( great restaurants )
The Daffodil
For a bit of pre-war pizzazz alongside contemporary cuisine and live music, LAURA ROWE reckons this Art Deco Cheltenham eatery is just the ticket
THEWAYWE eat out has changed a lot over the past few decades. It’s certainly lost its sense of
occasion. A trip to a restaurant is no longer a treat – it’s affordable and accessible. If we want a sandwich and a coffee, we don’t wait until we get home – we grab one at the local café. And if we’ve had a hard slog in the office and just can’t be bothered to pick up a pan, let alone wash up, we’ll head down to our local and let them do all of the hard work for us. And I think that’s a good thing – it means that we can eat often and well, and expand our foodie horizons. We might have a pronto pizza one weekend, and then a Thai feast for the family the next. But, now and again, it’s nice to dress up and eat
somewhere ‘fancy’, isn’t it? And while there are plenty of places in the Cotswolds where you can do that, and break the bank in the process, reasonably priced restaurants with a bit of style about them are a little bit harder to find.
The Daffodil on Suffolk Parade in Cheltenham, though, has long seemed to strike the right balance. Most dishes are priced in the mid-range bracket (we’re talking around the £6 mark for a starter and an average of £16 for a main) – though there are pricier meals if you want to push the boat out. The interior is as chic as you’re going to get in the town, too. If you likedGatsby, you’ll love this former Art Deco movie theatre with its chequered floors, sweeping staircases, mirrors and coloured glass. There are even old projectors, posters and film reels. It’s been on the street since 1922, but now the rows of
cinema seats have been replaced by cosy dinner tables, the stage is the site of many a live jazz session, and the curtain of the screen has been lifted to reveal an open kitchen instead, headed up by chef Tom Rains. Tom, who got his first job at The Lygon Arms in
Broadway, has since worked at The Berkeley, L’Escargot, the Belgravia Club (under the legendary Anton Mosimann, no less) and Claridges. Locals will know him though from his time at the Montpellier Chapter Hotel, where he worked under the guidance of Simon Hopkinson. His menu at The Daffodil is what you’d call modern European, where he’s taken the best of the local produce available to him and cooked dishes with influences from around the continent, and even a bit further afield (expect everything from bang bang chickento a tomato and thyme risotto with feta chips). My comnpanion, ‘Ms Catering’, who works in the industry and is a firm but fair critic, started with an
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Anglo-Indian dish of smoked haddock kedgeree fishcake (£6.95). A perfect crumb and creamy poached egg, she said, was let down by a lack of the promised spice and watery spinach base. My pan-fried scallops (£10.50), however, were much better and looked as pretty as a picture. Three sweet Queenie scallops, complete with a deliciously caramelised crust, sat atop a rectangle of spicy black pudding. Roasting juices made for a savoury sauce, cauliflower purée was creamy and light and raisins added a burst of sweetness, while shards of crackling kept the texture in check. On to our mains. Grilled lamb rump (£16.50) was
cheekily blushing –just how I like it – while lamb shoulder had been roasted, shredded and panéed. (Everything tastes better when it’s coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried, doesn’t it?) I also discovered just how good couscous can be, with an injection of tomato, while a smattering of chickpeas, a smack of salty aged feta and a punchy salsa verde rounded this flavour-packed plate off nicely. Ms Catering’s fillet of sea bass (£16.50) was so fresh, it
virtually flipped off the plate. An asparagus, pea, lemon and parsley risotto had just the right zing, while truffle chips were “an absolute triumph”. We visited on a Monday and so were able to make the
most of the Martini Monday deal (two for one!) and we were also treated to music, in the form of the Josephine Arthur Quartet. There’s something rather magical about hearing the orchestra of the kitchen (the whistle of a boiling broth, the rattling of pans and murmur of obedient chefs) mixed with the wild tinkering of live jazz. A ‘bite-size dessert plate’
(£14 for two) was, in reality, far too big for anyone’s mouth, even a gobby editor like me. The contents were damn tasty though. A crème brûlée was smooth and silky, once you’d broken through the crisp sugar shell; a warm chocolate fondant was hot and molten at its heart; and a treacle tart was sickly sweet (in the best possible way). The real stand-out puds, though, were a popcorn panna cotta, which tasted buttery, sweet and toasted all at the same time, and a refreshing lemon meringue crunch with lemon curd, meringue and cream. Not a perfect performance but close enough, and this
restaurant has the glamour and grub of somewhere that I would want to return to again and again.
Afters
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