Àclèaf (Plymouth)

Scott Paton moved to Boringdon Hall in 2016 having moved from the Horn of Plenty in Tavistock.  He oversaw the transition in 2018 of Àclèaf taking over the former Gallery restaurant and has thankfully managed to survive the significant turmoil since 2020.  The meal started with three intricate canapes with well crafted home made breads and butters.  The Iberian charcuterie had a deep, smokey flavour with good salt content; the mini celeriac pickle tart held superb pastry and pleasing Japanese pear, hazelnut pickled celeriac and truffle oil and the mini black pudding beignet was warming.  Home made  baguette and brown breads came with salted butter from Normandy and a wonderfully judged goats milk butter with truffle honey on top, proving a very good combination.  Goat’s milk is not to everyone’s palette, but when balanced like this (i.e. made less potent but still with inherent flavour), it shows a high, quality skill level.

Whilst we’re on this, I actually enjoy the canapes and breads probably the most in all my meals as it can very often serve as a very good indicator for the quality line and calibre of the restaurant – if the effort is there to make the ‘smaller’ things wonderful, it shows a very good advertisement to how much care goes in to the main elements and therefore the meal as a whole. As an aside, it was also gratifying to see Gusbourne served by the glass on the wine list as well (one of the more punchy of English Sparkling wines I have enjoyed visiting in Kent).

My starter choice was the chicken liver parfait.  This was gorgeously smooth and had a wonderful touch with the Pedro Ximénez and equally well-done brioche to accompany.  Next was the very pretty crab dish from a large, 2kg Red King crab served with a curry emulsion.  This was fabulous – excellent, sweet white crab with garden herbs,  absolutely fresh, a lovely combination with just the right amount of curry.  I upgraded my main to the Highland wagyu which was another, very good dish.  The Highland beef rump was braised with hen of woods mushroom beef jus, served with celeriac fondant and puree with ox tongue bone marrow.  There was rich intensity here without being too much and was a strong main. 

Pre-dessert was creative.  At the beginning of the meal I was asked to simply nominate my preferences on a cryptic piece of paper showing different shapes and colours – I felt like I was about to enter the eating phase of Squid Game.  What it was actually used for was to decide which type of pre-dessert I had a subconscious bias towards; turns out my opted colours and shapes were aligned most to the sharper based lemon-based optiont.  This was good news for me as the whole point of a pre-dessert is to serve as a palette cleanse from savoury to sweet and lemon handled correctly, does this probably better than anything.  A lemon mousse, lemon posset and lemon curd pre-dessert was nicely balanced (not too sharp), visually pleasing and just the right portion size.

My actual dessert was the duck egg brûlée, the eggs coming from the local Newlands farm.  Duck egg is underused in my opinion and wonderfully rich so careful treatment is required – thankfully this was done yet again. Cinnamon cream, dusted puff pastry, French financiers, cranberry compote with cranberry ice cream all came together beautifully, the cranberry cutting through the rich egg perfectly and this was frankly a stunning dessert. Handmade petit fours were served in the hidden bar for a change of scene to finish and included tonka bean with cherry glaze, Mirabelle plum and single origin chocolate which were all good.

There was virtually nothing I didn’t enjoy about this meal and it is amazing what happens sometimes when one moves further out of London, you can find some lovely gems.  I would definitely say this is one of them.

Food Grade: 85%