Edible Storytelling by Liam Penn: 'Vegan food good enough to pacify even this beurrephilic pâtissière'
A grand day out
Hannah Catley is a force to be reckoned with in Bristol’s food scene. She’s not only the mastermind behind Catley’s and Lockdown Loaves, but also frequent collaborator on many an impressive tasting menu and can often be found giving her very limited time to many a charity initiative. How she made room in her seemingly jam-packed (gettit?) schedule to write this, I’ll never know. But I am grateful, for it’s a wonderful insight into a very talented chef and his curious creations. You can find Hannah on Instagram, balancing baking trays in one of her three and a half sites or showing people who’s boss in the gym. Or writing a review (with a little help from myself and PXandTarts). This one’s more multi-faceted than a soft-serve loaded crookie.
As someone who doesn’t especially enjoy fancy food (I’m more of a steak-and-chips-at-home kind of girl), never really liked animations as a kid, and has a day job that involves using more butter than should legally be allowed in one kitchen, I was never going to be the obvious candidate to enjoy a vegan tasting menu inspired by Great British animations.
So it was with some reluctance that I sacrificed a rare Friday night off to endure what I assumed would be an overly theatrical, needlessly complicated, plant-based tasting menu at Emmeline on Spike Island — fittingly in the shadow of Aardman Animations, home of Wallace and Gromit and other beloved lumps of plasticine.
If anyone else had announced a pop-up like this, I’d have come up with an elaborate work-based excuse to get out of it. An exploding coffee machine. A delivery of two tonnes of sugar that needed signing for. A pain au chocolat-led pastry uprising on Kings Road. That sort of thing. But Liam Penn had piqued my curiosity. Though he’s lent a hand at charity events I’ve cooked at, I knew little of his own cooking — despite a CV that includes stints with two of the UK’s most boundary-pushing chefs: Heston Blumenthal (himself something of a cartoonish character) and farm-to-fork pioneer Simon Rogan, both of whom run three-star kitchens.
I wasn’t exactly giddy with anticipation. The menu structure — stiff, old-school, and paired with animations like a lacklustre 2023 episode of Great British Menu — did little to lift my mood. That is, until Liam appeared. Joyfully enthusiastic, with a touch of Heston’s ebullience, he moved through the room with infectious energy, introducing each course — each film — as though channelling one of the characters himself. More Tigger than Feathers McGraw, though I imagine he’d need to sell a blue diamond or two to cover the cost of the wild and wonderful props that punctuated the evening.
The first course, “Herb Garden”, alone probably set him back a small fortune in crockery: a glass dome flooded with smoky mist that lingered in the air and filled your mouth and nose as you polished off the bite-sized tartlet in one. Herb mousseline and pickled strawberries filled a pastry case made using stems that would otherwise have been wasted. A study in sustainability — another key theme of the evening — and arguably the best collision of animation and environmentalism since Captain Planet.
Magic Roundabout. A show I’ve never seen, but one widely rumoured to contain more drug references than Kitchen Confidential. If its writers were indeed high on psychedelics, a mushroom-based dish feels entirely apt. This one came with mushroom broth, hemp, pickled enoki and shimeji, and tomato “caviar” — just writing that makes me feel like I’m tripping. Fruity spheres burst on the tongue, adding dynamism and acidity to the deep umami. My(celium) dish of the night.
The bread course, inspired by The Wombles, took its cue from Wimbledon Common — not your usual source of baking inspiration. Daisies were milled into flour and used to hydrate Parker House rolls, shaped to resemble flowers, and were reminiscent of the daisy buns lovingly whipped up by Madame Cholet. On the side: moss butter and a moss broth, both adding a bosky, earthy note that tasted like a walk in the woods.
After a surprisingly successful “Clangers”-inspired dish of peas, champagne, and hay-smoked curd, I had to admit — I was actually enjoying myself. “Chicken Run” was one of the few animations I watched as a child, but in keeping with the plant-based brief, no chickens were harmed here (sorry, Mrs Tweedy). Instead: braised celeriac, lentil duxelles, carrot, celeriac milk, and fermented cherry jus came together in a pie that was dense, wholesome, and unexpectedly elevated. I was floored by the vegan puff pastry — until Liam confessed it wasn’t made in-house. Still, absolutely delicious.
“Animal Farm” was as layered as the Orwell novella that inspired it. We were invited to paint the plate with an umeboshi-like raspberry jam using tiny brushes, before adding black apple butter, barley koji (think chewy, nutty grains) and honey truffle butter — each component evoking a different note of the harvest. The only absentee? The promised whisky, which seemed to have quietly defected.
If Liam hadn’t included a “Wallace and Gromit”-inspired cheese course while cooking opposite the legendary Aardman studio, I’d have been seriously cheesed off. Channelling his inner inventor, he used penicillium — the mould behind gooey wonders like camembert — to culture potatoes. Sadly, the result was more ‘Wrong Trousers’ than culinary triumph: a curiously bland fondant topped with a tangy mustard sauce and a tangle of salt and vinegar shoestring fries that felt like a throwback to the early noughties.
“Bagpuss” heralded the arrival of my favourite part of any meal — dessert, and firmly my domain. To my delight, there were three. Even better, the first was îles flottantes: one of my all-time favourite puddings, made with one of my all-time favourite ingredients — rhubarb. This particular rendition was, according to Liam, a culinary “fuck you” to a horrid French chef he once worked with. It could easily have been a “fuck you” to me too, had the execution flopped. But despite some minor meringue misfires, the smooth, vanilla-laced crème anglaise and sherbet-sharp rhubarb evoked rhubarb-and-custard boiled sweets — enough to pacify even this beurrephilic pâtissière.
By the time “Paddington” and “Pingu” joined the party, one of whom was wearing an iconic red hat, I was very full. It didn’t stop me demolishing a spot-on sourdough ice cream marmalade sandwich and a popcorn ganache finale so silky, crunchy and strange I found myself hoping it would never end.
At their best, chefs are part artist, part scientist, part lunatic inventor — just like the animators who brought our childhoods to life. This menu might not have grabbed my attention on paper, but in practice, it soared. And all without using a single animal product — Heston better watch his back.
All words and photos by Hannah Catley, with support from PXandTarts
Information about Liam Penn’s pop-ups can be found at liam-penn.co.uk
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Thanks for visiting Liam, he’s working hard at doing something different and a little recognition helps.
Sounds like a memorable experience. I winced at the bread course, naturally 😊