Lark, 6A Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1UZ (larkrestaurant.co.uk). Snacks £2.50-£7, plates £11-£28, desserts £10-£12, wines from £25 a bottle
Some words are more abused than others. “Special” is one of those. Russia’s murderous war on Ukraine is apparently a “special military operation”. The Royal Mail’s “special delivery” service invariably means you’ll receive a card through your door from someone who couldn’t be arsed to ring the bell, even though you were in, telling you to go and collect your package from the post office. And then there’s the use of special on menus, which may indicate that the kitchen ordered too much of something nobody wanted to eat, and now it’s been repurposed as a soup still nobody wants to eat.
At Lark, a tiny restaurant in Bury St Edmunds, the special is properly special. The description, scribbled up on the blackboard, is suggestive enough. It reads “rabbit shank and black pudding pie, girolles, cream madeira sauce”. Put aside piffling questions over whether rabbits have shanks or whether, if they do, there’s enough meat between a rabbit’s knee and ankle to go in a pie. Questions of leporine anatomy are not relevant here. For that pie is on its way. Prepare to swoon. Perhaps unlace your corset.
Sitting on a mound of a pea purée, amid a pond of glossy, herb-flecked, girolles-studded, varnished-mahogany sauce, is a golden, pastry-encased, thigh-shaped pie. There is a fine pastry lattice over the case. It has been egg-glazed again and again until you can almost see your face in it. A bone sticks out one end. When you cut in, you realise it’s a brilliant piece of set dressing, for that bone does not connect to anything. It’s just been inserted to remind you of the whole shank thing. Beneath that pastry is a layer of blanched cabbage leaf, to act as a barrier, which leads to a thick, peppery layer of crumbly black pudding with the occasional bead of fat. In turn, that leads to the heart of the matter, which is to say a generous mound of deeply seasoned shredded rabbit.
It’s the love child of a wellington and a scotch egg. Maybe a ball of stuffed cabbage joined them in the sack for a romp, too. I am eating with the food historian Dr Annie Gray who sighs theatrically and says: “The 19th century would be very happy with that.” It is a masterclass in classical cooking which must have taken a few days to execute. And it is, of course, delicious: the outer pastry is crisp. The black pudding is soft. The rabbit is dense. It is all swept on its outrageous way by that proper old-school sauce. It costs £28 and if, in the current economic hurricane you think that’s too much, stop reading. Serious effort has happened to bring this to us and it’s pretty much the most expensive thing on the menu.
The rabbit pie is the work of the fabulously named Freddie Footer, working with head chef James Carn. Both came from nearby Pea Porridge, the longstanding Michelin-starred restaurant in Bury St Edmunds. The rest of the magnificent brigade is called Ewan. He’s not long graduated from catering college. That’s it. Just the three of them. Afterwards, when I was in the kitchen, fanboying over the rabbit shank pie as if they were all the Harry Styles of food, I asked whether there had been any pushback from their previous employer over the months-old opening. Absolutely not, they told me. They had been encouraged to do it. It’s heartening and proof, if it were needed, that quality begets quality; that when the tide rises, it lifts all the boats.
Lark is housed in a solid building on the edge of the town square. It was once a bus shelter, then a police station and finally a florist’s. The space, which seats just 20, was therefore often frequented by fumbling couples, then by drunks behaving badly and finally by beautiful fragrant things. Now it’s a restaurant, all three of those can happen here again. The floor is polished concrete. The white walls are hung with tidy if mildly glowering abstracts. The menu is a list of smallish plates, rising in price with their heft.
The classical drift of the rabbit pie is matched by sautéed sweetbreads, in a deep, sticky lake of café de Paris butter with a few white beans. It’s topped with fronds of bitter frisée (or the Jolly Green Giant’s pubic hair, as it was once described to me. You’ll never look at it in the same way again). Other things are from a more modern playbook. Bright orange lozenges of sherry-cured trout nestle amid vertical ribbons of kohlrabi, with jewels of roe, sliced grapes and a dribble of ajo blanco. A courgette flower, still attached to its courgette, is stuffed with smoky baba ghanoush then expertly tempuraed. We have crunchy radishes with a silky quenelle of whipped lardo, and spherical croquettes of hot shredded smoked mackerel. They also do a terrific line in sharp-edged, golden hash browns, either topped with a tartare of muntjac and glossy leaves of radicchio, or as a side dish with the garlicky, smoked paprika wonder-dip that is mojo rojo.
In the way of most former bus stops, this is not a glamorous space. It has been bludgeoned into being a comfortable room. Instead, all the glamour is on the plate. There is a strong sense of young cooks pushing at the very edge of what they can achieve in a tiny kitchen; of them making a first, stand-alone statement. As we work our way through our plates, a chap in a sun hat and shorts comes in alone, gets a table for one and orders the half lobster with lobster butter and sea herbs. It’s clear he’s been before. It’s clear he’s happy.
To complete the deal, they have a list of proper desserts, which includes an apple tarte tatin. A mango and passion fruit trifle, with beige wafers of caramelised white chocolate, is that righteous balance of acidic and creamy. Dig down and you will find a soft puck of sponge. A scoop of dark chocolate mousse is piled with grainy pistachio ice-cream. It’s then topped, as if it’s a jaunty hat, by a textured chocolate tuile, covered with fine shavings of more chocolate. The wine list is compact and priced for that second bottle. The service, by just two people, is swift and assured. There are lots of words you could use to describe Lark in Bury St Edmunds: it’s ambitious, clever, relaxed, and hugely enjoyable. But I’ll go for just one word, used correctly. Like that rabbit shank pie, it’s special.
News bites
The Crown Inn, a food pub at Upton in Hampshire, has joined forces with its sister company The Charcuterie at Parsonage Farm, which produces a range of cured meats and has a cookery school. They are offering a brace of new courses to guests. One is in the craft of making charcuterie. The other is called “Make your own breakfast”, and will lead participants through the butchering of pork shoulders to make sausages and the curing of bellies to make bacon (parsonagefarmcharcuterie.com).
The hyper-late night Chinese dining options in the centre of London have just doubled. A year ago, the Four Seasons Chinese restaurant group opened Chop Chop, a Cantonese restaurant on the lower ground floor of the Hippodrome Casino close to Leicester Square. It’s open until 4am. Now the Empire Casino, a few metres up the strip, has collaborated with Asian restaurateur Ellen Chew to launch 7th Cat. It too serves a Cantonese menu and is open until 4am (thecasinolsq.com).
Closure news. Le Pain Quotidien, the Belgian-born bakery group which operates in 20 countries including India, Brazil and Japan, has closed all but one of its British branches after the UK holding company went into administration. Only the branch at St Pancras station remains open. Meanwhile the large upmarket restaurant group D&D London has quietly closed its longstanding Canary Wharf site which was trading as Plateau. It is the sixth D&D restaurant to close this year.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
