Historical Dining Rooms – restaurant review

So this was how Henry VIII lived; a monarch who became so fat towards the end of his life that he had to be carried everywhere by servants.

The only difference being that instead of a raucous royal feast accompanied by jesters and dancing girls, dinner at the Historical Dining Rooms was an altogether more relaxed affair on a quiet Wednesday evening service, though still bacchanalian in spirit.

Ring a bell, climb a flight of stairs and be transported back in time. The private dining room with its dark wood paneling is even modeled on a room at Hampton Court, King Henry’s palace on the banks of the River Thames in Surrey.

Several items on the current tasting menu at this restaurant above the Star & Dove in Totterdown date from his era, including roasted milk from 1430 and stockfish from 1439. 

For those unaccustomed to English food from the 15th century, roasted milk is here is accompanied by a twice cooked custard of raw cheese, saffron, cut comb from the restaurant’s own bee hive and powdered chamomile. Stockfish is also known as ling fish, which is salted then fried.

Sitting underneath Georgian wallpaper from a house on Great Ormond Street in London, there first appeared an appetiser of Parmesan ice cream topped with a crunchy disc of the same cheese. It’s ice cream but not as you know it – your brain telling you one thing, it’s cheese; your tongue another, it’s ice cream.

It set the tone for what was to followed from chefs Leigh Pascoe, Tim Denny and Matt Duggan, who aim to “serve fine dining dishes from our heritage in an unusual and modern way”.

There were unexpected flavours and textures at every turn on the seven-course tasting menu (£48), hot and cold side by side, an immense amount of thought evidently going into each and every item on each and every plate, of which there were many.

Not in possession of servants like Henry, I was tempted to let out some air from my bicycle tyres after the gorging had eventually concluded almost three hours after it had begun, in preparation for the ride back home through Victoria Park.

A primary cause of the loss of two-wheeled equilibrium was one of the butters, flecked with tiny pieces of bacon, which was literally dripping off the plate on which it was served. If the butter is good enough to eat on its own, you know that you’re in for a treat.

Succulent snails were served in what looked like a miniature water trough alongside which was a crunchy French penny loaf and sweet oil made from English mace from the restaurant’s herb garden located on a former flat roof just outside the kitchen window.

Poached cabbage and crispy fried kale accompanied the delicate stockfish. Tubes of rabbit liver and loin sat on a bed of warm salad, with the juicy leg set aside. This was the “rabbit; buttered, roasted, potted, preserved” from 1833 – a main course that is £19 on the a la carte menu.

The duck came with that whey butter which had been served earlier with the bread. This time it was subtly incorporated into an 1800 recipe from the Cafe Royal in London, with mint a precursor of a “pre-dessert” of the classic Victorian palate cleanser punch a la romaine (made up of meringue and lemon sorbet over which is poured hot rum syrup) before the real pudding even appeared.

It seemed scarcely possible to get more decadent, but the wonderfully plump “diverse strawberries” (another recipe from 1430) had been washed in claret, with the thickened almond milk spiced with pepper, cinnamon meringue and borage, even with so-called bubble berries bursting in the mouth like popping candy.

Food trends come and go. Here there is no mention of seasonality on the menu because it instinctively is seasonal. There was no such word 100 years’ ago. 

The Historical Dining Rooms is like stepping into the pages of the most elaborate cook book you can find in the best antique book shop you know.

Eat like a Tudor king in a Georgian dining room and leave Bristol life in the 21st century far behind for as long as it takes to eat this exemplary food.

Historical Dining Rooms, The Black Door, Windsor Terrace, Totterdown, Bristol, BS3 4RY
0117 972 0366

www.historical-dining-rooms.co.uk