. Chairs shuffle closer together and strangers start chatting; we’re encouraged to choose songs for “dessert island discs”, at which point two young women start schooling their 60-something tablemates on Taylor Swift and a mini-Mexican wave breaks out. By the time Degg comes over offering warm, cherry-sugar-dusted madeleines, my neighbour is coaching me so intensely on overcoming my fear of failure, we absent-mindedly grab a handful and smash through them like he’s our mate passing round M&Ms (they’re infinitely tastier). He seems delighted. Fifty Two is better than fancy food as entertainment: it’s honest-to-goodness fun.
Jay Rayner returns next week
