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If you had been sentenced to death for some heinous crime, what would you choose for your final supper? I ask because I recently took the day off to saunter round Sherborne and stumbled into imaginatively named The Sherborne, a grand Georgian building-cum-art gallery which is currently home to Mat Collishaw’s ‘Last Meal on Death Row’. A profound, thought-provoking series of shadowy still lives replicating the final meals of prisoners in Texas.
In such a grave situation, would you pine for comfort? Or would you be inclined to go all in with one last hurrah, plate overflowing with caviar and truffle? Would you ask for a can of spinach and pray for Popeye’s strength for one final fight? Or order Jamie’s Italian and tell the executioner to bring it on?
If I ever found myself in such a predicament, my final meal would start with bread and butter, which seems fitting; austere, repentant, enough biblical significance to maybe convince any higher powers I could have believed. A tart to end would also be non-negotiable. In between? Maybe the tomato and peach salad with goat’s curd from Bell’s Diner, or lobster with garlic butter and chips from Wallfish Bistro. Dishes that are in parts nostalgic, comforting and, most of all, down right delicious.
As per the rules, no alcohol is permitted, though if possible, I’d start with a Negroni. Then Guinness and champagne. Not together, mind you. Having now dallied with a Black Velvet (£8) for the first time at freshly-opened Mon Plaisir in Clevedon, I can safely say the two entities are best kept apart.
For many, a French-leaning main, le plat principal, might be their choice — if the current renaissance of French restaurants has any bearing on reality. I won’t list all the new openings in London and beyond in the last few years. I’ve got a World Cup to watch. But the fact the recently-awarded Best Restaurant in the UK is a Lyonnaise bouchon above a pub in Farringdon says assez.
Closer to home, Toby Gritten, who recently departed The Pump House after many heroic years, and Alex De Salengre (ex-Pony & Trap, Noble Rot) decided Clevedon could do with a French bistro of its own. The pair reutilised the tricky corner site that previously housed Puro and turned it into Mon Plaisir. De rien, Clevedon.
To call Clevedon gastronomical purgatory is probably overstating it, but it’s hardly the first place you think of when it comes to dinner, whether coming from Bristol or, as we were, Sherborne. Such is the draw of Toby Gritten. I’m not calling him Jesus, even if he does now have a beard.
The meal had to begin with bread. We ordered sourdough but were told it was presented to tout le monde on the house, so we decided to spend our winnings, so to speak, on a little ramekin of pickles (£4). Cornichons, naturellement, armadillo-like ridged carrot slices, and ultra crunchy whole shallots.
There has been a tendency in restaurants for some years to whip foods into oblivion, be it in parfaits of liver or fungi, soft cheeses or fish eggs. We opted for two dishes with the potential for such tinkering: duck liver parfait (£9.50) and cod’s roe (£8.50). The parfait went resolutely old-school, a smooth, dense block, lined with golden butter on one edge and scattered with salt. A chef recently told me too many liver parfaits are fairweather (my words, not his) examples; meek, gentle, feeble. Too subtle. Not what he wants from a parfait. He wants a proper tang of offal and a heavy hand with booze. He would have happily snuffled this. It came with toasted sourdough, more of those cornichons and a tangle of sweetly jammy strands of red onion. So far, so classic. And so French.
The roe was much more on the fluffy, subtle end of the spread spectrum. It had been described as whipped on the menu, so we knew what we were getting ourselves in for, although the dungeon-like, windowless qualities of the downstairs dining chamber didn’t altogether rule out a less benevolent form of whipping. A whirl of emollient, emulsified smoked cod eggs was the ghostly pale pink of a Brit on the first morning of their all-inclusive beach holiday. It was sprinkled with a few chilli flakes the bright red of same Brit after a few hours in the sun. Perky radishes, leaves intact and sprightly, brought their characteristic peppery bite.
At this point the promised slices of sourdough body of Christ turned up. A little later than ideal, but apparently deliberate. And almost perfect. Chef thought the crumb could have been holier, but couldn’t we all? Personally I’d have liked it cut a bit thicker to better appreciate its spongy, porous texture and brittle crust. The Pump House used to knock out incredible sourdough, squishy and nutty, warm from the oven if you were lucky, and serve it with house-cultured butter. The best I had was the summer before they closed. Made, in fact, by Toby’s son. Immaculate. This version was cut from the same cloth, and a decent amount of generously salted butter was put to immediate use.
Pork and shellfish were both forbidden in the Old Testament but thankfully Jesus put paid to that prohibition (or not, depending on your beliefs). At Mon Plaisir the combination is very much on the table. Three podgy scallops (£14) shared a shallow white bowl with a thick plank of pork belly, fat rendered and sticky, moistening and flavouring the muscle around it. One of the bronzed bivalves sat glistening atop the pork, as if addressing the other two. A mound of squeaky peas, sweet as a toddler dressed as a shepherd in a school Nativity play, separated the parties. A winning combination, summery and with something of Iberia about it, a not unwelcome geographical tangent.
Fish wouldn’t feature as part of my final hurrah, but we were persuaded into ordering the Brixham skate (£23), which we did on the condition we also got fries (£5.50) (very thin, very crisp, very French). With our proximity to the coast, hot as hell atmospheric conditions and streets flowing with rosé, Clevedon was virtually Provence, if you drank enough Black Velvets. Fish felt right. The fillet, rolled up on itself like a startled woodlouse, was soft and subtle of flesh, pulling easily apart into thin strips. Beneath was a double whammy of tomato: a moat of sauce vierge — fresh, clean, herbal, acidic — surrounding a slump of ratatouille. As we recounted stewed veg horrors masquerading as the aspirational Provencal sludge of our respective childhoods, we were shown what we could have won; lusciously oily, vibrantly flavoured chunks of tomato and aubergine, softened without being pappy.
From a biblical list of desserts — cherry and almond tart, chocolate mousse, garden rhubarb pavlova, sticky toffee pudding, the last definitely one for another, colder, day - we eventually landed on mousse (£8). I had to allow it since I was not on death row, but the decision was to my slight chagrin. As if turning water into wine, the man himself appeared before us, resurrected from his Bristol days, bearing not just our mousse but also the tart. He must have sensed a man in need of salvation, preferably in the form of a perfectly angled wedge of pastry.
Seldon Curry of Wallfish Bistro used to make the best chocolate mousse I ever had in Bristol — broodingly dark and rich, thoroughly suffused with bubbles but not overly aerated, like a nice foamy Guinness, dolloped with salted caramel and crème fraîche. If he fancied it, he flung a few peanuts over the top almost as an afterthought. This didn’t reach those heavenly heights, but was a noble offering. Quite light for its dark billing, it was creamy, airy and classic, topped with a gently salted caramel ice cream and a hazelnut tuile.
Better still, and more my thing, was the tart (£9.50). Just out of the oven, it was liberally cratered with warm cherries surrendering their juices into a nutty, moist frangipane. It was all contained in a biscuitty, properly-bronzed crust with more than a mere suggestion of salt. The thick wedge sat in a pool of silken vanilla-freckled crème anglaise so fragrant it could have been used in place of incense. I purposefully left myself an apotheotic bite on which to end. Ideal ratios of pastry to frangipane, a particularly juicy looking chunk of cherry and a nice lick of custard. A bite so perfect that, if it had been my last on earth, I’d have swanned smugly off to the afterlife.
But before I could say “mais non” Meg swooped in and nabbed it. Quelle horreur. I suppose the German expression about stolen food, “die kirschen in nachbars garten schmecken immer besser”, must indeed be right. Looks like I’ll have to live a little while longer, then. Sorry.
All words by PXandTarts, photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Mon Plaisir, rear of 32, 34 Hill Road, Clevedon BS21 7PH
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Those captions!! Typically my Clevedon trips are to swim and then get chips in the Salthouse but this looks very much a cut above.
I laughed aloud while reading this — brilliant writing!