I’ve waxed lyrical a few times in the last 12 months about Alex Claridges cooking. Currently, whilst finalising details for Nomads evolution into the city centre, he’s cooking alongside fellow chefs at Urban Coffee Co in the guise of The Man & The Myth.
As always, the concept is a little different to your usual restaurant set up. The menu is designed to eat how you want to eat. Several small plates with the option of having just the one with a glass of wine, several for a light meal or the whole lot in the form of a kind of tasting menu. At £30/head for the latter option, it’s great value. Along with this modern style of dining, the win menu sees a list of ‘tasting notes’ only with set prices for glasses of wine, inspiring you to chose by flavor rather than name or price. I loved this aspect and went for a glass of ‘White peach and tangerine’.
My dining partner in crime laura and I decided to have the whole menu to share, duplicating a couple of the dishes that we liked the sound of the most. But to tickle our tastebuds we were served a little taster – a salad in a glass. Comprising of tomato, basil and cucumber in liquid form this was a delcious little shot of goodness.
Peel & Stone Bread
The food we ate was, as usual, inventive and unusual. Flavours that really stood out, cooked in delicate and subtle fashion. For me all but one were a resounding success – the plum dish right at the end, and if I’m honest thats only because the plums themselves were too sour for my palate. The accompanying almond, creme fraiche and lavender worked beautifully. And apparently we can blame Dan fro Free Radio for the plums…....see here! ;)
Have a look below at what we ate but the menu changes on a very regular basis depending on what is foraged and gathered from the allotment that day.
King oyster mushroom in beef dripping
Courgettes, nasturtium, ‘capers’ (where the capers were pickled nasturtium berries)
Pea, Broad Bean, black pudding, allotment trimmings
Beetroot smoked yoghurt, samphire
Hake, cauliflower, picked dulse
Fig, summer truffle, brie
wild blackberries, blackberry sorbet, caremelised yoghurt, and mint
Plum, almond, creme fraiche, lavender
I always enjoy trying Alexs food; it challenges me, introduces me to new ingredients and above all is alway tasty and cooked with care and love.
This meal including 1 glass wine each would have cost us less than £50, which is great value, so I urge you to try out the Man & The Myth while it resides at Urban Coffee Co, and follow Nomad and Bar by Nomad on Twitter to keep up with the goings on.
Disclosure: Alex treated us to this meal for free, opinions are no less honest because of it.
