The Forest Side, Grasmere

It was a single meal - a multi-course, expressionist dance of harmony and colour and flavour served at L'Enclume in Cartmel in 2012 which convinced me that modern foraged British food was the future of dining out, and that Simon Rogan was one of the most inventive and exciting chefs working today. And nothing since has changed my mind. Further experiences at the French in Manchester and Fera at Claridge's have merely replaced that initial swooning shock with a kind of awestruck reverie; nothing in five or six meals across those locations has been less than interesting and the the best of it is transcendental, tying together strict seasonality, a botanist's knowledge of the local environment, and - let's not forget this one - a library of classical French techniques to frame those wonderful ingredients with sticky reduced jus and crisp skins and pinpoint-accurate seasoning.

It may have felt revolutionary in 2012 to eat at L'Enclume, but Rogan learned his craft working for people like Marco Pierre White and Jean-Christophe Novelli, who in turn- oh, I can't be bothered to start with the Rock Family Tree; the point is, each chef is part of a chain of talent that stretches back way back when, and each individual uses the tools they were taught to make their own great leap forward once they start out alone in their own kitchens, where before long they become the "establishment" and various young chefs who have toiled 16-hour days podding peas in those kitchens start having some ideas of their own and fly the nest.

So we're getting to the stage now where Simon Rogan, once the hot young revolutionary of the British dining scene, is most definitely the New Establishment (I mean, his restaurant is in Claridge's; there's nowhere more establishment than that), and so for the next leap forward in British food the country looks towards ex- L'Enclume alumni such as Mark Birchall (soon to open Moor Hall near Ormskirk) and Kevin Tickle, who has landed a head chef role in the stunning gothic mansion hotel-restaurant Forest Side in Grasmere.

Much is resting on the success of the Forest Side; if, and it's a big if, Simon Rogan's influence can live outside his own kitchens and inform a new generation of restaurants across the country, then this will be the first great test - a high-end modern British menu, making use of foraged ingredients, nestled in the lush Cumbrian countryside and serving the best the area has to offer, but with Kevin Tickle in charge; related to l'Enclume, but a different blood line. Everything was possible, and it was all very exciting. You can see why I jumped at the chance to travel to Grasmere.

After a couple of "forager's cocktails" and nibbles in the bar (all very plush and impressive; no expense spared on décor that we could tell, and the drinks were all nice twists on classics using local plants), we were moved through to the main restaurant for the show to begin. Snacks appeared, chickpea wafer topped with peas & herbs, a crunchy new potato skin containing onion ash, and a "critter fritter", a deep-fried breadcrumbed cube of squirrel meat (and other bits and pieces I imagine), all nice enough as an introduction. Pretty, clever... but more impressive than enjoyable.

The next amuse was a bowl of fudgey slow-cooked yolk on top of some broad beans and topped with some slivers of "hen of the woods", a mushroom that credulous foodies will try and tell you tastes like chicken but actually tastes quite a bit more like mushroom. Again, it was a clever demonstration of a variety of techniques missing a certain balance (there was a lot of gooey yolk and not enough of anything else) and wasn't hugely memorable.

Bread (wholemeal loaf, fine but I won't judge them too harshly as it seems the bread offering is the last thing to evolve to its final form in a new restaurant) came with fennel butter, a weird enough idea and an oddly divisive flavour to force upon every paying guest, even if it had been seasoned properly. Which it wasn't. So we muched through half a slice each of bland, vaguely aniseedy bread before deciding that we'd much prefer some nice normal salted butter. Even adding salt to the fennel butter would have been nice, but not possible, as there wasn't any on the table.

The next course, heritage tomatoes cooked in elderflower with goat's curd and caviar, came paired with cucumber-flavour soda water made in Hackney. I have various issues with this, which may be easier to express in bullet form:

• I do not like cucumber soda
• Even if I did like cucumber soda, I would much prefer my tomato consommé (hardly the world's most unco-operative set of flavours) to be matched with a nice white wine, say a Riesling or something, than just another vegetable ingredient that, if the chef really thought the tomato needed it, would have surely been better off as part of the dish?
• The soda, presumably constructed by adding cucumber juice to soda water, had been shipped up from a company in Hackney. Maybe I'm unaware of every potential issue surrounding the adding of cucumber to sparkling water, but it seems odd that Forest Side can make their own bread but not their own flavoured water?

All of which would have been less annoying if the consommé had tasted of much, but I'm afraid I didn't think much of the slightly sweet and insipid liquid that coated the bottom of the bowl. Even the caviar seemed subdued.

The next course, in its own way, had just as many issues. Venison "pastrami" wasn't anything of the sort, just slices of cold roast venison with no hint of the bouncy, briney hit of proper pastrami, sat on some pickled veg, blobs of curd-y yoghurt and a few bits of shaved parmesan-style cheese. So far, so meh. But it was "paired" with a gin and tonic elaborately built tableside using more Hackney soda ("Artemesia", your guess is as good as mine), a Hackney*[see edit] gin called "Forest" (Lakeside gin is made a few miles away but isn't good enough apparently) and a sea buckthorne jelly to garnish. Needless to say, the gin & tonic completely battered any flavour in the venison (which wasn't much) into oblivion but actually the sea buckthorne jelly was really lovely, so I'll give them that.

I've only ever been disappointed with one dish in all my visits to Fera, and it involved langoustine, so perhaps there's something about West Coast langoustine that doesn't sit well with me. But I think I mainly didn't like it because it was a strange blobby texture and offputtingly transluscent from being undercooked, and I didn't like any of the rest of the dish either, from the slab of unseasoned "charred" cucumber that didn't look or taste like it had been anywhere near a direct heat, to the chewy strip of home made guanciale on top. My friend, who doesn't eat seafood, had exactly the same dish but with the langoustine and the guanciale(?) removed, so had to made do with a slice of cold cucumber for this course. Oh, and both were paired with an IPA - local, at least, but I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever see another glass of wine.

Courgette was presumably "scorched" in the same way the cucumber in the langoustine dish was "charred", i.e. not very much. And I don't care how much of a fan of vegetables you are, cold courgette is never a nice thing to eat, not even topped with a kind of pumpernickle cracker and surrounded by dots of mint sauce. I can't remember what this was paired with but it sure as hell wasn't wine.

And then just as we were thinking perhaps we should cut our losses and leap on the next train back to Euston, Forest Side went all... well, normal. Nice, even. My fish course was a fabulously cooked slice of halibut, bright white and flaking into clean, defined chunks, with a gorgeous golden brown crust. Served with the good bits of razor clams (no weirdness) and a lovely herby chutney which brought to mind the coriander dressing Trishna serve with their Haryali Sea Bream dish (this is a Good Thing), it was a balanced, complete, mature and hugely enjoyable dish. And - joy of joys - it was paired with a white wine (it'll never catch on), a natural Chablis-style from Burgundy, which complimented the fish perfectly. My seafood-hating friend similarly enjoyed her local hoggett, beautifully pink and rich in aged flavour, paired with a Syrah blend red. Were they messing with us?

Middlewhite pork proved the halibut and hoggett were no fluke. Beautifully moist squares of pig, surrounded by colourful local herbs and flowers, with a couple of sweet and tender artichoke hearts and all bound by that classic Rogan touch, a savoury custard. And on top of all that, it had been dressed with one of those lovely reduced stock sauces, thick and strong like porky honey, which I attempted to scoop every last bit of from my plate before realising I was making a bit of a scene. This dish was paired with a Radikon wine from Slovenia, light and interesting and just what we wanted. Seven courses into a ten-course tasting menu, they were hitting their stride.

Now we were on to desserts. Pre-dessert was a bowl of frozen bits and pieces of summer fruits, colourful and vibrant and great fun. I can't begin to describe half the things that went into it (not least because, as a pre-dessert, it wasn't listed on the menu) but I'm sure it was all lovely and seasonal. I think this came paired with a sparkling saké, which I'm only mentioning out of completeness because it didn't really do much for the food.

The first proper dessert was this strawberry mousse thing, which had the most beautiful flavour thanks I think to the use of wild strawberries from the kitchen garden at Forest Side. There were plenty of interesting techniques in play here too, from the crispy meringue-style coating to the cakey crumbs underneath which made it into a kind of deconstructed cheesecake. It was paired with a Sauternes, which brought out the fruity flavours very well. Only joking, it actually came with a strawberry cocktail, which was as pointless as it was annoying.

"Gooseberry, buttermilk and sweet cicely" had an extremely clever "floaty" texture, very difficult to describe but imagine a cross between a foam and a jelly, but smooth and almost impossibly light. The gooseberries packed a punch, like they often do, and buttermilk underneath added a nice dairy richness. This was paired with some non-alcoholic fruit cocktail of some kind I don't even care any more.

Partly because the cheeses from this part of the world are right up there with the best of them, and partly because we needed something to go with the glass of wine we were so craving, we went for the extra cheeseboard. And, unsurprisingly, it was brilliant, a not too large or too small selection of the finest British cheeses, kept perfectly and served generously, from a fresh citrussy goat's to a surprisingly chalky St James which nevertheless had the usual fine flavour. We asked for the red that came with the pork as we'd enjoyed it so much. "Yes, we have a sweet Banyuls to go with the cheese" came the reply, either through misunderstanding or sheer stubbornness. It was OK, but would have gone better with the desserts.

Petits fours, taken in the bar just so we could finally order a normal drink without anyone trying to force a honey-peanut butter stout or sparkling cabbage water on us, were a couple of Turkish delight things using some weird fruit, and a couple of frozen summer berry "rocks" that I remember from all those years ago at L'Enclume. I ate them, very nice (particularly the berry rock which must be a very difficult technique to master), then enjoyed a brandy and tried to work out what the hell just happened over the last few hours.

Some of the reasons I didn't enjoy everything we were given at Forest Side, were maybe just matters of taste, and nobody's fault. I'd rather have wine than sparkline saké, I don't much like cucumber water, and I don't like cold venison (it was 13th August, where was the grouse?), and maybe there are millions of people out there who do. OK fine, fair enough. But even if half of the first few courses just weren't my thing that still leaves half that could have been if they'd have just been treated a bit more carefully, or seasoned a bit better - particularly the fennel butter but also the tomato consommé and the cucumber/langoustine and courgette dishes which a bit of salt may have at least distracted from the reality of eating slabs of cold vegetable.

But on top of all of that we have the fact that when Forest Side put aside cold foraged plankton and matching pansy-water, the results can be very impressive. If I'd have turned up, had the halibut as a starter, the pork as a main then that strawberry dessert, I would have left a very happy chappy indeed. They know how to treat fish and pig, can make a nice reduced sauce, and the pastry section is spot-on. But this isn't a neighbourhood bistro serving 3 courses for £25, it's a £80/head tasting menu that for most people will require a pretty major journey to get to, and there aren't many people going to be happy waiting for 7-courses in before anything more than "OK" hits the table. And I wonder how many of those would be happy paying £60 extra for a bizarre selection of flavoured sodas, beers and juices instead of some nice wines?

I should probably point out that the hotel itself, the vast rooms, the luxurious bathrooms with their rain showers and baths the size of Bournemouth, the stunning location nestled amongst woodland within walking distance of Grasmere, you may consider all these things making the journey for even if you're not a fan of the food detailed above. And I know for a fact Forest Side has plenty of fans; my rather grumpy reaction to it is very much in the minority according to various press reviews I've read. But all I can do is all I ever do, go somewhere once, make a snap judgment and then carry on with my life. And so it is here. My love affair with modern British foraged food remains unshaken; but if I want it, I'll go to Fera.

5/10

I was invited to Forest Side. *EDIT: I swear our waiter said the gin was from London but it is in fact from Macclesfield Forest, so apologies to them!

l'Enclume, Cumbria

For many years, the cliff-top road to El Bulli was uneven, unpaved and, frankly, terrifying. Difficult enough even today despite clear road markings and that thick black tarmac the Europeans seem to do so well, for all the time Ferran Adria was collecting his stars his guests (not to mention countless Michelin inspectors) were required to pass this rally trial of a journey before they were allowed to sit down to dinner.

Of course, it was entirely deliberate. The bumpy journey around the coast, that half-hour spent bracing for every pothole, hoping to God you weren't about to hit a stray rock and career off into the Bay of Rosas, was all part of the adventure, the idea presumably being that the harder you had to try to get to a restaurant, the more likely you were to make the most of it once you got there. Whatever you thought of his food (and I didn't think much), Adria is nothing if not a showman, and understands that anticipation and the sense of achievement of having "arrived" (all coupled with the desperate unlikelihood of securing a reservation in the first place of course) is absolutely the best way of ensuring your guests are in the best possible frame of mind to be entertained.

On a smaller scale, building any mini break or long journey around a single meal goes some way to generating that sense of anticipation. Admittedly, Cartmel isn't quite as far-flung as Cala Montjoi, and turning left off the A590 isn't as spectacular as navigating a precipitous coastal road 200 metres above the Mediterranean sea, but the idea is the same - you're making a journey for your dinner, you are removing yourself from your daily patterns and routines and embarking on an adventure. We essentially weren't travelling up to the Lake District for any other reason than to eat at l'Enclume, and so the journey, indeed the whole trip, became part of the meal. And it follows, of course, that had the meal been disappointing, so would the trip.

Fortunately, Saturday evening in l'Enclume turned out to be one of the greatest meals I've ever had in my life. I have been thinking hard (usually a mistake) about whether if I'd just got the tube to Mayfair and had the same food and service would I still be in such raptures; on the one hand it doesn't matter I suppose as it's just pointless speculation, but are all truly great meals just as much a product of build-up and state-of-mind and surroundings as they are of skill in the kitchen? Is l'Enclume really serving the best food in Britain or was it simply a result of a "holiday mode" mental state and a pretty sunlit garden next to a babbling brook? See if you can help me decide.

From an array of amuses that arrived more or less together, the least impressive was actually the only thing in the whole evening I recognised from the l'Enclume sister restaurant in London, Roganic. "Cream cheese wafers" were as pretty as an entry in the Chelsea Flower Show but tasted only "very good". Smoked eel cooked in ham fat tasted every bit as good as that combination sounds, "Celery and apple and pickled beetroot", a substitution for my red-meat-avoiding father was a little explosion of fresh summer produce, and "peas and beef tongue" suffered only slightly from underseasoning but nevertheless was great fun to eat thanks to a range of interesting textures.

Out in front, though, was something called "Oyster pebbles"; supremely delicate apple meringue filled with oyster cream which dissolved into heavenly fresh seafood in the mouth, accompanied by extraordinary things called "oyster leaves" - look like weeds, taste like oyster. Really.

First proper course was an achingly pretty arrangement of sliced kohlrabi, puffed wild rice and what looked like a bright yellow quails egg but what was actually cod & sage cream set inside a gel of some kind. L'Enclume is not averse to using the odd bit of scientific trickery, it seems, but only sparingly, and always to great effect. Some powerfully-flavoured pieces of tomato added extra umami, although if you are (understandably) wincing at the unironic use of the word "umami" in a restaurant review, feel free to substitute it for "tomatoey flavour".

I should probably pause to make a special mention of the house bread. There were three kinds - a pumpernickel, an onion whole-wheat of some kind and a white flavoured with summer herbs, and were so good with the bright-white salted house butter it was a constant struggle to stop working your way through them. They were fresh out of the oven, with perfect crusts and soft moist inside, and I have not had better house bread anywhere apart from sister restaurant Roganic. Alaine Ducasse once said, when confronted with a criticism that his house bread was cold, that he didn't want people to "fill up" before the proper food started arriving. Well, Ducasse is a fool and l'Enclume is proof that a tray of the greatest bread in Britain only adds to the enjoyment of a meal. We do have some self-control, you know.

Westcombe [Cheddar] dumplings in onion broth, marjoram and broad beans was nothing short of sensational. The flavour from the dumplings was as good as you might expect from this magisterial unpasteurised product, but the syrupy onion broth paired with tiny leaves of intense marjoram turned the whole thing into a sort of God's Own French Onion soup.

I have long suspected that venison makes a better tartare than beef, and nothing on this plate was about to change my mind. Studded with delicate tiny cubes of capers and dressed with fennel shoots, the venison still managed to be the star of the show despite jewelled pockets of sugared fennel bursting on the tongue and providing wildly inventive seasoning and texture.

Scallops (usefully described as "sea scallops" on the menu, marking them apart from the tasteless land-dwelling variety you see so many of these days, as someone sarkily pointed out on Twitter) came dressed with a sharp strawberry sauce, crunchy grilled cauliflower and a selection of foraged coastal herbs that seasoned with intense sea-salt flavours. There was also a little dollop of what I think was some kind of hazelnut purée, and a scattering of puffed oats.

We were fortunate enough to eat at l'Enclume on the same day as their restaurant farm had pulled up its first harvest potatoes. These innocent looking tubers managed to punch through as a main ingredient despite being served with citrusy Nasturtium leaves and delicate slivers of chicken skin, and were as rich - and enjoyable - as any protein.

Next, a disc of charred cucumber and some kind of crispy shoot of broccoli was scattered with local shrimp and a blackberry oil dressing. The shrimp, as you might hope, were the talking point - sweet and juicy and almost unnaturally powerful in flavour, but the same attention to detail and artistic sensibility had been applied to everything else on the plate.

I'm going to just take a moment here and say that those previous five courses, from the onion broth to the local bay shrimps, constitutes the most consistently brilliant run of dishes I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Inevitably any meal has highlights, but it's very rare indeed to see so many side-by-side that are as good as can possibly be, that each impress in every way just as much as the one before, and that maintain such a stunning level of precision and skill. These dishes are side one of Van Morrison's Moondance, the first ten minutes of Disney/Pixar's Up - crafted, expertly judged, perfect.

That the next course didn't quite live up to the previous giddying highs is not that much of a criticism. Local bass was full of fresh flavour and cooked to just translucent, but the topping of shockingly fishy cockles on top dominated far too much, and rather threw the whole thing out of kilter. We also had to Google what a "chenopodium" was (looks like mint, tastes of salad).

We were, though, right back on top of the mountain with this suckling pig. Dressed with yellow beans and wood sorrel, the crackling took the form of piggy popcorn, presumably dried and deep-fried pieces of pig skin. The pork itself was unbelievably tender and moist, and I'm afraid I rather embarrassed myself by sweeping up every last remnant of the sauce with my fingers, it was that addictive.

Cheeses were all British Isles and largely very good although in all honesty I was a bit underwhelmed by a couple of the soft goat's. In principle I applaud the idea of extending the fiercly localist principles of l'Enclume to the cheeseboard, I just think - and believe me it pains me to say this - that sometimes the French do certain types of cheese better. At least, for now.

Iced chamomile, spruce, celery and black pepper was a palate-cleanser but memorable enough in its own right. Chamomile is an interesting flavour and, in common with pretty much everything else we at at l'Enclume, the combination of these ingredients wasn't something I'd ever had before.

"Cumbrian slate" was in fact two portions of summer berry jelly dusted and shaped to look like lumps of rock. Lemon verbena were placed like shoots of ferns growing in between the rocks, and the apple and gooseberries were freeze-dried and aerated somehow into little moss-like sponges. Clever stuff, and of course, very tasty.

There's not much not to like about the combination of cherries, hazelnut and cider, and yet another supreme command of texture and technique made this something special. I particularly liked the hazelnut, which was whipped into a kind of light mousse.

Finally, journey's end. Oatmeal stout, blackberry, malt and plum was a sandwich of light malty mousse topped with blackberries and served alongside a little cup of plum sauce. We'd had fully fifteen courses before it, and yet it still disappeared with relish and enthusiasm.

So what do you think? To return to an earlier point, running back through the l'Enclume menu now I can't imagine the setting and state of mind had much to do with the fact we enjoyed ourselves so much; it was simply that presentation, ingredients, attention to detail and monumental effort had produced a dinner that stood apart from pretty much anything else we'd ever eaten.

No element of any dish was superfluous, no fancy cheffy technique was either overused or there simply to hollowly impress at the expense of culinary sense. The food was never obscure or superior; where it was challenging it only ever delighted and surprised, never confused; where it used foraged or unusual ingredients they always worked better than any conceivable alternative, and were not just present to prove a point on sustainability. The service was professional and knowledgeable but never aloof, the timing between courses always just right - the first few dishes appearing swiftly in sympathy with our empty stomachs, then slowing down as the meal wore on. Yes, there were a couple of things we enjoyed less but these weren't jarring errors, just differences of opinion perhaps, and I suppose £89 a head isn't an everyday spend but is still perfectly within the bounds of acceptability for this level of cooking.

I'm not the first person to rave about l'Enclume and I certainly won't be the last. And I won't insult their kitchen by labelling anyone a "genius"; that word has lost all meaning after being thrown at anyone who's ever lifted a knife and who very rarely deserves it - certainly not Ferran Adria who I've always considered to be more PT Barnum than Pablo Picasso. So the greatest compliment I can give Simon Rogan and Mark Birchall and the phalanx of talent behind the stoves in the old Smithy in Cartmel is that I don't think there is any more exciting, innovative, joyful and miraculous restaurant in Britain. L'Enclume is an open-hearted and masterful celebration of everything that's great about modern British food, and you should go as soon as you possibly can.

10/10