The Raby Hunt Restaurant, Summerhouse nr Darlington, Co Durham (01325 374 237). Meal for two including service: £120-£200.
Some ideas make no sense, even when they succeed: think budget airlines, pop tarts and Milton Keynes. The Raby Hunt in the hamlet of Summerhouse, a 15-minute drive outside Darlington, is another one of those. You can work backwards from where it is now. You can list the regular appearances in best-restaurant lists, the Michelin star, the way it is hailed as a beacon of gastronomy in a region with precious few. Do that and you will declare self-taught chef James Close a visionary who knew exactly what he was doing. But did he? I suspect a rare combination of hard work, innocence, stubbornness and talent allowed him to get lucky.
Many people eat in grand restaurants and find themselves swooning. They’re slipped a piece of, say, baby rook cooked for 97 hours at 56C and then lightly brushed with unicorn tears, and they gasp. In Close’s case it was a meal at El Celler de Can Roca in northern Spain, regarded by many as one of the greatest restaurants in the world, which knocked him off his axis. Close ate some stuff. He was thrilled by it. He wanted to spend his time making thrilling stuff for other people. The remarkable bit is that he followed through on that thought. On those terms this tiny restaurant, located in a 19th-century inn quite a long way from most places, is a minor miracle.
Close comes from a family immersed in the hospitality business. His mother ran a hotel. He spent a couple of years as the lowest of the low in a hotel kitchen, chopping vegetables. But that’s it. At the point when he took on the Raby (as in baby) Hunt, he was trying to make a living as a golf professional. Presumably he’d worked out he was never going to qualify for the Masters. Originally the plan was to open a 30-seat bistro, generally a euphemism for “cook some straightforward stuff and get bums on seats”. Given the pub’s location in the middle of some fields I can’t quite see how that would have worked.
Instead he serves tasting menus which shouldn’t work either, but do. Five courses cost a reasonable £35 at lunch and £55 in the evening. Nine courses are £80. We had the five courses, with substitutions so we could try as much as possible with a couple of other bits and pieces thrown in. It begins with a curl of crisp, dehydrated and salted cod skin, dotted with splodges of a saffron aioli and a hit of fennel. It crunches satisfyingly but then the flavours come through: the fish, the saffron, the aniseed. It’s a high-end snack that tastes like a perfect Mediterranean fish stew. A puck of raw scallop served at room temperature on a disc of lime is dressed with a little miso glaze and sesame seeds. So now we’re in Japan and very happy to be there. An oyster from nearby Lindisfarne has been cooked at 62C and returned to the shell atop a little fruity vinegar. Too often sous vide leaves a raw texture. Here the oyster is hinged between meatiness and rawness. It’s damned clever.
Best of these snacks, and proof of an instinct to feed, is a buttery piece of still-warm toast, laid with thin slices of lardo, the cured back fat of the pig, in turn loaded with a dollop of caviar. There is salt and crunch and fats of so many different kinds, and the knowledge that if you were brought a plate of these you’d snaffle the lot in seconds. That may just be me.
A beef bone, sawn through on the horizontal and cleaned out so it looks like a piece of Skandi tableware, comes filled with slices of raw beef from a Dexter-Wagyu cross, the former gifting flavour, the latter texture. I want to track down some steaks of that for myself. It’s dressed with a little smoked marrowbone oil, dots of anchovy and torn basil leaves. It is a sultry, aromatic mouthful. Tiny cylinders of duck-liver parfait come wrapped in the thinnest leaves of smoked eel, with beetroot in various forms, including as meringue. In my notebook I scribble one word: earthy. I think that just about covers it.
A thick piece of duck breast has gloriously rendered skin and comes with a ragu of the offal with crushed hazelnuts. The latter is a tiny intense mouthful, both dirty and light at the same time. It leaves you wanting more, even though you know more would be too much. A frilly leaf of deep-fried kale takes the dish off towards thoughts of Chinese deep-fried seaweed which isn’t seaweed at all.
Most impressive of all is a plate of sea bream, served skin up. Close must at times feel he has something to prove. The temptation will be to go off on one, with a whizz and a bang. Instead he serves a piece of fish, skin crisped, flesh just the right side of done. It’s about as perfect a piece of fish cookery as you could hope for. There are swirls of a light cod’s roe cream, and a dusting of powder made from more cod’s roe that has been dried. And then a couple of wilted spinach leaves. And that’s it. It’s simple and excruciatingly effective. It is self-confidence expressed in three ingredients.
We finish with a block of light milk-chocolate parfait with a salted-caramel centre, glazed with shiny dark chocolate, alongside a scoop of popcorn ice cream. It’s a Mars Bar that’s gone for a makeover on Bond Street. The otherwise charming service is so fully with the project that questioning anything becomes tricky. They insist upon making coffee through the Chemex drip method and are so thrilled about the whole palaver I couldn’t quite bring myself to say (until now) that it was merely fine and not the pokey espresso I actually wanted.
There is a bigger question around sense of place. The landscape of this part of the northeast is very particular. It can, by turns, be both brutal and enfolding. The food here, accomplished though it is, has at times a restless feel to it; beyond a little name-checking of ingredients it doesn’t reflect location in the way, say, Simon Rogan’s food does at L’Enclume in the Lakes. But that is less a criticism than an observation. Close is an impressive young chef with some very good ideas, who is still finding his voice. It’s already one to which we should listen.
Jay’s news bites
■ The Old Inn at Drewsteignton, Devon is another tiny pub serving ambitious food. Chef Duncan Walker (right) came south 25 years ago to work with Shaun Hill at Gidleigh Park before striking out on his own. His cooking is big on flavour without being overwrought. Go for saffron lasagne with crab and red peppers, or rabbit and bacon risotto. Finish with hot blackcurrant soufflé with liquorice ice cream (old-inn.co.uk).
■ Forza Win, the group specialising in Italian-themed communal movable feasts, has found a permanent home in a reconditioned cash and carry in Peckham, south London. Their first menu, to be eaten at huge tables dangling from the ceiling, will be served three nights a week from this month and focus on spit roasted ‘100-day’ chickens. Price £35 for a full set menu (forzawin.com).
■ News of vital research: Direct Line has surveyed 1,000 adults to find the ingredients for the perfect bacon butty. The majority went for untoasted sliced white bread, smoked bacon and, controversially, brown sauce. Though the Welsh favoured tomato ketchup.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
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