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A midweek package at Winteringham Fields

We went back to Winteringham Fields on the 19 January 2010, so in anticipation I re-read this page. As well as picking up and correcting a few typing errors, I had my memory of our first visit refreshed - and couldn’t wait for the second!

A few weeks ago Darren, my fishmonger at Worksop market, told me that Winteringham Fields was his favourite restaurant. This is another ’restaurant with rooms’ - a format we’ve grown to love - about an hour’s drive from home, quite near the Lincolnshire side of the Humber Bridge. I had a look at their website and decided to book a midweek break for our wedding anniversary and Patricia’s birthday. I landed one of their top suites for the 1 May 2008 - our second anniversary.

Winteringham Fields has won some fairly serious awards, and has the same score for cooking in The Good Food Guide, 7, as Sat Bains - two less than The Fat Duck’s 9 and one less than The Waterside Inn’s 8. It is number 4 on The Good Food Guide 2008’s Top 40. Until a recent change of chef, it also had a Michelin star.

The package consisted of a night in the Thomas Westoby suite with continental breakfast and the Menu Surprise, complete with a glass of the sommelier’s recommended wine with each of six of the eight courses. The room is normally £205 per night for double occupation, and the menu is £79 per person and the wine selection £55 (total £268 for two), so the midweek break at £395 represents a worthwhile saving of £78 - with the advantage that the restaurant is relatively quiet, rather than completely full as it is at weekends.

We arrived just before 2pm, the earliest check-in time (much earlier than many similat establishments), the satnav having taken us right to the gate of an attractive gravel courtyard surrounded by old buildings.

Our room wasn’t quite ready, but as we hadn’t had lunch we were happy to settle in one of the cosy lounges with a glass of wine (Sancerre rosé) and one of their treats: an elegant slate plate with a stack of delicious, freshly-made blinis, two generous portions of the chef’s home-cured salmon (more like gravadlax than smoked salmon), two elegant assemblies of smoked haddock brandade (normally made with salt cod), each with two beautifully made potato crisps with a leaf of either chive or tarragon cleverly embedded in them, and some little piles of caviar. There was also a coffee-cup of the most delicious soup - a creamy confection based on butternut squash. Unsurprisingly, the caviar was not very impressive. Sevruga was also on offer, but at quite a high price (I don’t trust my memory here) for just five grams - about a teaspoonful.

What was charming was that, after the Sancerre had arrived and before the food came, the young French lady who was looking after us arrived with two complimentary flutes of the house Champagne as an apology for our room not being ready when we arrived - and we had arrived early, remember!

The building is an absolute maze of twisting passages and many rooms. Ours was up a narrow flight of stairs and - as you can see from the pictures on the website - a delightful bedsitting room with a huge, comfortable bed, lovely pillows, a huge walk-in wardrobe and a truly luxurious bathroom (you’d have to stay several nights to get the full benefit of the large spa bath and multi-function shower!). The only mild disappointment was that the bath-towels, though of superb quality, were a little on the small side.

We whiled away the afternoon with a snooze, aided by the Sancerre and Champagne, and caught the dessert episode of Great British Menu on TV before going down for dinner.

Aperitifs were not included. I opted for another glass of the excellent house Champagne and Patricia had a kir royale. Drinks were served in the same little lounge and accompanied by amuse-bouches including more of the brandade-and-crisps assembly and another cup of soup, this time leek and potato and equally delicious.

We used two of the restaurant’s dining rooms. For dinner, we were in a pair of linked rooms with about half a dozen tables spread between them.

The Menu Surprise is constantly changing. Ours had nothing in common with the sample menu in our room.

It wasn’t listed on our menu printout, but I’m sure we started with a tall glass of several layers, each quite distinct and ending at the bottom with what was described as ’apple jelly’ but certainly wans’t what I know as jelly - it sort of crumbled between tongue and palate into little firm chunks. Stunning.

The menu proper began with Sweetcorn soup with curry foam, garnished with pine nuts, accompanied by Springhill Chardonnay from Irvine Wines. For such a mundane ingredient as sweetcorn, the result was rich, creamy and delicious, and the foam - I think Ferran Adria calls this very open kind ’air’, and it is little more than that - lent a subtle hit of spice. The pine nuts had been roasted to give a rich burst of toasted flavour. The dry white wine was very well chosen and complimented the food perfectly.

Then came Chicken and foie gras terrine, sea bream, artichoke puree and verjus - a skilfully layered block with paper-thin leaves of celeriac, a delicate chicken mousse and a wonderfully buttery layer of foie gras. My only misgiving here is that the portions in tasting menus are sometimes too small to do justice to the complex components of the dish. I adore foie gras, so obviously I’d have liked more of this, but I also found scraping up the tiny smears of delicious, intense sauces rather teasing. Nevertheless, a stunning little dish, and superbly accompanied by Pinot Gris Reserve 2003 from Trimbach in Alsace. This was appropriate because Alsace is one of the less well-known foie gras regions of France but produces a product of very high quality. And, with its heat, it makes wines of great body, depth and intensity: the Pinot Gris was a fascinating contrast with the more familiar and much lighter Pinot Grigios (same grape) of Northern Italy.

Next was Salt-baked scallops, confit pepper and yellow pepper purée. The scallops - just one each - arrived in clever little metal pots, the top half containing the scallop embedded in salt and the bottom a heat-source of some sort, which might have been charcoal or a tea-light. Each was carefully rescued with tongs by the waiter and rinsed in a little pot of veloute before being added to the plate. I usually like my scallops seared very quickly to produce a hint of caramel while leaving the inside warm but raw. I have even eated completely raw scallops in Provence. But these were absolutely delicious, and the confit of finely-diced red pepper and the puree of yellow pepper had powerful and quite distinct flavours. Yet another impressive dish, this served with Chardonnay Los Vascos 2006 (from Chile, I think) - again a perfect match).

At this point the refresher was very welcome. A bed of crunchy Vodka ganita supporting a scoop ofsweet-and-sharp Lemon sorbet was the perfect kickstarter for the ’main’ course.

Fillet of beef, served with spiced carrot and olive potato puree, spinach, finished with red wine jus was perhaps the least impressive dish so far. I asked if the beef had been cooked sous vide and the waiter confirmed that it had. It was evenly rare right through, and had been rolled in un unspecified herb and/or spice mix, but the waited said this had been done after cooking. The meat was rather soft, pleasantly flavoured but no more. Fillet isn’t the tastiest of beef cuts, and what I felt was missing were the products of browning. Surely it could have been seared, either before or after the sous vide cooking? It was served with the only red wine, Selkirk Shiraz 2004, Langhorne Creek, Bremerton - a deep and powerful wine, reminiscent of the wonderful 1993 Gigondas we had drunk at Les Florets in the Vaucluse.

Then came the cheese trolley and a long conversation with one of the senior staff. I tried several, including a deliciously creamy blue cheese made from goat’s milk on a small farm just over the Humber Bridge, and a soft cheese which I was assured had been made from Lincolnshire Poacher, our own ’local Cheddar’. With our cheeses, we drank 10-year-old Pinot des Charentes Chateau de Beaulon - a classic dessert ’wine’ made from sweet unfermented grape must fortified with Cognac.

Our two desserts were Passion fruit souffle, panacotta, topped with pineapple foam and Raspberry mousse with strawberry and ginger emulsion, served with strawberry and pepper sorbet on the side. These delicious ’puds’ were served with Elysium Black Muscat 2005.

As usual, having drunk all my glasses of wine and helped Patricia to finish some of hers, my memory was getting a bit unreliable by this point. I know I had a double espresso with petits fours, and I’m sure I did them justice, but that’s all! One day I’ll manage to balance my alcohol intake with one of these long, slow menus...

However, I can confidently say that nothing in the dishes or the drinks fell short of excellent - with the possible exception of the beef fillet, which was nevertheless very good.

Breakfast was taken in a different dining room, decorated in a very unusual and individual style, and was served by the charming - if chatty - Frenchman who had handled the cheese trolley the previous evening. Apart from silly shallow cups that let the coffee cool too quickly, everything was very good. My ’full English’ was a little ambitious after the previous evening’s indulgences, but nonetheless enjoyable, with three big rashers of good (though not outstanding) bacon, excellent home-made black pudding, what I took to be Scottish white (or ’mealie’) pudding, also very tasty, and a superb herby sausage. There were tiny quartered button mushrooms, fried bread and, for contrast, a slice of caramelied apple. Very nice, even after the dinner. Maybe I should have had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, Eggs Benedict or one of the other lighter choices. Or maybe just the Continental breakfast included in our package, with plenty of cereals and cold meats on the buffet. The local goat’s milk yogurt was stunning.

Summing up

A delightful place, splendid accommodation, friendly and attentive staff, an imaginative menu, well-chosen wines and, yet again, a bill just shy of £500 - comparable with The Fat Duck with no accommodation included and Restaurant Sat Bains with a room. To be fair, The Fat Duck, for about another £100 with decent accommodation in Maidenhead, stands head-and-shoulders above the other two as an experience, but that is not to belittle either of them: they are doing something rather different but very impressive.

A tasting menu is a great way to get a feel for a restaurant, but I’d like to go back to both Sat Bains and Winteringham Fields for an ’ordinary’ dinner (as I would to The Fat Duck). Good to know that Winteringham Fields does two- and three-course lunches at under £40 - a leisurely morning’s drive through the Lincolnshire countryside or up the coast, a long lunch (with not too much to drink) and an alternative route back all sounds very tempting. Watch this space...

Personal site for Paul Marsden: frustrated writer; experimental cook and all-round foodie; amateur wine-importer; former copywriter and press-officer; former teacher, teacher-trainer, educational software developer and documenter; still a professional web-developer but mostly retired.

This site was transferred in June 2005 to the Sites4Doctors Site Management System, and has been developed and maintained there ever since.